I wasn’t sure how somber a face to put on for a “celebration of life” gathering for our biologist colleague Jonathan Wells (1942 – 2024), last Sunday in Poulsbo, WA. It turned out I needn’t have worried about it. The event wasn’t a funeral, as Jonathan had passed away in September and left instructions, as his daughter Josie said, that he did not want a funeral. It was indeed a celebration and not somber at all, with much warmth and humor inspired by our longtime friend and colleague. 

Photo by Nathan Jacobson, © Discovery Institute

It was fascinating to see Jonathan’s son Peter (immediately above), who looks remarkably like his dad when Dr. Wells was young. As he introduced himself to the crowd, he joked that the “apple fell far from the tree” — which it most certainly did not. Apart from family members, the tributes were mostly from colleagues with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. John West spoke of Dr. Wells’s brilliance, humility, and kindness, but also praised him as a wonderfully lucid science writer: “He was understandable. Many scientists can’t write.” Paul Nelson alluded to his own “weepy Norwegian eyes” as he sought through tears to pay tribute to his friend, saying that “I expect that Jonathan’s ideas about organisms will be vindicated.”

Photo by Nathan Jacobson, © Discovery Institute

Casey Luskin quoted evolutionist Eugenie Scott who predicted that Jonathan’s book Icons of Evolution would turn out to be “a royal pain in the fanny” for her and other Darwin partisans. She was right about that! It was through Jonathan’s work that the famed, fraudulent Haeckel’s embryo drawings were finally driven out of biology textbooks. “Jonathan,” said Dr. Luskin, “you won. You’ve already been vindicated.”

Photo by Nathan Jacobson, © Discovery Institute

Jonathan himself made an appearance in a video produced by the CSC. A notorious perfectionist who labored over his work with an insistence on precision in both science and language, Dr. Wells was asked at one point in the video, “What do you do for fun?” His reply, which got a big appreciative laugh: “I don’t.”

Photo by Nathan Jacobson, © Discovery Institute

Perhaps his closest working scientist colleague, Richard Sternberg (immediately above), recalled how he had moved to Bremerton, WA, “to be close to Jonathan.” Wells, said Dr. Sternberg, had a “commitment to the Truth with a capital T,” but also possessed, quoting then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, an “awareness of the unknown unknowns,” the things that you don’t even know, and can’t even guess, that you don’t know. Sternberg regretted, citing Plato, that “words are very poor containers for what one wants to say” about a friend like Jonathan. He deadpanned as a conclusion, “All is well that ends.”