Download or read book Darwinism Comes to America written by Ronald L. Numbers and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on crucial aspects of the history of Darwinism in America, Numbers gets to the heart of American resistance to Darwin's ideas. He provides a much-needed historical perspective on today's quarrels about creationism and evolution--and illuminates the specifically American nature of this struggle.
Download or read book The Book That Changed America written by Randall Fuller and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-01-02 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Darwin Day in America written by John G. West and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2014-04-22 with total page 581 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the dawn of the last century, leading scientists and politicians giddily predicted that science—especially Darwinian biology—would supply solutions to all the intractable problems of American society, from crime to poverty to sexual maladjustment. Instead, politics and culture were dehumanized as scientific experts began treating human beings as little more than animals or machines. In criminal justice, these experts denied the existence of free will and proposed replacing punishment with invasive “cures” such as the lobotomy. In welfare, they proposed eliminating the poor by sterilizing those deemed biologically unfit. In business, they urged the selection of workers based on racist theories of human evolution and the development of advertising methods to more effectively manipulate consumer behavior. In sex education, they advocated creating a new sexual morality based on “normal mammalian behavior” without regard to longstanding ethical and religious imperatives. Based on extensive research with primary sources and archival materials, John G. West’s captivating Darwin Day in America tells the story of how American public policy has been corrupted by scientistic ideology. Marshaling fascinating anecdotes and damning quotations, West’s narrative explores the far-reaching consequences for society when scientists and politicians deny the essential differences between human beings and the rest of nature. It also exposes the disastrous results that ensue when experts claiming to speak for science turn out to be wrong. West concludes with a powerful plea for the restoration of democratic accountability in an age of experts.
Download or read book America s Darwin written by Tina Gianquitto and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2014-06-15 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While much has been written about the impact of Darwin's theories on U.S. culture, and countless scholarly collections have been devoted to the science of evolution, few have addressed the specific details of Darwin's theories as a cultural force affecting U.S. writers. America's Darwin fills this gap and features a range of critical approaches that examine U.S. textual responses to Darwin's works. The scholars in this collection represent a range of disciplines--literature, history of science, women's studies, geology, biology, entomology, and anthropology. All pay close attention to the specific forms that Darwinian evolution took in the United States, engaging not only with Darwin's most famous works, such as On the Origin of Species, but also with less familiar works, such as The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Each contributor considers distinctive social, cultural, and intellectual conditions that affected the reception and dissemination of evolutionary thought, from before the publication of On the Origin of Species to the early years of the twenty-first century. These essays engage with the specific details and language of a wide selection of Darwin's texts, treating his writings as primary sources essential to comprehending the impact of Darwinian language on American writers and thinkers. This careful engagement with the texts of evolution enables us to see the broad points of its acceptance and adoption in the American scene; this approach also highlights the ways in which writers, reformers, and others reconfigured Darwinian language to suit their individual purposes. America's Darwin demonstrates the many ways in which writers and others fit themselves to a narrative of evolution whose dominant motifs are contingency and uncertainty. Collectively, the authors make the compelling case that the interpretation of evolutionary theory in the U.S. has always shifted in relation to prevailing cultural anxieties.
Download or read book Darwin s Dangerous Idea written by Daniel C. Dennett and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a book that is both groundbreaking and accessible, Daniel C. Dennett, whom Chet Raymo of The Boston Globe calls "one of the most provocative thinkers on the planet," focuses his unerringly logical mind on the theory of natural selection, showing how Darwin's great idea transforms and illuminates our traditional view of humanity's place in the universe. Dennett vividly describes the theory itself and then extends Darwin's vision with impeccable arguments to their often surprising conclusions, challenging the views of some of the most famous scientists of our day.
Download or read book Where Darwin Meets the Bible written by Larry Witham and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2005 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where Darwin Meets the Bible provides an account of the lasting conflict between creationists and evolutionists.
Download or read book Darwin s First Theory written by Rob Wesson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-04-11 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everybody knows—or thinks they know—Charles Darwin, the father of evolution and the man who altered the way we view our place in the world. But what most people do not know is that Darwin was on board the HMS Beagle as a geologist—on a mission to examine the land, not flora and fauna.Tracing Darwin’s footsteps in South America and beyond, geologist Rob Wesson sets out on a trek across the Andes, repeating the nautical surveys made by the Beagle’s crew, hunting for fossils in Uruguay and Argentina, and explores traces of long vanished glaciers in Scotland and Wales. By following Darwin’s path literally and intellectually, Rob experiences the landscape that absorbed Darwin, followed his reasoning about what he saw, and immerses himself in the same questions about the earth. Upon Darwin’s return from the five-year journey, he conceived his theory of tectonics—his first theory. These concepts and attitudes—the vastness of time; the enormous cumulative impact of almost imperceptibly slow change; change as a constant feature of the environment—underlie his subsequent discoveries in evolution. And this peculiar way of thinking remains vitally important today as we enter the Anthropocene.
Download or read book The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex written by Charles Darwin and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2008-09-02 with total page 960 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the current resurgence of interest in the biological basis of animal behavior and social organization, the ideas and questions pursued by Charles Darwin remain fresh and insightful. This is especially true of The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, Darwin's second most important work. This edition is a facsimile reprint of the first printing of the first edition (1871), not previously available in paperback. The work is divided into two parts. Part One marshals behavioral and morphological evidence to argue that humans evolved from other animals. Darwin shoes that human mental and emotional capacities, far from making human beings unique, are evidence of an animal origin and evolutionary development. Part Two is an extended discussion of the differences between the sexes of many species and how they arose as a result of selection. Here Darwin lays the foundation for much contemporary research by arguing that many characteristics of animals have evolved not in response to the selective pressures exerted by their physical and biological environment, but rather to confer an advantage in sexual competition. These two themes are drawn together in two final chapters on the role of sexual selection in humans. In their Introduction, Professors Bonner and May discuss the place of The Descent in its own time and relation to current work in biology and other disciplines.
Download or read book Darwin s Fossils written by Adrian Lister and published by Smithsonian Institution. This book was released on 2018-04-24 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reveals how Darwin's study of fossils shaped his scientific thinking and led to his development of the theory of evolution. Darwin's Fossils is an accessible account of Darwin's pioneering work on fossils, his adventures in South America, and his relationship with the scientific establishment. While Darwin's research on Galápagos finches is celebrated, his work on fossils is less well known. Yet he was the first to collect the remains of giant extinct South American mammals; he worked out how coral reefs and atolls formed; he excavated and explained marine fossils high in the Andes; and he discovered a fossil forest that now bears his name. All of this research was fundamental in leading Darwin to develop his revolutionary theory of evolution. This richly illustrated book brings Darwin's fossils, many of which survive in museums and institutions around the world, together for the first time. Including new photography of many of the fossils--which in recent years have enjoyed a surge of scientific interest--as well as superb line drawings produced in the nineteenth century and newly commissioned artists' reconstructions of the extinct animals as they are understood today, Darwin's Fossils reveals how Darwin's discoveries played a crucial role in the development of his groundbreaking ideas.
Download or read book In the Light of Evolution written by National Academy of Sciences and published by Sackler Colloquium. This book was released on 2007 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Arthur M. Sackler Colloquia of the National Academy of Sciences address scientific topics of broad and current interest, cutting across the boundaries of traditional disciplines. Each year, four or five such colloquia are scheduled, typically two days in length and international in scope. Colloquia are organized by a member of the Academy, often with the assistance of an organizing committee, and feature presentations by leading scientists in the field and discussions with a hundred or more researchers with an interest in the topic. Colloquia presentations are recorded and posted on the National Academy of Sciences Sackler colloquia website and published on CD-ROM. These Colloquia are made possible by a generous gift from Mrs. Jill Sackler, in memory of her husband, Arthur M. Sackler.
Download or read book Darwinism Democracy and Race written by John P Jackson and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-07-06 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1 Introduction: in the footsteps of Franz Boas -- 2 Franz Boas and the argument from presumption -- 3 Demarcating anthropology: the boundary work of Alfred Kroeber -- 4 Theodosius Dobzhansky and the argument from definition -- 5 Unifying science by creating community: the epideictic rhetoric of Sherwood Washburn -- 6 A kairos moment unmet and met: the controversy over Carleton Coon's The Origin of Races -- 7 Epilogue: the roots of the Sociobiology controversy, the infirmities of Evolutionary Psychology, and the unity of anthropology -- Index
Download or read book Godless written by Ann Coulter and published by Crown Forum. This book was released on 2007-06-26 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "If a martian landed in America and set out to determine the nation's official state religion, he would have to conclude it is liberalism, while Christianity and Judaism are prohibited by law. Many Americans are outraged by liberal hostility to traditional religion. But as Ann Coulter reveals in this, her most explosive book yet, to focus solely on the Left's attacks on our Judeo-Christian tradition is to miss a larger point: liberalism is a religion—a godless one. And it is now entrenched as the state religion of this county. Though liberalism rejects the idea of God and reviles people of faith, it bears all the attributes of a religion. In Godless, Coulter throws open the doors of the Church of Liberalism, showing us its sacraments (abortion), its holy writ (Roe v. Wade), its martyrs (from Soviet spy Alger Hiss to cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal), its clergy (public school teachers), its churches (government schools, where prayer is prohibited but condoms are free), its doctrine of infallibility (as manifest in the "absolute moral authority" of spokesmen from Cindy Sheehan to Max Cleland), and its cosmology (in which mankind is an inconsequential accident). Then, of course, there's the liberal creation myth: Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. For liberals, evolution is the touchstone that separates the enlightened from the benighted. But Coulter neatly reverses the pretense that liberals are rationalists guided by the ideals of free inquiry and the scientific method. She exposes the essential truth about Darwinian evolution that liberals refuse to confront: it is bogus science. Writing with a keen appreciation for genuine science, Coulter reveals that the so-called gaps in the theory of evolution are all there is—Darwinism is nothing but a gap. After 150 years of dedicated searching into the fossil record, evolution's proponents have failed utterly to substantiate its claims. And a long line of supposed evidence, from the infamous Piltdown Man to the "evolving" peppered moths of England, has been exposed as hoaxes. Still, liberals treat those who question evolution as religious heretics and prohibit students from hearing about real science when it contradicts Darwinism. And these are the people who say they want to keep faith out of the classroom? Liberals' absolute devotion to Darwinism, Coulter shows, has nothing to do with evolution's scientific validity and everything to do with its refusal to admit the possibility of God as a guiding force. They will brook no challenges to the official religion. Fearlessly confronting the high priests of the Church of Liberalism and ringing with Coulter's razor-sharp wit, Godless is the most important and riveting book yet from one of today's most lively and impassioned conservative voices. "Liberals love to boast that they are not 'religious,' which is what one would expect to hear from the state-sanctioned religion. Of course liberalism is a religion. It has its own cosmology, its own miracles, its own beliefs in the supernatural, its own churches, its own high priests, its own saints, its own total worldview, and its own explanation of the existence of the universe. In other words, liberalism contains all the attributes of what is generally known as 'religion.'" —From Godless
Download or read book The Galapagos Islands written by Charles Darwin and published by Penguin Group. This book was released on 1996 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book America s Darwin written by Tina Gianquitto and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An engaging collection of interdisciplinary essays on the distinctive qualities of America's textual engagement with Darwinian evolutionary theory, especially in regard to On the Origin of Species, which highlights the influence of prevalent cultural anxieties on interpretation.
Download or read book God Vs Darwin written by Mano Singham and published by Rowman & Littlefield Education. This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In God vs. Darwin, Mano Singham dissects the legal battle between evolution and creationism in the classroom beginning with the Scopes Monkey trial in 1925 and ending with an intelligent design trial in Dover, Pennsylvania, in 2005. A publicity stunt, the Scopes Monkey trial had less to do with legal precedence than with generating tourism dollars for a rural Tennessee town. But the trial did successfully spark a debate that has lasted more than 80 years and simply will not be quelled despite a succession of seemingly definitive court decisions. In the greatest demonstration of survival, opposition to the teaching of evolution has itself evolved. Attempts to completely eliminate the teaching of evolution from public schools have given way to the recognition that evolution is here to stay, that explicitly religious ideas will never be allowed in public schools, and that the best that can be hoped for is to chip away at the credibility of the theory of evolution. Dr. Singham deftly answers complex questions: Why is there such intense antagonism to the teaching of evolution in the United States? What have the courts said about the various attempts to oppose it? Sprinkled with interesting tidbits about Charles Darwin and the major players of the evolution vs. creationism debate, God vs. Darwin is charming in its embrace of the strong passions aroused from the topic of teaching evolution in schools.
Download or read book Darwin in America written by Cynthia Eagle Russett and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Darwinism and the Divine in America written by Jon H. Roberts and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title provides a comprehensive analytical overview of public dialogue among 19th century American Protestant intellectuals who struggled with the theory of organic evolution. Arguments over the scientific merits of Darwin's theory gave way to discussions of its theological implications.
