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Larson's "Summer for the Gods" about the Scopes Monkey Trial; "Monkey Girl" by Edward Humes which is about ignoramuses trying to sneak creationsim into Dover, Pennsylvania's high school science curricula; and "War Against the Weak" by Edwin Black that documents America's frightening, misguided flirtation with eugenics. This book is a great, entertaining start for people who believe knowledge is power and have the courage to take their brains out for a little fresh air.If you are looking for a more detailed account of some of the topics skimmed over in this work, I'd humbly suggest Mr. It is absolutely amazing that we are into the 21st century and, still, a large portion of the populace doesn't understand or accept evolution.
Larson has written a fine overview of the history of evolution. Larson had taken that approach, the size of "Evolution" would have made "War & Peace" look like a flimsy bookmark. Mr.
Instead, the author effectively shows how and why Darwin's theory became and continues to be the backbone of all biological research. All three of them are also excellent reads. The book does not dwell endlessly on every skirmish between different scientists or the backlash from religious groups.
If Mr.
His authority on this subject is well established.The book starts in France, in the midst of the enlightenment, with the story of the man who managed to squash any real discussion of evolution throughout his lifetime and for 30 years after, Georges Couvier, the granddaddy of modern comparative anatomy. He has several other works on the interaction between science and religion and works on various aspects of the legal history of the United States. Huxley and Galton embraced the science so they might free themselves from religion, but that embrace is then how science becomes a religion, as it has for many people. The appeal here is the description of the scientists who followed Darwin to found modern genetics (lot of founding going on around this, hmmm), their lives and their interactions with each other which slowly lead to the synthesis of genetics and natural selection that we now call evolution.The book regains its stride in its discussion of the rejection of evolution by many in the United States in the 20th century and of the Scopes Monkey Trial. in History from the University of Wisconsin and a J.D. For those who do want to know the science before they read this book, the starting point is easy - Darwin. But what you will learn will be, to use the author's words, "remarkable." I have been a biologist for 30 years now and I learned something new from each page, not about biology but history, just as the subtitle says. Origin of the Species is easily the best non-fiction book of the 19th century and the corner stone of modern biology.
Darwin took his time with this construction and it's unveiling and this makes for a good story.Professor Larson then describes the fanatical proselytizing for the ideas of evolution by "Darwin's Bulldog", Thomas Huxley, and Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton, the founder of Social Darwinism. D. I have remarked elsewhere (somewhat controversially) that relatively few people, even biological scientists, really understand the Principle of Evolution. He argued against any form of gradual speciation on the grounds that the organ systems of each species were too essentially integrated to allow for any variation. One of the weakest points of the book is the author's failure to explore adequately the fact that the fervor of these men was every bit the equivalent of that of those similarly well-meaning folk who opposed the teaching of evolution insisting on Heavenly mechanisms 60 years later.
He has a Ph. Lyell's work was the bedrock on which Darwin eventually constructed his theory using the bricks and mortar supplied by Thomas Malthus. Variation would lead to death, which happens to be right most of the time, and the essence of Couvier's argument remains at the heart of the objections of the advocates of Intelligent Design yet today. You will not become one of those few by reading this book.
The treatment of Mendel (his work was not discovered until the 20th century so it is dealt with here) is appropriately generous and that of Jay Gould appropriately harsh. Social Darwinism has killed far more than the Crusades. But while the treatment of the deniers of evolution is fair, accurate and measured, the undertone of scorn is unmistakable. The acceptance of both God and science by Darwin's American ally, Asa Gray, likewise remains unexplored. The book also struggles in places as it progresses through the 20th century, but then the science does start to get trickier here.
It was Lyell's book, "Principles of Geology" that Darwin read and reread on that five year journey of the Beagle. The movie "Inherit the Wind" is a lie and Professor Larson says so. For those who really want to try to understand the science, I recommend Douglas Futuyma's text, "Evolution." For those who just want to know the "remarkable history of a scientific theory" this is your place. But it should, Professor Larson has written another book on just that subject, "Summer for the Gods", the book that evidently lead him down this historical path. The author, Edward Larson is a professor in the School of Law at Pepperdine University.
That religion of science can lead to the same irrationality sometimes found in other religions. It was Lyell that allowed Darwin to see back through the time available and necessary for evolution. from Harvard. Couvier spent his career making sure that Lamarck's "ascending escalator" of species never got off the ground and the story of these two men and the changing ideas of the early 19th century is worth the price of the book.But the origins of evolution are more to be found in fossils than finches, so the book turns to the work of Charles Lyell and the other rock choppers of England who founded simultaneously the sciences of geology and paleontology.
He also notes that room was made for Genesis to be compatible with new findings in the earth sciences - especially those of deep time and the succession of life forms in the past. It is simple and broad, and Larson's non-scientific prose adds to it being a great book for an introduction to Darwin, evolutionary theories, and the conflicts and successes the idea of evolution has endured.[I wrote this review for an undergraduate history of science course in 2005] Cuvier's access to numerous specimens owes gratitude to the militant excursions of Napoleon, whose troops would bring back to France samplings of the organic world. Larson notes that much of Cuvier's work "opened windows into the Earth's biological history that would lead others to a vision of organic evolution he steadfastly refused to see" (p. From the start, Larson emphasizes the dependence of science on social and political forces, an approach he does well.From Cuvier Larson explores the foundation of nature being rooted in Biblical scripture to the rise of enlightenment thinkers with scientific materialism as the basis for ideas.
Throughout he describes the science behind the development of the theory, as well as illuminating social and ideological forces acting on that development and in turn how evolutionary theory has influenced society. To Larson there is no doubt that Darwin placed ideals of human society in eighteenth century industrial Britain onto the animal and plant kingdoms. 6). In other words, Cuvier was a creationist, and his studies of organisms helped in appreciating God's work and later helped to create a naturalistic explanation for life. Alfred Russel Wallace's independent contribution to natural selection is also explored and given due credit. 70).
It is now known that Franklin's work led greatly to Francis and Crick's success (and Nobel Prize). Beginning with two chapters that predate Darwin's time, Larson spells out the pre-Darwinian history of both special creation and evolutionary theories and how the two are intertwined. In Chapter 2, he digs in to geology and paleontology, emphasizing their roles in changing the catastrophic view of biologic and geologic history to one less dependent on strict Biblical literalism. Thomas Henry Huxley is given plenty of pages in discussing his efforts in defending Darwin's idea, while other evolutionists are described as relying on other theories and not natural selection (such as mutation theory, saltation and even ones that call God into the mechanism). Larson's _Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory_ is a wonderful compact book that does well to relate the social, cultural and political forces at work through the past two centuries of evolutionary thought. Tying together a quadrilogy of scholarship - _Trial and Error: The American Controversy over Creation and Evolution_ (Oxford University Press, 1985), _Sex, Race, and Science: Eugenics in the Deep South_ (John Hopkins University Press, 1996), _Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion_ (Basic Books, 1997), and _Evolution's Workshop: God and Science on the Galapagos Islands_ (Basic Books, 2001) - in _Evolution_, Larson presents a simple and broad overview of the history of the idea of evolutionary theory.
Despite that other theories of evolution existed before Darwin, his theory of evolution provided a mechanism for change while others did not. Probably one of the best chapters, both for its detail and its look at the negative side of social applications of evolutionary theory, describes eugenics and social Darwinism. 5). In the following chapters, Larson describes both problems and successes of Darwin's evolutionary theories, and throughout provides many short biographies. To place that in a book about the "remarkable history of an idea" serves well to show that science and society are linked, and Larson provides many other examples in his book.Although a little book packed with an enormous amount of information, it does in a few places omit some important details. Much like Peter Bowler's _Evolution: The History of an Idea_ in scope and content, Larson's Evolution is less comprehensive or in-depth, which may serve its audience better.The book is not divided into themed sections but consists of twelve chronological chapters that each highlight a moment in evolutionary thought. Negative eugenics is a harsh and, through much recent research, not forgotten moment in America's past. As Stephen Jay Gould has noted, eugenics is "the most troubling field of interaction between science and society." Larson shows how Darwin's theory of evolution along with theories of heredity and genetics were used to justify the attempts in America (and almost success in Germany) to breed out undesirable people from the population.
One reason this occurred was that with Darwinian theory, heredity could not be explained. Larson describes the eclipse of Darwinism (although he does not refer to Bowler's work) that occurred where many evolutionists began to accept a Lamarckian theory of evolution. In Britain, where Darwin's cousin Sir Francis Galton coined "eugenics," the application of the new science was in a positive tone - that is, encouragement of the best people to breed. Absent from Larson's book, it will be some time before the "Francis and Crick" so often mentioned becomes "Francis, Crick and Franklin." Edward J. Larson refers to Darwin as Fitzroy's "gentleman naturalist." When Francis and Crick discovered the double helix structure of DNA in the mid-twentieth century, the work of Rosalind Franklin was left in shadows. After describing a few pre-Darwinian evolutionary theories (Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Robert Chambers and Lamarck), Darwin comes into the narrative. Charles Darwin is too often referred to as the Beagle's naturalist, when in fact the ship had a hired naturalist and Darwin was brought on as a gentlemen companion to Captain Fitzroy. The early eighteenth century French anatomist Georges Cuvier plays the central role in Chapter 1.
Chapters 7 and 10 provide the history of Mendelian genetics and its merge with natural selection, known today as the Modern Synthesis.The rest of the book explores varied topics from the search for missing links in the fossil record to early twentieth century American fundamentalism and the Scopes Monkey Trial to more modern day debates about teaching evolution or creation in public schools (creation science and intelligent design). This mechanism Darwin realized when reading Malthus' _Essay on the Principle of Population_, and Larson points out that "essential to Darwin's concept was a modern worldview influenced by ideas of utilitarianism, individualism, imperialism, and laissez-faire capitalism" (p. Placing Cuvier as a naturalist in historical perspective, his success spawned from a moderate republican government which "took power in Paris and promised to rebuild the central scientific establishment decapitated during the Terror" of the French Revolution (p. Here he incorporates the work of William Buckland, Richard Owen, Gideon Mantell, Adam Sedgwick, James Hutton and most important to Charles Darwin, the uniformitarian geologist Charles Lyell.
However, youshould plan to complement it with something that providesa good account of the more recent developments. The developmentsof the last 30 years are probably much harder to give justice in a popular book, but I still think a better effort could have beenmade. This is certainly an enjoyable book that will give you some insightson the fascinating history of evolutionary theory. This is a well written, and relatively brief account of thehistory of the theory of evolution. While Darwin certainlyplays a central role, the book quickly moves on to the early20th century when evolution really became a scientific theory(this may be incorrect, but it seems to be implied in the account). It starts with an overviewof related theories before Darwin. While the account up to about the 70s is fascinating,I think that it petered out after that.
The book is a fascinating look at psychology and sociology as much as biology and would be a good introduction for even theologists due to its fairly subjective nature. While the description of those concepts are sufficient, they aren't exactly stimulating, but the background anecdotes on each contributor give the book color enough. Larson's book is a thorough survey of the figures of history who contributed to the theory of evolution. From 18th century French naturalist Cuvier to modern British biologist Dawkins, this volume details the story and impact of those men, often delving into the religious implications of scientific findings, but focusing on the concepts of evolution itself.
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