Introducing Darwin

Introducing Darwin PDF Author: Jonathan Miller
Publisher: Icon Books Ltd
ISBN: 1848319703
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
Progress in genetics today would not be possible without Darwin's revolution, but the mysterious man who laid the rational basis for undermining belief in God's creation was remarkable timid. He spent most of his life in seclusion; a semi-invalid, riddled with doubts, fearing the controversy his theories might unleash. In this brilliantly lucid book - a classic originally published in 1982 - Jonathan Miller unravels Darwin's life and his contribution to biology, and traces the path from his scientific predecessors to the later modifications that his own evolutionary theories required. Introducing Darwin brings alive the difficult progress from pre-Darwinian thinking to modern genetics and the devastatingly important impact of one man on our fundamental understanding of biology, life and ourselves.

Introducing Darwin

Introducing Darwin PDF Author: Jonathan Miller
Publisher: Icon Books Ltd
ISBN: 1848319703
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
Progress in genetics today would not be possible without Darwin's revolution, but the mysterious man who laid the rational basis for undermining belief in God's creation was remarkable timid. He spent most of his life in seclusion; a semi-invalid, riddled with doubts, fearing the controversy his theories might unleash. In this brilliantly lucid book - a classic originally published in 1982 - Jonathan Miller unravels Darwin's life and his contribution to biology, and traces the path from his scientific predecessors to the later modifications that his own evolutionary theories required. Introducing Darwin brings alive the difficult progress from pre-Darwinian thinking to modern genetics and the devastatingly important impact of one man on our fundamental understanding of biology, life and ourselves.

Darwin for Beginners

Darwin for Beginners PDF Author: Jonathan Miller
Publisher: El Ateneo
ISBN: 9781874166016
Category : England
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
Unravelling Darwin's life and contribution to biology, this book traces the path from his scientific predecessors to the later modifications that his own evolutionary theories required. It provides a clear historical perspective on the progress from pre-Darwinian biology to modern genetics.

Introducing Darwin and Evolution

Introducing Darwin and Evolution PDF Author: Jonathan Miller
Publisher: Icon Books Company
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
In this guide, Jonathan Miller unravels Darwin's life and contribution to biology, and traces the path from his scientific predecessors to the later modifications that his own evolutionary theories required.

Darwin: A Very Short Introduction

Darwin: A Very Short Introduction PDF Author: Jonathan Howard
Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks
ISBN: 0192854542
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 145

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Book Description
Darwin's theory that our ancestors were apes caused a furore in the scientific world and outside it when The Origin of Species was published in 1859. Arguments still rage about the implications of his evolutionary theory, and scepticism about the value of Darwin's contribution to knowledge is widespread. In this analysis of Darwin's major insights and arguments, Jonathan Howard reasserts the importance of Darwin's work for the development of modern biology. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

The Book That Changed America

The Book That Changed America PDF Author: Randall Fuller
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143130099
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
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.

Evolution

Evolution PDF Author: Brian Charlesworth
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198804369
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
This text is about the central role of evolution in shaping the nature and diversity of the living world. It describes the processes of natural selection, how adaptations arise, and how new species form, as well as summarizing the evidence for evolution

On the Origin of Species

On the Origin of Species PDF Author: Charles Darwin
Publisher: E-Kitap Projesi & Cheapest Books
ISBN: 6155564388
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1253

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Book Description
On the Origin of Species, published on 24 November 1859, is a work of scientific literature by Charles Darwin which is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology. Its full title was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. For the sixth edition of 1872, the short title was changed to The Origin of Species. Darwin's book introduced the scientific theory that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection. It presented a body of evidence that the diversity of life arose by common descent through a branching pattern of evolution. Darwin included evidence that he had gathered on the Beagle expedition in the 1830s and his subsequent findings from research, correspondence, and experimentation. Various evolutionary ideas had already been proposed to explain new findings in biology. There was growing support for such ideas among dissident anatomists and the general public, but during the first half of the 19th century the English scientific establishment was closely tied to the Church of England, while science was part of natural theology. Ideas about the transmutation of species were controversial as they conflicted with the beliefs that species were unchanging parts of a designed hierarchy and that humans were unique, unrelated to other animals. The political and theological implications were intensely debated, but transmutation was not accepted by the scientific mainstream. The book was written for non-specialist readers and attracted widespread interest upon its publication. As Darwin was an eminent scientist, his findings were taken seriously and the evidence he presented generated scientific, philosophical, and religious discussion. The debate over the book contributed to the campaign by T. H. Huxley and his fellow members of the X Club to secularise science by promoting scientific naturalism. Within two decades there was widespread scientific agreement that evolution, with a branching pattern of common descent, had occurred, but scientists were slow to give natural selection the significance that Darwin thought appropriate. During the "eclipse of Darwinism" from the 1880s to the 1930s, various other mechanisms of evolution were given more credit. With the development of the modern evolutionary synthesis in the 1930s and 1940s, Darwin's concept of evolutionary adaptation through natural selection became central to modern evolutionary theory, and it has now become the unifying concept of the life sciences. Summary of Darwin's theory: Darwin's theory of evolution is based on key facts and the inferences drawn from them, which biologist Ernst Mayr summarised as follows: • Every species is fertile enough that if all offspring survived to reproduce the population would grow (fact). • Despite periodic fluctuations, populations remain roughly the same size (fact). • Resources such as food are limited and are relatively stable over time (fact). • A struggle for survival ensues (inference). • Individuals in a population vary significantly from one another (fact). • Much of this variation is inheritable (fact). • Individuals less suited to the environment are less likely to survive and less likely to reproduce; individuals more suited to the environment are more likely to survive and more likely to reproduce and leave their inheritable traits to future generations, which produces the process of natural selection (inference). • This slowly effected process results in populations changing to adapt to their environments, and ultimately, these variations accumulate over time to form new species (inference).

Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior

Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior PDF Author: Robert J. Richards
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226712001
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 719

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Book Description
With insight and wit, Robert J. Richards focuses on the development of evolutionary theories of mind and behavior from their first distinct appearance in the eighteenth century to their controversial state today. Particularly important in the nineteenth century were Charles Darwin's ideas about instinct, reason, and morality, which Richards considers against the background of Darwin's personality, training, scientific and cultural concerns, and intellectual community. Many critics have argued that the Darwinian revolution stripped nature of moral purpose and ethically neutered the human animal. Richards contends, however, that Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and their disciples attempted to reanimate moral life, believing that the evolutionary process gave heart to unselfish, altruistic behavior. "Richards's book is now the obvious introduction to the history of ideas about mind and behavior in the nineteenth century."—Mark Ridley, Times Literary Supplement "Not since the publication of Michael Ghiselin's The Triumph of the Darwinian Method has there been such an ambitious, challenging, and methodologically self-conscious interpretation of the rise and development and evolutionary theories and Darwin's role therein."—John C. Greene, Science "His book . . . triumphantly achieves the goal of all great scholarship: it not only informs us, but shows us why becoming thus informed is essential to understanding our own issues and projects."—Daniel C. Dennett, Philosophy of Science

 PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 0761354867
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 92

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Book Description


Darwin

Darwin PDF Author: Jonathan Howard
Publisher: Hill & Wang
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description