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Informationen zum Autor Dame Gillian Beer is Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Literature. Her Darwin's Plots (1983; second edition 2000) was followed by Open Fields: Science in Cultural Encounter (1996). More recently she has been working on Carroll's Alice books in the context of nineteenth-century intellectual controversies and a new collection of her essays on literature and science is scheduled for 2008. Klappentext In the Origin of Species (1859) Darwin challenged many of the most deeply heldbeliefs of the Western world, dislodging man from his central position in creationand calling into question the role of the Creator. This revised edition presents the textin light of the most recent scholarship. In her introduction, Gillian Beer considersin detail the first reactions to the work and Darwin's responses and appraises thecontroversy in the light of the recent revival of Creationism and Intelligent Design. Zusammenfassung In the Origin of Species (1859) Darwin challenged many of the most deeply held beliefs of the Western world. The present edition provides a detailed discussion of his theories and adds an account of the responses of readers to the book on first publication. These cast light on recent controversies, such as questions of design and descent.
Info autore
Dame Gillian Beer is Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Literature. Her
Darwin's Plots (1983; second edition 2000) was followed by
Open Fields: Science in Cultural Encounter (1996). More recently she has been working on Carroll's
Alice books in the context of nineteenth-century intellectual controversies and a new collection of her essays on literature and science is scheduled for 2008.
Riassunto
'can we doubt ... that individuals having any advantage, however slight, over others, would have the best chance of surviving and of procreating their kind?'
In the Origin of Species (1859) Darwin challenged many of the most deeply held beliefs of the Western world. His insistence on the immense length of the past and on the abundance of life-forms, present and extinct, dislodged man from his central position in creation and called into question the role of the Creator. He showed that new species are achieved by natural selection, and that absence of plan is an inherent part of the evolutionary process.
Darwin's prodigious reading, experimentation, and observations on his travels fed into his great work, which draws on material from the Galapagos Islands to rural Staffordshire, from English back gardens to colonial encounters. The present edition provides a detailed and accessible discussion of his theories and adds an account of the immediate responses to the book on publication. The resistances as well as the enthusiasms of the first readers cast light on recent controversies, particularly concerning questions of design and descent.
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