Darwin's Laboratory

Darwin's Laboratory PDF Author: Roy M. MacLeod
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824816131
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 562

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Book Description
No scientific traveler was more influenced by the Pacific than Charles Darwin, and his legacy in the region remains unparalleled. Yet the extent of the Pacific's impact on the thought of Darwin and those who followed him has not been sufficiently grasped. In this volume of essays, sixteen scholars explore the many dimensions - biological, geological, anthropological, social, and political - of Darwinism in the Pacific. Fired by Darwinian ideas, nineteenth-century naturalists within and around the Pacific rim worked to further Darwin's programs in their own research: in Seattle, conchologist P. Brooks Randolph; in Honolulu, evolutionist John Thomas Gulick; in Adelaide, botanist Richard Schomburgk; and in Malaysia, biogeographer Alfred Russel Wallace. Lesser-known enthusiasts furnished Darwin with fresh material and replied to his endless inquiries, while young aspiring biologists from Cambridge tested Darwinian ideas directly in the "laboratory" of the Pacific. But the implications of Darwinism for the understanding of human nature and history turned it into a public theory as well as a scientific one. Anthropologists, geographers, missionaries, politicians, and social commentators - from Australia to Japan - all found ways to adapt Darwinism to their own agendas. Darwin's Laboratory demonstrates the variety and richness of Darwinian ideas in the Pacific and, in so doing, shows how the region functioned as a testing ground for the theory of evolution. Further, it illustrates how Darwinian ideas and their European contexts helped invent and define the particular conception we have of the Pacific. Both the general reader and the specialist will find controversy, illumination, and entertainment in this, the first book to probe the extent of Darwinism and Darwinian thinking in the Pacific.

Darwin's Laboratory

Darwin's Laboratory PDF Author: Roy M. MacLeod
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824816131
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 562

Get Book Here

Book Description
No scientific traveler was more influenced by the Pacific than Charles Darwin, and his legacy in the region remains unparalleled. Yet the extent of the Pacific's impact on the thought of Darwin and those who followed him has not been sufficiently grasped. In this volume of essays, sixteen scholars explore the many dimensions - biological, geological, anthropological, social, and political - of Darwinism in the Pacific. Fired by Darwinian ideas, nineteenth-century naturalists within and around the Pacific rim worked to further Darwin's programs in their own research: in Seattle, conchologist P. Brooks Randolph; in Honolulu, evolutionist John Thomas Gulick; in Adelaide, botanist Richard Schomburgk; and in Malaysia, biogeographer Alfred Russel Wallace. Lesser-known enthusiasts furnished Darwin with fresh material and replied to his endless inquiries, while young aspiring biologists from Cambridge tested Darwinian ideas directly in the "laboratory" of the Pacific. But the implications of Darwinism for the understanding of human nature and history turned it into a public theory as well as a scientific one. Anthropologists, geographers, missionaries, politicians, and social commentators - from Australia to Japan - all found ways to adapt Darwinism to their own agendas. Darwin's Laboratory demonstrates the variety and richness of Darwinian ideas in the Pacific and, in so doing, shows how the region functioned as a testing ground for the theory of evolution. Further, it illustrates how Darwinian ideas and their European contexts helped invent and define the particular conception we have of the Pacific. Both the general reader and the specialist will find controversy, illumination, and entertainment in this, the first book to probe the extent of Darwinism and Darwinian thinking in the Pacific.

Darwin's Fishes

Darwin's Fishes PDF Author: Daniel Pauly
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139451812
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
In Darwin's Fishes, Daniel Pauly presents an encyclopaedia of ichthyology, ecology and evolution, based upon everything that Charles Darwin ever wrote about fish. Entries are arranged alphabetically and can be about, for example, a particular fish taxon, an anatomical part, a chemical substance, a scientist, a place, or an evolutionary or ecological concept. The reader can start wherever they like and are then led by a series of cross-references on a fascinating voyage of interconnected entries, each indirectly or directly connected with original writings from Darwin himself. Along the way, the reader is offered interpretation of the historical material put in the context of both Darwin's time and that of contemporary biology and ecology. This book is intended for anyone interested in fishes, the work of Charles Darwin, evolutionary biology and ecology, and natural history in general.

Darwin's Evolving Identity

Darwin's Evolving Identity PDF Author: Alistair Sponsel
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022652325X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
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.

Darwin's Spectre

Darwin's Spectre PDF Author: Michael R. Rose
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400822637
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Extending the human life-span past 120 years. The "green" revolution. Evolution and human psychology. These subjects make today's newspaper headlines. Yet much of the science underlying these topics stems from a book published nearly 140 years ago--Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. Far from an antique idea restricted to the nineteenth century, the theory of evolution is one of the most potent concepts in all of modern science. In Darwin's Spectre, Michael Rose provides the general reader with an introduction to the theory of evolution: its beginning with Darwin, its key concepts, and how it may affect us in the future. First comes a brief biographical sketch of Darwin. Next, Rose gives a primer on the three most important concepts in evolutionary theory--variation, selection, and adaptation. With a firm grasp of these concepts, the reader is ready to look at modern applications of evolutionary theory. Discussing agriculture, Rose shows how even before Darwin farmers and ranchers unknowingly experimented with evolution. Medical research, however, has ignored Darwin's lessons until recently, with potentially grave consequences. Finally, evolution supplies important new vantage points on human nature. If humans weren't created by deities, then our nature may be determined more by evolution than we have understood. Or it may not be. In this question, as in many others, the Darwinian perspective is one of the most important for understanding human affairs in the modern world. Darwin's Spectre explains how evolutionary biology has been used to support both valuable applied research, particularly in agriculture, and truly frightening objectives, such as Nazi eugenics. Darwin's legacy has been a comfort and a scourge. But it has never been irrelevant.

Darwin's Armada

Darwin's Armada PDF Author: Iain McCalman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1847377181
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 498

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Book Description
Darwin's Armadatells the stories of Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, Joseph Hooker and Alfred Wallace, four young amateur naturalists from Britain who voyaged to the southern hemisphere during the first half of the nineteenth century in search of adventure and scientific fame. It charts their thrilling voyages to the strange and beautiful lands of the southern hemisphere that reshaped the young mariners' scientific ideas and led them, on returning to Britain, to befriend fellow voyager Charles Darwin. All three crucially influenced the publication and reception of his Origin of Speciesin 1859, one of the formative texts of the modern world. For the first time the Darwinian revolution of ideas is seen as a genuinely collective enterprise and one that had its birth in a series of gripping and human travel adventures. Many of the most urgent ecological and social issues of our times are seen to be prefigured in this compelling story of intellectual discovery.

Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin PDF Author: E. Janet Browne
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691114392
Category : Celebrities
Languages : en
Pages : 628

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Book Description
Traces the life of the great British scientist, describes his travels as a naturalist, and traces the development of his theories.

Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin PDF Author: Adrian Desmond
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191647489
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 107

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Book Description
Definitive, concise, and very interesting... From William Shakespeare to Winston Churchill, the Very Interesting People series provides authoritative bite-sized biographies of Britain's most fascinating historical figures - people whose influence and importance have stood the test of time. Each book in the series is based upon the biographical entry from the world-famous Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Literature and Science

Literature and Science PDF Author: Martin Willis
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1137474416
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
This Guide introduces literature and science as a vibrant field of critical study that is increasingly influencing both university curricula and future areas of investigation. Martin Willis explores the development of the genre and its surrounding criticism from the early modern period to the present day, focusing on key texts, topics and debates.

Exploration and Science

Exploration and Science PDF Author: Michael Sean Reidy
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1576079864
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
This comprehensive volume explores the intricate, mutually dependent relationship between science and exploration—how each has repeatedly built on the discoveries of the other and, in the process, opened new frontiers. A simple question: Which came first, advances in navigation or successful voyages of discovery? A complicated answer: Both and neither. For more than four centuries, scientists and explorers have worked together—sometimes intentionally and sometimes not—in an ongoing, symbiotic partnership. When early explorers brought back exotic flora and fauna from newly discovered lands, scientists were able to challenge ancient authorities for the first time. As a result, scientists not only invented new navigational tools to encourage exploration, but also created a new approach to studying nature, in which observations were more important than reason and authority. The story of the relationship between science and exploration, analyzed here for the first time, is nothing less than the history of modern science and the expanding human universe.

Darwin-Inspired Learning

Darwin-Inspired Learning PDF Author: Carolyn J. Boulter
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9462098336
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 429

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Book Description
Charles Darwin has been extensively analysed and written about as a scientist, Victorian, father and husband. However, this is the first book to present a carefully thought out pedagogical approach to learning that is centered on Darwin’s life and scientific practice. The ways in which Darwin developed his scientific ideas, and their far reaching effects, continue to challenge and provoke contemporary teachers and learners, inspiring them to consider both how scientists work and how individual humans ‘read nature’. Darwin-inspired learning, as proposed in this international collection of essays, is an enquiry-based pedagogy, that takes the professional practice of Charles Darwin as its source. Without seeking to idealise the man, Darwin-inspired learning places importance on: • active learning • hands-on enquiry • critical thinking • creativity • argumentation • interdisciplinarity. In an increasingly urbanised world, first-hand observations of living plants and animals are becoming rarer. Indeed, some commentators suggest that such encounters are under threat and children are living in a time of ‘nature-deficit’. Darwin-inspired learning, with its focus on close observation and hands-on enquiry, seeks to re-engage children and young people with the living world through critical and creative thinking modeled on Darwin’s life and science.