one did, one didn't

As 2009 marks the 400th anniversary of Galileo's first use of the telescope and the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, the New Scientist asked a bunch of thinkers to decide who was more important.

One showed us that we inhabit a tiny speck orbiting a tiny speck, all but lost among billions of specks in a galaxy (says philosopher Daniel Dennett). The other struck at the root of what it means to be human (says physicist Paul Davies).

This blog adds: one became the subject of a great play, the other didn't.