Download or read book Vestiges and the Debate Before Darwin written by John M. Lynch and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Robert Chambers's Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation was the most important pre-Darwinian work of evolutionary thought published in Victorian Britain. It caused huge controversy and was undoubtedly a major factor in preparing the way, both positively and negatively, for On the Origin of Species. To this point, essential documents surrounding the work - the reviews, the commentaries, the expositions, and more - have been incredibly difficult to obtain and truly available only to the most privileged scholar. Now with the publication of the Thoemmes Press collection on Vestiges, essential material will be readily available to all. The editor, John M. Lynch, and the Press are to be congratulated and thanked for making this possible.' - Michael Ruse Vestiges and the Debate Before Darwin centres on Robert Chambers's Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation and reprints all the key documents in the controversy that surrounded its publication. Vestiges was first published in 1844. Chambers, one of the most successful publishers in Britain, managed to keep his authorship a secret throughout the ten editions published in his lifetime. The work reached a huge popular audience and was widely read by the social and intellectual elite. Despite initially favourable reviews, its publication sent shockwaves through the world of British science. Chambers suggested that the whole of nature, including mankind, could be explained by the action of a single universal evolutionary law--a law that suggested that not only did change happen in the past, but that it would continue into the future. Such a statement enflamed both religious conservatives (Sedgwick referred to the 'inner deformity and foulness' of the work and its 'gross and filthy views of physiology') and scientists (T. H. Huxley said that the author was 'one of those who--indulge in science at second-hand and dispense totally with logic', and physicist Sir David Brewster warned that Vestiges 'stood a fair chance of poisoning the fountains of religion'). Understanding the upheaval that Vestiges caused in 'polite' British society is key to understanding Darwin's later argument and the reaction to his work by the same public. Reprinted here is the rare tenth edition of Vestiges (1853), written in response to this widespread criticism, plus Chambers's 'sequel', Explanations, written largely as a reply to Sedgwick's highly critical review of Vestiges. Periodical reviews and other important book-length refutations are also incorporated, including rare editions of works by Adam Sedgwick, William Whewell and Hugh Miller. With introductory essays by John M. Lynch of Arizona State University's Institute of Human Origins, this important set will appeal to both historians of evolutionary thought and philosophers of science alike. -collection of rare primary sources on the evolution debate before Darwin -selects the best editions, added to which are extensive introductory essays -gathers numerous critical reviews tracing the debate over ten years -intriguing case study of Victorian scientific controversy

Download or read book A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom written by Andrew Dickson White and published by . This book was released on 1898 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Species written by John S. Wilkins and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this comprehensive work, John S. Wilkins traces the history of the idea of "species" from antiquity to today, providing a new perspective on the relationship between philosophical and biological approaches.--[book cover].

Download or read book The Warfare of Science written by Andrew Dickson White and published by . This book was released on 1876 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Fashionable Nonsense written by Alan Sokal and published by Picador. This book was released on 2014-01-14 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1996 physicist Alan Sokal published an essay in Social Text--an influential academic journal of cultural studies--touting the deep similarities between quantum gravitational theory and postmodern philosophy. Soon thereafter, the essay was revealed as a brilliant parody, a catalog of nonsense written in the cutting-edge but impenetrable lingo of postmodern theorists. The event sparked a furious debate in academic circles and made the headlines of newspapers in the U.S. and abroad. In Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science, Sokal and his fellow physicist Jean Bricmont expand from where the hoax left off. In a delightfully witty and clear voice, the two thoughtfully and thoroughly dismantle the pseudo-scientific writings of some of the most fashionable French and American intellectuals. More generally, they challenge the widespread notion that scientific theories are mere "narrations" or social constructions.

Download or read book Evolution in Modern Thought written by Ernst Haeckel and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-04-22 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As everyone knows, the general idea of the Doctrine of Descent is that the plants and animals of the present day are the lineal descendants of ancestors on the whole somewhat simpler, that these again are descended from yet simpler forms, and so on backwards towards the literal "Protozoa" and "Protophyta" about which we unfortunately know nothing. Now no one supposes that Darwin originated this idea, which in rudiment at least is as old as Aristotle. What Darwin did was to make it current intellectual coin. He gave it a form that commended itself to the scientific and public intelligence of the day, and he won widespread conviction by showing with consummate skill that it was an effective formula to work with, a key which no lock refused. In a scholarly, critical, and pre-eminently fair-minded way, admitting difficulties and removing them, foreseeing objections and forestalling them, he showed that the doctrine of descent supplied a modal interpretation of how our present-day fauna and flora have come to be.

Download or read book Principles of Geology written by Sir Charles Lyell and published by . This book was released on 1854 with total page 870 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Reception of Darwinism in the Iberian World written by T.F Glick and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2001-10-31 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I Twenty-five years ago, at the Conference on the Comparative Reception of Darwinism held at the University of Texas in 1972, only two countries of the Iberian world-Spain and Mexico-were represented.' At the time, it was apparent that the topic had attracted interest only as regarded the "mainstream" science countries of Western Europe, plus the United States. The Eurocentric bias of professional history of science was a fact. The sea change that subsequently occurred in the historiography of science makes 1972 appear something like the antediluvian era. Still, we would like to think that that meeting was prescient in looking beyond the mainstream science countries-as then perceived-in order to test the variation that ideas undergo as they pass from center to periphery. One thing that the comparative study of the reception of ideas makes abundantly clear, however, is the weakness of the center/periphery dichotomy from the perspective of the diffusion of scientific ideas. Catholics in mainstream countries, for example, did not handle evolution much better than did their corre1igionaries on the fringes. Conversely, Darwinians in Latin America were frequently better placed to advance Darwin's ideas in a social and political sense than were their fellow evolutionists on the Continent. The Texas meeting was also a marker in the comparative reception of scientific ideas, Darwinism aside. Although, by 1972, scientific institutions had been studied comparatively, there was no antecedent for the comparative history of scientific ideas.

Download or read book A History of Science written by Henry Smith Williams and published by . This book was released on 1910 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Christian Philosophy A Z written by Daniel J. Hill and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A handy guide to the major figures and issues in Christian philosophy from Augustine to the present.This volume covers a broad historical sweep and takes into account those non-Christian philosophers that have had a great impact on the Christian tradition. However, it concentrates on the issues that perplex Christian philosophers as they seek to think through their faith in a philosophical way and their philosophical beliefs in the light of their faith. Examples of the topics discussed are the question of whether and how God knows the future, whether we actually know that God exists, and what Athens has to do with Jerusalem. The leaders of the recent revival of Christian analytic philosophy, especially Alvin Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff, William Alston, and Robert Adams are also included.This book will be of interest to those studying Christian philosophy and to Christians seeking to think philosophically about their faith.

Download or read book Media and the American Mind written by Daniel J. Czitrom and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2010-02-03 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a fascinating and comprehensive intellectual history of modern communication in America, Daniel Czitrom examines the continuing contradictions between the progressive possibilities that new communications technologies offer and their use as instruments of domination and exploitation.

Download or read book On the Various Contrivances by Which British and Foreign Orchids are Fertilised by Insects written by Charles Darwin and published by London : J. Murray. This book was released on 1862 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 1862 publication describes the flower structure of orchids and their pollination to illustrate aspects of Darwin's evolutionary theory.

Download or read book Historical Essays Studies written by John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton Baron Acton and published by . This book was released on 1907 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Works of Walter Bagehot written by Walter Bagehot and published by . This book was released on 1891 with total page 614 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Doctors written by Sherwin B. Nuland and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-10-19 with total page 547 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of How We Die, the extraordinary story of the development of modern medicine, told through the lives of the physician-scientists who paved the way. How does medical science advance? Popular historians would have us believe that a few heroic individuals, possessing superhuman talents, lead an unselfish quest to better the human condition. But as renowned Yale surgeon and medical historian Sherwin B. Nuland shows in this brilliant collection of linked life portraits, the theory bears little resemblance to the truth. Through the centuries, the men and women who have shaped the world of medicine have been not only very human, but also very much the products of their own times and places. Presenting compelling studies of great medical innovators and pioneers, Doctors gives us a fascinating history of modern medicine. Ranging from the legendary Father of Medicine, Hippocrates, to Andreas Vesalius, whose Renaissance masterwork on anatomy offered invaluable new insight into the human body, to Helen Taussig, founder of pediatric cardiology and co-inventor of the original "blue baby" operation, here is a volume filled with the spirit of ideas and the thrill of discovery.

Download or read book Functions and Uses of Disciplinary Histories written by Loren Graham and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edward Gibbon's allegation at the beginning of his Essay on the Study of Literature (1764) that the history of empires is that of the miseries of humankind whereas the history of the sciences is that of their splendour and happiness has for a long time been accepted by professional scientists and by historians of science alike. For its practitioner, the history of a discipline displayed above all the always difficult but fmally rewarding approach to a truth which was incorporated in the discipline in its actual fonn. Looking back, it was only too easy to distinguish those who erred and heretics in the field from the few forerunners of true science. On the one hand, the traditional history of science was told as a story of hero and hero worship, on the other hand it was, paradoxically enough, the constant attempt to remind the scientist whom he should better forget. It is not surprising at all therefore that the traditional history of science was a field of only minor interest for the practitioner of a distinct scientific diSCipline or specialty and at the same time a hardly challenging task for the professional historian. Nietzsche had already described the historian of science as someone who arrives late after harvest-time: it is somebody who is only a tolerated guest at the thanksgiving dinner of the scientific community .

Download or read book The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex written by Charles Darwin and published by anboco. This book was released on 2016-08-17 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the successive reprints of the first edition of this work, published in 1871, I was able to introduce several important corrections; and now that more time has elapsed, I have endeavoured to profit by the fiery ordeal through which the book has passed, and have taken advantage of all the criticisms which seem to me sound. I am also greatly indebted to a large number of correspondents for the communication of a surprising number of new facts and remarks. These have been so numerous, that I have been able to use only the more important ones; and of these, as well as of the more important corrections, I will append a list. Some new illustrations have been introduced, and four of the old drawings have been replaced by better ones, done from life by Mr. T.W. Wood. I must especially call attention to some observations which I owe to the kindness of Prof. Huxley (given as a supplement at the end of Part I.), on the nature of the differences between the brains of man and the higher apes. I have been particularly glad to give these observations, because during the last few years several memoirs on the subject have appeared on the Continent, and their importance has been, in some cases, greatly exaggerated by popular writers. I may take this opportunity of remarking that my critics frequently assume that I attribute all changes of corporeal structure and mental power exclusively to the natural selection of such variations as are often called spontaneous; whereas, even in the first edition of the 'Origin of Species,' I distinctly stated that great weight must be attributed to the inherited effects of use and disuse, with respect both to the body and mind. I also attributed some amount of modification to the direct and prolonged action of changed conditions of life.