Ebook Download The Origin of Species and the Descent of Man, by Charles Darwin
Yet below, we will reveal you incredible point to be able consistently review the publication The Origin Of Species And The Descent Of Man, By Charles Darwin any place as well as whenever you take place as well as time. The publication The Origin Of Species And The Descent Of Man, By Charles Darwin by just could help you to recognize having guide to review every single time. It will not obligate you to constantly bring the thick book anywhere you go. You could just maintain them on the device or on soft data in your computer system to always review the room at that time.
The Origin of Species and the Descent of Man, by Charles Darwin
Ebook Download The Origin of Species and the Descent of Man, by Charles Darwin
Some individuals could be chuckling when checking out you reviewing The Origin Of Species And The Descent Of Man, By Charles Darwin in your spare time. Some may be appreciated of you. And some could want be like you which have reading pastime. What regarding your personal feeling? Have you felt right? Reading The Origin Of Species And The Descent Of Man, By Charles Darwin is a demand as well as a hobby simultaneously. This problem is the on that will certainly make you feel that you must read. If you recognize are seeking guide qualified The Origin Of Species And The Descent Of Man, By Charles Darwin as the selection of reading, you can locate right here.
As one of the home window to open up the brand-new world, this The Origin Of Species And The Descent Of Man, By Charles Darwin offers its outstanding writing from the author. Published in among the prominent authors, this publication The Origin Of Species And The Descent Of Man, By Charles Darwin becomes one of one of the most needed books just recently. Actually, the book will certainly not matter if that The Origin Of Species And The Descent Of Man, By Charles Darwin is a best seller or not. Every book will certainly still provide ideal resources to get the visitor all finest.
However, some individuals will seek for the best seller publication to review as the initial reference. This is why; this The Origin Of Species And The Descent Of Man, By Charles Darwin exists to fulfil your requirement. Some individuals like reading this publication The Origin Of Species And The Descent Of Man, By Charles Darwin due to this preferred book, yet some love this due to preferred writer. Or, lots of also like reading this book The Origin Of Species And The Descent Of Man, By Charles Darwin due to the fact that they really should read this book. It can be the one that really love reading.
In getting this The Origin Of Species And The Descent Of Man, By Charles Darwin, you could not constantly pass strolling or riding your motors to the book shops. Obtain the queuing, under the rainfall or warm light, and still search for the unidentified book to be during that book store. By visiting this web page, you could only hunt for the The Origin Of Species And The Descent Of Man, By Charles Darwin and also you can find it. So currently, this moment is for you to opt for the download web link and acquisition The Origin Of Species And The Descent Of Man, By Charles Darwin as your own soft documents publication. You can read this publication The Origin Of Species And The Descent Of Man, By Charles Darwin in soft file only and wait as all yours. So, you don't should fast place guide The Origin Of Species And The Descent Of Man, By Charles Darwin right into your bag anywhere.
The Origin of Species.
- Sales Rank: #595054 in Books
- Published on: 1977
- Format: Import
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Get the older additions since new ones have been edited!
By Johnny O.
Due to the fact that some versions of Darwin's original works are now being edited to exclude his ideas of human eugenics and his doubts of his own theory of evolution based on a lack of data specific to the Cambrian Explosion, get an older edition and read the man's scientific opinions in their most original forms. Avoid editions printed later than 1960 if you can.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
A TRUE "CLASSIC," AS WELL AS A LANDMARK IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE
By Steven H Propp
NOTE: this review is only of the "Origin of Species." My review of "The Descent of Man" is found at: The Descent of Man. Darwin also wrote Charles Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle:; The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.
He begins this famous book by saying, "When on board the H.M.S. `Beagle,' as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the organic beings inhabiting South America, and in the geological relations of the present to past inhabitants of that continent. These facts... seemed to throw some light on the origin of species---that mystery of mysteries... it occurred to me, in 1837, that something might perhaps be made out on this question by patiently accumulating and reflecting on all sorts of facts... After five years' work I ... drew up some short notes; these I enlarged in 1844 into a sketch of the conclusions... from that period to the present day I have steadily pursued the same object... I give [these "personal details"] to show that I have not been hasty in coming to a decision... I have been urged to publish this Abstract. I have more especially been induced to do this, as Mr. [Alfred Russel] Wallace... has arrived at almost exactly the same general conclusions that I have on the origin of the species." (Pg. 11) He adds, "I am fully convinced that species are not immutable... Furthermore, I am convinced that Natural Selection has been the most important, but not the exclusive, means of modification." (Pg. 14)
Darwin, as is well known, accepted the [later] "Lamarckian" notion of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. He says, "Some authors have maintained that the amount of variation in our domestic productions is soon reached, and can never afterwards be exceeded... No doubt... a limit will at last be reached. For instance, there must be a limit to the fleetness of any terrestrial animal... Variability is governed by many unknown laws... Something... may be attributed to the definite action of the conditions of life. Some, perhaps a great, effect may be attributed to the increased use or disuse of parts." (Pg. 37) Later, he adds, "For all spontaneous variations in the right direction will thus be preserved; as will those individuals which inherit in the highest degree the effects of the increased and beneficial use of any part. How much to attribute in each particular case to the effects of use, and how much to natural selection, it seems impossible to decide." (Pg. 170) He suggests about "Rudimentary, Atrophies, and Aborted Organs," that "It appears probably that disuse has been the main agent in rendering organs rudimentary. It would at first lead by slow steps to the more a more complete reduction of a part, until at last it became rudimentary." (Pg. 349) He adds, "There remains, however, this difficulty. After an organ has ceased being used, and has become in consequence much reduced... how can it finally be obliterated? It is scarcely possible that disuse can go on producing any further effect after the organ has been rendered functionless. Some additional explanation is here requisite which I cannot give." (Pg. 350)
He asks, "How do these groups of species ... arise? All these results... follow from the struggle for life. Owing to this struggle, variations, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if they be in any degree profitable to the individuals of a species... will tend to the preservation of such individuals, and will generally be inherited by the offspring. The offspring, also, will thus have a better chance of surviving, for... but a small number can survive. I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection. But the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate...." (Pg. 52) He adds, "It is the doctrine of [Thomas] Malthus [An Essay on the Principle of Population] applied with manifold force to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms." (Pg. 53) He elaborates, "This preservation of favourable individual differences and variations, and the destruction of those which are injurious, I have called Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest... It has been said that I speak of natural selection as an active power or Deity; but who objects to an author speaking of the attraction of gravity as ruling the movements of the planets?... So again it is difficult to avoid personifying the word Nature; but I mean by Nature, only the aggregate action and product of many natural laws." (Pg. 64)
He wrote, "This leads me to say a few words on what I have called Sexual Selection. This form of selection depends... on a struggle between the individuals of one sex... for the possession of the other sex. The result is not death to the unsuccessful competitor, but few or no offspring. Sexual selection is, therefore, less rigorous than natural selection. Generally, the most vigorous males... will leave most progeny... Sexual selection, by always allowing the victor to breed, might surely give indomitable courage, length to the spur, and strength to the wing to strike in the spurred leg..." (Pg. 69) He argues, "He who believes that each equine species was independently created, will, I presume, assert that each species has been created with a tendency to vary, but under nature and under domestication... To admit this view is... to reject a real for an unreal... cause. It makes the works of God a mere mockery or deception; I would almost as soon believe that the old and ignorant cosmogonists, that fossil shells had never lived, but had been created in stone so as to mock the shells living on the sea-shore." (Pg.. 122) Later, he contends, "This tendency ... to go on increasing in size and diverging in character... explains the arrangement of all the forms of life in groups subordinate to groups, all within a few great classes, which has prevailed throughout all time. This grand fact of the grouping of all organic beings under what is called the Natural System is utterly inexplicable on the theory of creation." (Pg. 361)
Darwin faces up with admirable directness to "Difficulties" of his theory: "Some of them are so serious that to this day I can hardly reflect on them without being in some degree staggered... First, why, if species have descended from other species by fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms?... Secondly, is it possible that an animal having... the structure and habits of a bat, could have been formed by the modification of some other animal with widely different habits and structure?" (Pg. 124-125) "Lastly... if my theory be true, numberless intermediate varieties ... must assuredly have existed; but the very process of natural selection constantly tends... to exterminate the parent-forms and the intermediate links. Consequently evidence of their former existence could only be found among fossil remains, which are preserved... in an extremely imperfect and intermittent record." (Pg. 128) Later, he adds, "this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record." (Pg. 234) He later confesses, "But I do not pretend that I should ever have suspected how poor was the record in the best preserved geological sections, had not the absence of innumerable transitional links between the species which lived at the commencement and close of each formation, pressed so hardly on my theory." (Pg. 249) He also admits, "To the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these assumed earliest periods prior to the Cambrian system, I can give no satisfactory answer... The case at present must remain inexplicable; and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained." (Pg. 253-254) He ultimately concludes, "The noble science of Geology loses glory from the extreme imperfection of the record." (Pg. 372)
For the second problem, he states confidently, "I can see no difficulty... in the continued preservation of individuals with fuller and fuller flank membranes, each modification being useful, each being propagated, until, by the accumulating effects of this process of natural selection, a perfect so-called flying squirrel was produced." (Pg. 129) But he also frankly says, "To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different differences, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree... Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor... and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive to the theory." (Pg. 133) He admits, "although in many cases it is most difficult even to conjecture by what transitions organs have arrived at their present state; yet... I have been astonished how rarely an organ can be named, towards which no transitional grade is known to lead. It certainly is true, that new organs appearing as if created for some special purpose, rarely or never appear in any being." (Pg. 143) Still, he concedes, "We are profoundly ignorant of the cause of each slight variation or individual difference." (Pg. 145)
He argues, "[let me] say a few words on the protest ... against the utilitarian doctrine that every detail of structure has been produced for the good of its possessor. They believe that many structures have been created for the same of beauty, to delight man or the Creator... Such doctrines, if true, would be absolutely fatal to my theory. I fully admit that many structures are now of no direct use to their possessors, and may never have been of any use to their progenitors; but this does not prove that they were formed solely for beauty or variety...With respect to the belief that organic beings have been created beautiful for the delight of man... I may first remark that the sense of beauty obviously depends on the nature of the mind... the idea of what is beautiful, is not innate or unalterable." (Pg. 146-147) With regard to characteristics that "appear to be of no service whatever to their possessors," he says, "we ought... to be extremely cautious in pretending to decide what structures now are, or have formerly been, of use to each species." (Pg. 155)
He adds, "It is no valid objection that science as yet throws no light on the far higher problem of the essence or origin of life. Who can explain what is the essence of the attraction of gravity?... I see no good reason why the views given in this volume should shock the religious feelings of any one." (Pg. 367) He concludes, "Much light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history... When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Cambrian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled... There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved." (Pg. 373-374)
Regardless of one's views on the evolution/creation matter, this book is absolutely "must reading" for anyone wanting to understand Western culture, much less science.
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
A must.
By C. Van Youngman
And all this time I thought the Earth was 8000 years old. Turns out its a lot older than that. Not only that. It wasn't some god who made it. It was a woman! Her initials are M.N. and you can meet her if you just go out side.
See all 3 customer reviews...
The Origin of Species and the Descent of Man, by Charles Darwin PDF
The Origin of Species and the Descent of Man, by Charles Darwin EPub
The Origin of Species and the Descent of Man, by Charles Darwin Doc
The Origin of Species and the Descent of Man, by Charles Darwin iBooks
The Origin of Species and the Descent of Man, by Charles Darwin rtf
The Origin of Species and the Descent of Man, by Charles Darwin Mobipocket
The Origin of Species and the Descent of Man, by Charles Darwin Kindle
* Ebook Download The Origin of Species and the Descent of Man, by Charles Darwin Doc
* Ebook Download The Origin of Species and the Descent of Man, by Charles Darwin Doc
* Ebook Download The Origin of Species and the Descent of Man, by Charles Darwin Doc
* Ebook Download The Origin of Species and the Descent of Man, by Charles Darwin Doc
