Product Description

'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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19510 in Books
• Published on: 2008-11-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Harold Fromm, University of Arizona
"Joseph Carroll has produced a definitive edition The Origin of Species...The volume as a whole will be invaluable."

From the Publisher
The Broadview Editions series is an effort to represent the ever-changing canon of literature in English by bringing together texts long regarded as classics with valuable, lesser-known literature. Newly type-set and produced on high-quality paper in trade paperback format, the Broadview Editions series is a delight to handle as well as to read.

Each volume includes a full introduction, chronology, bibliography, and explanatory notes along with a variety of documents from the period, giving readers a rich sense of the world from which the work emerged.

About the Author
Joseph Carroll, a Professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, has published widely on Darwin and his influence.

Customer Reviews

Victorian Value
The Origin of Species is, of course, one of the most famous and influential books ever written, but why would anybody read it today other than as a Victorian curiosity?

What struck me most was not only how much Darwin didn't know, but also the very different ways in which knowledge was acquired 150 years ago. Although the Victorians knew enough practical genetics to breed pigeons or improve livestock, the science of genetics as we understand it did not exist and it would take another century to discover DNA.

Modern laboratories are equipped with a bewildering array of sophisticated technologies that enable scientists to do everything from mapping the human genome to measuring the age of ancient micro-organisms.

And this is where the real difference lies: Darwin had a garden, notebooks, a microscope and (as Prof. Steve Jones recently pointed out) access to a breathtakingly efficient postal service, which brought information from the furthest reaches of Empire and beyond. Crucially, though, Darwin had gifts of observation, clear thinking and a knack for asking the right questions. The real value of this book to a modern reader is to observe these gifts at work in a context that any keen gardener or birdwatcher can understand.

This book is well written by the standards of the Victorian gentleman-scholars who were its first audience, but if you can cope with the average Victorian novel and don't mind looking up the occasional unfamiliar term, then The Origin of Species is probably worth the effort.

The World's Classics edition is well presented, has a useful introduction, a good index and a guide to the other writers mentioned in the text. There is a single diagram, as in the original, but no pictures, which may be a consideration for some readers. My only criticism is that the glossary of terms is Darwin's, from one of the early editions: it would have been useful to have a slightly more comprehensive list for the benefit of modern readers.

The Origin of Species deserves to be read not merely as a cultural artefact or the foundation document of the modern life sciences, but as a timeless work of natural philosophy in the very best sense of that phrase.

On the Destiny of Species
On the Origin of Species must be one of the most famous books in history, yet very few people have any idea what it says. Indeed, even those who claim to have read it seem to have missed the true implications because it's not a book that supports the endless doom and gloom rhetoric that defines modern conservation. In fact, it specifically insults those that wallow in the assumed importance of their own pessimism:

"Nevertheless, so profound is our ignorance, and so high our presumption, that we marvel when we hear of the extinction of an organic being; and as we do not see the cause, we invoke cataclysms to desolate the world, or invent laws on the duration of the forms of life!"

I guess there's a possibility modern conservationists haven't actually read it after all, but either way, objective natural history has been drowned in a cauldron of sentimental hysteria that has nothing to do with Charles Darwin. How comfortable do you think the WWF would be with this quote for example?

"Thus, as it seems to me, the manner in which single species and whole groups of species become extinct accords well with the theory of natural selection."

Given their involvement in the wonderfully preposterous Alliance for Zero Extinction, I would suggest not very. The Alliance for Zero Extinction also includes the Charles Darwin Foundation by the way, but in light of their utopian desperation to end extinction, how comfortable do you think the Charles Darwin Foundation would be with this quote (by Charles Darwin himself remember):

"We need not marvel at extinction; if we must marvel, let it be at our own presumption in imagining for a moment that we understand the many complex contingencies on which the existence of each species depends."

Again, I would suggest not very, and that's why I would urge everybody to read On the Origin of Species before accepting, or suggesting, that humans can `kill the planet'. Yes, they may kill giant pandas, and yes, they may kill polar bears, and yes, they may kill tigers, but no, they will not kill everything. Life will find a way (even if it's via cane toads and comb jellyfish and all the other species that humans don't like very much) and the suggestion that it needs our help is a grotesque insult, at the very best.

And besides, nature doesn't care about giant pandas or polar bears or tigers, as Charles Darwin was well aware:

"Nature, if I may be allowed to personify the natural preservation or survival of the fittest, cares nothing for appearances, except in so far as they are useful to any being."

We may be utterly obsessed with animals with fluffy coats and big eyes, but in reality, nature itself couldn't care less. Life is life after all, regardless of what it looks like:

"The most humble organism is something much higher than the dust under our feet; and no one with an unbiased mind can study any living creature, however humble, without being struck with enthusiasm at its marvellous structure and properties."

They're all incredible, regardless of which types conservationists are trying to save (red squirrels) or kill (grey squirrels) based entirely on self-centred prejudice. And if On the Origin of Species can't convince you, there's always On the Destiny of Species.

On the Destiny of Species by Matthew Watkinson will be published on the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (24th November 2009) and can be ordered on Amazon.co.uk.

Second Choice
Ordered this book after I had had another version on order for a month and an email indicated that it was still not in stock. After I ordered this one it arrived extremely quickly.