Download or read book Darwin s Backyard How Small Experiments Led to a Big Theory written by James T. Costa and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “If you’ve ever fantasized walking and conversing with the great scientist on the subjects that consumed him, and now wish to add the fullness of reality, read this book.” —Edward O. Wilson, author of Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life James T. Costa takes readers on a journey from Darwin’s childhood through his voyage on the HMS Beagle, where his ideas on evolution began, and on to Down House, his bustling home of forty years. Using his garden and greenhouse, the surrounding meadows and woodlands, and even the cellar and hallways of his home-turned-field-station, Darwin tested ideas of his landmark theory of evolution through an astonishing array of experiments without using specialized equipment. From those results, he plumbed the laws of nature and drew evidence for the revolutionary arguments of On the Origin of Species and other watershed works. This unique perspective introduces us to an enthusiastic correspondent, collaborator, and, especially, an incorrigible observer and experimenter. And it includes eighteen experiments for home, school, or garden. Finalist for the 2018 AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prizes for Excellence in Science Books.
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 596 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 The Darwin Myth written by Benjamin Wiker and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-06-02 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Darwin Myth casts aside Darwinism's politically correct veneer and offers a critical, scientific analysis of Darwin's life and his history–changing theory. Without vilifying or deifying Darwin, Wiker reveals the story of the complicated man with a love for family, science, and a passion to eliminate God from public thought.
Download or read book The Voyage of the Beagle written by Charles Darwin and published by Hayes Barton Press. This book was released on 1906 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Opmålingsskibet "Beagle"s togt til Sydamerika og videre jorden rundt
Download or read book Understanding Evolution written by Kostas Kampourakis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-03 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together conceptual obstacles and core concepts of evolutionary theory, this book presents evolution as straightforward and intuitive.
Download or read book The Chief Sea Lion s Inheritance written by Tom Blaney and published by Troubador Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2011-05-01 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Galton Darwin was the grandson of the great Charles Darwin and was born into the liberal and independent-minded intellectual family in 1887. He became an eminent physical scientist, but less respectably emerged as a proponent of eugenics – a science devoted to the desirability, even necessity, of improving human stock by selective breeding. He and most of the previous generation of Darwins were enthusiastic activists and leaders in the cause of eugenics – which was controversial when it was first proposed and today, after its association with Nazi atrocities, has become hugely distasteful to most people. The Chief Sea Lion’s Inheritance: Eugenics and the Darwins is the first book to scrutinise this aspect of the Darwin inheritance – examining Charles Galton Darwin and six generations of the family.Dr. Blaney’s research has placed the concept of eugenics within the context of Charles Galton Darwin’s own unique family perspective. Why did a member of a family with a reputation for enlightened and humane thought pursue a concept that was reviled from its inception? And why has this seemingly reprehensible aspect of the Darwin family been given scant attention in nearly all versions of their illustrious story?
Download or read book Darwin s Illness written by Ralph Colp and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The year 2009 will mark the bicentennial of Charles Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species. From 1840 to his death in 1882, Darwin was constantly plagued by chronic illnesses that allowed him to work only a few hours at a time and by an obsession with his physical health. Was this the psychosomatic product of stress resulting from the development and public reception to his theory of evolution or the result of a disease or parasite obtained during the world traveler's excursions? In 1977 Ralph Colp Jr. argued persuasively for the former explanation in his book To Be an Invalid: The Illness of Charles Darwin, now out of print, but considered to be one of the century's most important works on Darwin's life. Expanding and reworking his earlier arguments to take into account new information (including Darwin's "Diary of Health," included as an appendix), Darwin's Illness paints a more intimate portrait of the nature and possible causes of Darwin's lifelong illness, of the ways he and Victorian physicians tried treating it, and how it influenced his scientific work and relations with his family and friends.
Download or read book Jane Austen Charles Darwin written by Peter W. Graham and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-06 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are Jane Austen and Charles Darwin the two great English empiricists of the nineteenth century? Peter W. Graham poses this question as he brings these two icons of nineteenth-century British culture into intellectual conversation in his provocative new book. Graham shows that while the one is generally termed a naturalist (Darwin's preferred term for himself) and the other a novelist, these characterizations are at least partially interchangeable, as each author possessed skills that would serve well in either arena. Both Austen and Darwin are naturalists who look with a sharp, cold eye at the concrete particulars of the world around them. Both are in certain senses novelists who weave densely particularized and convincingly grounded narratives that convey their personal observations and perceptions to wide readerships. When taken seriously, the words and works of Austen and Darwin encourage their readers to look closely at the social and natural worlds around them and form opinions based on individual judgment rather than on transmitted opinion. Graham's four interlocked essays begin by situating Austen and Darwin in the English empirical tradition and focusing on the uncanny similarities in the two writers' respective circumstances and preoccupations. Both Austen and Darwin were fascinated by sibling relations. Both were acute observers and analysts of courtship rituals. Both understood constant change as the way of the world, whether the microcosm under consideration is geological, biological, social, or literary. Both grasped the importance of scale in making observations. Both discerned the connection between minute, particular causes and vast, general effects. Employing the trenchant analytical talents associated with his subjects and informed by a wealth of historical and biographical detail and the best of recent work by historians of science, Graham has given us a new entree into Austen's and Darwin's writings.
Download or read book Proceedings American Philosophical Society vol 103 no 6 1959 written by and published by American Philosophical Society. This book was released on with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
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 419 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 Charles and Emma written by Deborah Heiligman and published by Henry Holt and Company (BYR). This book was released on 2009-01-06 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species, his revolutionary tract on evolution and the fundamental ideas involved, in 1859. Nearly 150 years later, the theory of evolution continues to create tension between the scientific and religious communities. Challenges about teaching the theory of evolution in schools occur annually all over the country. This same debate raged within Darwin himself, and played an important part in his marriage: his wife, Emma, was quite religious, and her faith gave Charles a lot to think about as he worked on a theory that continues to spark intense debates. Deborah Heiligman's new biography of Charles Darwin is a thought-provoking account of the man behind evolutionary theory: how his personal life affected his work and vice versa. The end result is an engaging exploration of history, science, and religion for young readers. Charles and Emma is a 2009 National Book Award Finalist for Young People's Literature.
Download or read book The Reluctant Mr Darwin An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution Great Discoveries written by David Quammen and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2007-06-26 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 21 years passed between Charles Darwim's epiphany that 'natural selection' formed the basis of evolution and the scientist's publication of 'On the Origin of Species'. This text looks at why Darwin delayed the publication and examines what happened during the course of those two decades.
Download or read book On the Origin of Species Illustrated written by Charles Darwin and published by . This book was released on 2020-12-04 with total page 769 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the Origin of Species (or, more completely, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life),[3] published on 24 November 1859, is a work of scientific literature by Charles Darwin which is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology.[4] 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.
Download or read book Charles Darwin In Cambridge The Most Joyful Years written by John Van Wyhe and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2014-05-27 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Darwin's years as a student at the University of Cambridge were some of the most important and formative of his life. Thereafter he always felt a particular affection for Cambridge. For a time he even considered a Cambridge professorship as a career and sent three of his sons there to be educated. Unfortunately the remaining traces of what Darwin actually did and experienced in Cambridge have long remained undiscovered. Consequently his day-to-day life there has remained unknown and misunderstood. This book is based on new research, including newly discovered manuscripts and Darwin publications, and gathers together recollections of those who knew Darwin as a student. This book therefore reveals Darwin's time in Cambridge in unprecedented detail.
Download or read book In the Light of Evolution written by National Academy of Sciences and published by . 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 Charles Darwin written by A.N. Wilson and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-12-12 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A radical reappraisal of Charles Darwin from the bestselling author of Victoria: A Life. With the publication of On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin—hailed as the man who "discovered evolution"—was propelled into the pantheon of great scientific thinkers, alongside Galileo, Copernicus, and Newton. Eminent writer A. N. Wilson challenges this long-held assumption. Contextualizing Darwin and his ideas, he offers a groundbreaking critical look at this revered figure in modern science. In this beautifully written, deeply erudite portrait, Wilson argues that Darwin was not an original scientific thinker, but a ruthless and determined self-promoter who did not credit the many great sages whose ideas he advanced in his book. Furthermore, Wilson contends that religion and Darwinism have much more in common than it would seem, for the acceptance of Darwin's theory involves a pretty significant leap of faith. Armed with an extraordinary breadth of knowledge, Wilson explores how Darwin and his theory were very much a product of their place and time. The "Survival of the Fittest" was really the Survival of Middle Class families like the Darwins—members of a relatively new economic strata who benefited from the rising Industrial Revolution at the expense of the working classes. Following Darwin’s theory, the wretched state of the poor was an outcome of nature, not the greed and neglect of the moneyed classes. In a paradigm-shifting conclusion, Wilson suggests that it remains to be seen, as this class dies out, whether the Darwinian idea will survive, or whether it, like other Victorian fads, will become a footnote in our intellectual history. Brilliant, daring, and ambitious, Charles Darwin explores this legendary man as never before, and challenges us to reconsider our understanding of both Darwin and modern science itself.
Download or read book Charles Darwin written by John Bowlby and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1992 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A vivid and engrossing account of Darwin's inner life and his search for the laws of life. We feel the durable texture of his friendships and family attachments, and we witness the slow, painful genesis of ideas that are still transforming the world." --Geoffrey Cowley, New York Times Book Review
