One Long Argument

One Long Argument PDF Author: Ernst Mayr
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674639065
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Get Book Here

Book Description
The great evolutionist Mayr elucidates the subtleties of Darwin’s thought and that of his contemporaries and intellectual heirs—A. R. Wallace, T. H. Huxley, August Weisman, Asa Gray. Mayr has achieved a remarkable distillation of Darwin’s scientific thought and his legacy to twentieth-century biology.

One Long Argument

One Long Argument PDF Author: Ernst Mayr
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674639065
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Get Book Here

Book Description
The great evolutionist Mayr elucidates the subtleties of Darwin’s thought and that of his contemporaries and intellectual heirs—A. R. Wallace, T. H. Huxley, August Weisman, Asa Gray. Mayr has achieved a remarkable distillation of Darwin’s scientific thought and his legacy to twentieth-century biology.

One Long Argument

One Long Argument PDF Author: Ernst Mayr
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780140166279
Category : Evolution
Languages : en
Pages : 195

Get Book Here

Book Description


The Cambridge Companion to Darwin

The Cambridge Companion to Darwin PDF Author: Michael Jonathan Sessions Hodge
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521884756
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 565

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume provides the reader with clear, lively and balanced introductions to the most recent scholarship on Darwin and his intellectual legacies.

One Long Argument

One Long Argument PDF Author: Ernst Mayr
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674265882
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Get Book Here

Book Description
Evolutionary theory ranks as one of the most powerful concepts of modern civilization. Its effects on our view of life have been wide and deep. One of the most world-shaking books ever published, Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, first appeared in print over 130 years ago, and it touched off a debate that rages to this day. Every modern evolutionist turns to Darwin’s work again and again. Current controversies in the life sciences very often have as their starting point some vagueness in Darwin’s writings or some question Darwin was unable to answer owing to the insufficient biological knowledge available during his time. Despite the intense study of Darwin’s life and work, however, many of us cannot explain his theories (he had several separate ones) and the evidence and reasoning behind them, nor do we appreciate the modifications of the Darwinian paradigm that have kept it viable throughout the twentieth century. Who could elucidate the subtleties of Darwin’s thought and that of his contemporaries and intellectual heirs—A. R. Wallace, T. H. Huxley, August Weismann, Asa Gray—better than Ernst Mayr, a man considered by many to be the greatest evolutionist of the century? In this gem of historical scholarship, Mayr has achieved a remarkable distillation of Charles Darwin’s scientific thought and his enormous legacy to twentieth-century biology. Here we have an accessible account of the revolutionary ideas that Darwin thrust upon the world. Describing his treatise as “one long argument,” Darwin definitively refuted the belief in the divine creation of each individual species, establishing in its place the concept that all of life descended from a common ancestor. He proposed the idea that humans were not the special products of creation but evolved according to principles that operate everywhere else in the living world; he upset current notions of a perfectly designed, benign natural world and substituted in their place the concept of a struggle for survival; and he introduced probability, chance, and uniqueness into scientific discourse. This is an important book for students, biologists, and general readers interested in the history of ideas—especially ideas that have radically altered our worldview. Here is a book by a grand master that spells out in simple terms the historical issues and presents the controversies in a manner that makes them understandable from a modern perspective.

Darwin's Argument by Analogy

Darwin's Argument by Analogy PDF Author: Roger M. White
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108851657
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 261

Get Book Here

Book Description
In On the Origin of Species (1859), Charles Darwin put forward his theory of natural selection. Conventionally, Darwin's argument for this theory has been understood as based on an analogy with artificial selection. But there has been no consensus on how, exactly, this analogical argument is supposed to work – and some suspicion too that analogical arguments on the whole are embarrassingly weak. Drawing on new insights into the history of analogical argumentation from the ancient Greeks onward, as well as on in-depth studies of Darwin's public and private writings, this book offers an original perspective on Darwin's argument, restoring to view the intellectual traditions which Darwin took for granted in arguing as he did. From this perspective come new appreciations not only of Darwin's argument but of the metaphors based on it, the range of wider traditions the argument touched upon, and its legacies for science after the Origin.

From So Simple a Beginning

From So Simple a Beginning PDF Author: Charles Darwin
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0393061345
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Hailed as "superior" by Nature, this landmark volume is available in a collectible, boxed edition. Never before have the four great works of Charles Darwin—Voyage of the H.M.S. Beagle (1845), The Origin of Species (1859), The Descent of Man (1871), and The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals (1872)—been collected under one cover. Undertaking this challenging endeavor 123 years after Darwin's death, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Edward O. Wilson has written an introductory essay for the occasion, while providing new, insightful introductions to each of the four volumes and an afterword that examines the fate of evolutionary theory in an era of religious resistance. In addition, Wilson has crafted a creative new index to accompany these four texts, which links the nineteenth-century, Darwinian evolutionary concepts to contemporary biological thought. Beautifully slipcased, and including restored versions of the original illustrations, From So Simple a Beginning turns our attention to the astounding power of the natural creative process and the magnificence of its products.

Evolution and the Diversity of Life

Evolution and the Diversity of Life PDF Author: Ernst Mayr
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674271050
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 742

Get Book Here

Book Description
The diversity of living forms and the unity of evolutionary processes are the focus of these essays. The collection helps form much of the basis of contempoary undertanding of evolutionary biology.

Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love

Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love PDF Author: Elizabeth A. Johnson
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1472903730
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Get Book Here

Book Description
An examination of the relationship between faith in God and the concept of ecological care within a crisis of biodiversity

The Long Argument

The Long Argument PDF Author: Stephen Foster
Publisher: Omohundro Institute and Unc Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 424

Get Book Here

Book Description
Long Argument: English Puritanism and the Shaping of New England Culture, 1570-1700

Improbable Destinies

Improbable Destinies PDF Author: Jonathan B. Losos
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0399184937
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 386

Get Book Here

Book Description
A major new book overturning our assumptions about how evolution works Earth’s natural history is full of fascinating instances of convergence: phenomena like eyes and wings and tree-climbing lizards that have evolved independently, multiple times. But evolutionary biologists also point out many examples of contingency, cases where the tiniest change—a random mutation or an ancient butterfly sneeze—caused evolution to take a completely different course. What role does each force really play in the constantly changing natural world? Are the plants and animals that exist today, and we humans ourselves, inevitabilities or evolutionary flukes? And what does that say about life on other planets? Jonathan Losos reveals what the latest breakthroughs in evolutionary biology can tell us about one of the greatest ongoing debates in science. He takes us around the globe to meet the researchers who are solving the deepest mysteries of life on Earth through their work in experimental evolutionary science. Losos himself is one of the leaders in this exciting new field, and he illustrates how experiments with guppies, fruit flies, bacteria, foxes, and field mice, along with his own work with anole lizards on Caribbean islands, are rewinding the tape of life to reveal just how rapid and predictable evolution can be. Improbable Destinies will change the way we think and talk about evolution. Losos's insights into natural selection and evolutionary change have far-reaching applications for protecting ecosystems, securing our food supply, and fighting off harmful viruses and bacteria. This compelling narrative offers a new understanding of ourselves and our role in the natural world and the cosmos.