Charles Darwin: The Man and his Influence

by Peter J. Bowler , Preface by David Knight

• ISBN13: 9780521566681
• ISBN10: 0521566681
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-04-26
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Darwin’s enormous influence on science and culture, begun during his lifetime, is still very evident today. The Origin of Species excited much debate and controversy, challenging the foundations of Christianity, yet underpinning the Victorian concept of progress, and today still evokes powerful and contradictory responses. Yet he was not first to publish evolutionary ideas and his theory of natural selection was not accepted by many of his contemporaries. Peter Bowler’s study of Darwin’s life and influence combines biography and cultural history. He shows how Darwin’s contemporaries were unable to appreciate precisely those aspects of his thinking that are considered scientifically important today. Darwin was a product of his time, but he also transcended it, by creating an idea capable of being exploited by twentieth-century scientists and intellectuals who had very different values from his own.

Table of Contents

General editor's preface

Preface

1. The problem of interpretation

2. Evolution before The Origin of Species

3. The young Darwin

4. The voyage of the Beagle

5. The crucial years, London 1837-1842

6. The years of development

7. Going public

8. The emergence of Darwinism

9. The opponents of Darwinism

10. Human origins

11. Darwin and the modern world

Notes

Bibliography

Index.