Patrząc na dokonania Darwina przez pryzmat kontrowersji i płomiennych dyskusji, które rozgorzały na całym świecie i toczone są do dnia dzisiejszego, zadziwi Czytelnika fakt, że obcując z tą lekturą znajdziemy się niejako w samym oku cyklonu. Spokojnej, przepełnionej rodzinną i serdeczną atmosferą wiosce Down, w malowniczo położonym domu Charlesa Darwina. W toku lektury nie sposób nie odnieść wrażenia, że jej narracja wzbudza takie uczucie, j...
Everyone has opinions about evolution, but how many people have actually read Charles Darwin? If you haven’t done so yet, you’re missing out on what is surely one of the greatest books ever written. Written for the general public of the 1850s, it is a rigorously documented but highly readable account of the scientific theory that now lies at the root of our present attitude to the universe. Darwin’s book contains a wealth of evidence that the diversity of life arose through...
In The Descent of Man Darwin addresses many of the issues raised by his notorious Origin of Species: finding in the traits and instincts of animals the origins of the mental abilities of humans, of language, of our social structures and our moral capacities, he attempts to show that there is no clear dividing line between animals and humans. Most importantly, he accounts for what Victorians called the ‘races’ of mankind by means of what he calls sexual selection. This book pr...
With an Introduction by David Amigoni. Charles Darwin's travels around the world as an independent naturalist on HMS Beagle between 1831 and 1836 impressed upon him a sense of the natural world's beauty and sublimity which language could barely capture. Words, he said, were inadequate to convey to those who have not visited the inter-tropical regions, the sensation of delight which the mind experiences'. Yet in a travel journal which takes the reader from the coasts and inter...
With an Introduction by Jeff Wallace. 'A grain in the balance will determine which individual shall live and which shall die...'. Darwin's theory of natural selection issued a profound challenge to orthodox thought and belief: no being or species has been specifically created; all are locked into a pitiless struggle for existence, with extinction looming for those not fitted for the task. Yet The Origin of Species (1859) is also a humane and inspirational vision of ecological...