Today is the sesquicentennial of The Origin of Species‘ publication. After gathering evidence for twenty years, Darwin was surprised to receive a letter from Alfred Russell Wallace, detailing Wallace’s theory and asking Darwin’s opinion.

Darwin immediately realized he’d have to publish and invited Wallace to give a joint paper with him at the Royal Society. The rest, as they say, is history.

This is both a history of evolution and a biography of Darwin. It discusses the impact of his work on Western Civilization. Scientific developments that were influenced by Darwinian thought include:

• Konrad Lorenz on ethology (animal behaviour and its origins),
• Margaret Mead on evolution,
• Jane Goodall on primate research,
• Edward O. Wilson on sociobiology,
• Richard Leakey on paleontology, and
• Nicholas Wade on recombinant DNA research

This book has exerpts from the writings of pre-Darwinian scientists such as Sir Joseph Hooker and Sir Charles Lyell; exerpts from the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man; various debates showing how Darwin influenced science, philosophy, theology, society, and literature. There’s an epilogue by the editor, Philip Appleman.

It’s in my To Be Read pile.

Norton Critical Edition, 2nd edition, 1970.
370 pages plus index.

Online journaller xinit has posted an article about Richard Dawkins’ book reading last night.

“I’m reviewing… the situation.”

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I borrowed a science book from the Ontario Centre for Inquiry to find out more than the trickle of obsolete popular science on elementary particles and quanta that I remember from my youth. Entanglement by Amir Aczel promises to explain one of the great mysteries of physics in layman’s terms. Not to answer it, but to explain the phenomena.

Amir D. Aczel is the author of many popular books on mathematics and physics, notably Fermat’s Last Theorem.

A previous post discussed how unreliable is Kersey Graves’ book, “The Worlds’ Sixteen Crucified Saviors, using as reference a review by Richard Carrier, assembled from his comments on the book in 2003.

In the course of this review, Carrier points out that almost any history book written before 1950 is of dubious value, simply because methods of scholarship and new research have made so much historical study obsolete

Graves’ scholarship is obsolete, having been vastly improved upon by new methods, materials, discoveries, and textual criticism in the century since he worked. In fact, almost every historical work written before 1950 is regarded as outdated and untrustworthy by historians today.

Richard Carrier is the author of Sense and Goodness without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism.