The Origin of Species and the Voyage of the Beagle
Published by Vintage Classics, 2009, softcover, index, 968 pages, conditio: as new.
When the eminent naturalist Charles Darwin returned from South America on board the HMS Beagle in 1836, he brought with him the notes and evidence which would form the basis of his landmark theory of evolution of species by a process of natural selection. This theory, published as The Origin of Species in 1859, sparked a fierce scientific, religious, and philosophical debate which continues heatedly today. This seminal work is presented with The Voyage of the Beagle , a vivid travel memoir as well as a detailed scientific field journal. Ordered by place, covering area from Northern Chile to Australia to Cape Verde Islands, this text contains hints of the theories that were later developed in The Origin of Species .
To say that Origin of the Species might be slightly interesting is to make a monumental error in degree. Obviously. And no other work of literature... nee, science, has been as contentious.
This is the extremely readable work that provides us a step-by-step accounting of the theory of Evolution, after all.
In this particular edition of Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle and Origins of the Species, narrated by and specially abridged by Richard Dawkins, a lot of the detailed extras are boiled down to an easy to read and fully explained middle section that includes background information, concurrent debates of Darwin's time, and the circumstances that catapulted this work to the forefront of science.
Natural selection has been an idea that has been around longer than Darwin, but Darwin took the idea a bit farther and he gave us the strong idea that it is both universal and reproducible from a simple beginning. There are not a pre-formed plethora of species. We have what we have from the natural progression of optimization, die-offs, and improvements based on variation. The fact that plants, insects, and animals all predate on one another is not nearly as interesting as the fact that they also learn to COOPERATE.
I suspect that anyone who poo-poos Darwin does it without having read him. There's really nothing contentious about the text. He just applies observation and realism to what he sees all around us.
