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  • I think that everyone with even the slightest interest in biology and evolution should read this book. It's particularly relevant in recent years, considering the controversies surrounding science education and intelligent design. It's easy to read, as Darwin wrote it as an introduction for both his ... Continue

    I think that everyone with even the slightest interest in biology and evolution should read this book. It's particularly relevant in recent years, considering the controversies surrounding science education and intelligent design. It's easy to read, as Darwin wrote it as an introduction for both his fellow scientists and the 'educated' public.

    

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• ― Kellyo said on Apr 19, 2008 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

Perhaps the most readable and accessible of the great works of scientific imagination, The Origin of Species sold out on the day it was published in 1859. Theologians quickly labeled Charles Darwin the most dangerous man in England, and, as the Saturday Review noted, the uproar over the book quickly "passed beyond the bounds of the study and lecture-room into the drawing-room and the public street." Yet, after reading it, Darwin's friend and colleague T. H. Huxley had a different reaction: "How extremely stupid not to have thought of that."
Based largely on Darwin's experience as a naturalist while on a five-year voyage aboard H.M.S. Beagle, The Origin of Species set forth a theory of evolution and natural selection that challenged contemporary beliefs about divine providence and the immutability of species. A landmark contribution to philosophical and scientific thought, this edition also includes an introductory historical sketch and a glossary Darwin later added to the original text.

Charles Darwin grew up considered, by his own account, "a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard of intellect." A quirk of fate kept him from the career his father had deemed appropriate--that of a country parson--when a botanist recommended Darwin for an appointment as a naturalist aboard H.M.S. Beagle from 1831 to 1836. Darwin is also the author of the five-volume work Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle (1839) and The Descent of Man (1871).


From the Trade Paperback edition.

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Philosophy of Biology & Theoretical Biology (生物哲學&理論生物學) (26)

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