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Darwin's Evolving Identity

2018-03-21 Science
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Release : 2018-03-21
Genre : Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 25X/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Darwin's Evolving Identity by : Alistair Sponsel

Download or read book Darwin's Evolving Identity written by Alistair Sponsel. This book was released on 2018-03-21. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why—against his mentor’s exhortations to publish—did Charles Darwin take twenty years to reveal his theory of evolution by natural selection? In Darwin’s Evolving Identity, Alistair Sponsel argues that Darwin adopted this cautious approach to atone for his provocative theorizing as a young author spurred by that mentor, the geologist Charles Lyell. While we might expect him to have been tormented by guilt about his private study of evolution, Darwin was most distressed by harsh reactions to his published work on coral reefs, volcanoes, and earthquakes, judging himself guilty of an authorial “sin of speculation.” It was the battle to defend himself against charges of overzealous theorizing as a geologist, rather than the prospect of broader public outcry over evolution, which made Darwin such a cautious author of Origin of Species. Drawing on his own ambitious research in Darwin’s manuscripts and at the Beagle’s remotest ports of call, Sponsel takes us from the ocean to the Origin and beyond. He provides a vivid new picture of Darwin’s career as a voyaging naturalist and metropolitan author, and in doing so makes a bold argument about how we should understand the history of scientific theories.

Understanding Evolution

2014-04-03 Science
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Release : 2014-04-03
Genre : Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 914/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Understanding Evolution by : Kostas Kampourakis

Download or read book Understanding Evolution written by Kostas Kampourakis. This book was released on 2014-04-03. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together conceptual obstacles and core concepts of evolutionary theory, this book presents evolution as straightforward and intuitive.

The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

2008-09-02 Science
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Release : 2008-09-02
Genre : Science
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Book Rating : 065/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex by : Charles Darwin

Download or read book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex written by Charles Darwin. This book was released on 2008-09-02. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the current resurgence of interest in the biological basis of animal behavior and social organization, the ideas and questions pursued by Charles Darwin remain fresh and insightful. This is especially true of The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, Darwin's second most important work. This edition is a facsimile reprint of the first printing of the first edition (1871), not previously available in paperback. The work is divided into two parts. Part One marshals behavioral and morphological evidence to argue that humans evolved from other animals. Darwin shoes that human mental and emotional capacities, far from making human beings unique, are evidence of an animal origin and evolutionary development. Part Two is an extended discussion of the differences between the sexes of many species and how they arose as a result of selection. Here Darwin lays the foundation for much contemporary research by arguing that many characteristics of animals have evolved not in response to the selective pressures exerted by their physical and biological environment, but rather to confer an advantage in sexual competition. These two themes are drawn together in two final chapters on the role of sexual selection in humans. In their Introduction, Professors Bonner and May discuss the place of The Descent in its own time and relation to current work in biology and other disciplines.

The Book That Changed America

2018-01-02 History
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Release : 2018-01-02
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 099/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Book That Changed America by : Randall Fuller

Download or read book The Book That Changed America written by Randall Fuller. This book was released on 2018-01-02. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling portrait of a unique moment in American history when the ideas of Charles Darwin reshaped American notions about nature, religion, science and race “A lively and informative history.” – The New York Times Book Review Throughout its history America has been torn in two by debates over ideals and beliefs. Randall Fuller takes us back to one of those turning points, in 1860, with the story of the influence of Charles Darwin’s just-published On the Origin of Species on five American intellectuals, including Bronson Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, the child welfare reformer Charles Loring Brace, and the abolitionist Franklin Sanborn. Each of these figures seized on the book’s assertion of a common ancestry for all creatures as a powerful argument against slavery, one that helped provide scientific credibility to the cause of abolition. Darwin’s depiction of constant struggle and endless competition described America on the brink of civil war. But some had difficulty aligning the new theory to their religious convictions and their faith in a higher power. Thoreau, perhaps the most profoundly affected all, absorbed Darwin’s views into his mysterious final work on species migration and the interconnectedness of all living things. Creating a rich tableau of nineteenth-century American intellectual culture, as well as providing a fascinating biography of perhaps the single most important idea of that time, The Book That Changed America is also an account of issues and concerns still with us today, including racism and the enduring conflict between science and religion.

Darwin and the Making of Sexual Selection

2017-04-27 Biography & Autobiography
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Release : 2017-04-27
Genre : Biography & Autobiography
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Book Rating : 90X/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Darwin and the Making of Sexual Selection by : Evelleen Richards

Download or read book Darwin and the Making of Sexual Selection written by Evelleen Richards. This book was released on 2017-04-27. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sexual selection, or the struggle for mates, was of considerable strategic importance to Darwin s theory of evolution as he first outlined it in the "Origin of Species," and later, in the "Descent of Man," it took on a much wider role. There, Darwin s exhaustive elaboration of sexual selection throughout the animal kingdom was directed to substantiating his view that human racial and sexual differences, not just physical differences but certain mental and moral differences, had evolved primarily through the action of sexual selection. It was the culmination of a lifetime of intellectual effort and commitment. Yet even though he argued its validity with a great array of critics, sexual selection went into abeyance with Darwin s death, not to be revived until late in the twentieth century, and even today it remains a controversial theory. In unfurling the history of sexual selection, Evelleen Richards brings to vivid life Darwin the man, not the myth, and the social and intellectual roots of his theory building."

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