Charles Darwin
Book description
In 1858, Charles Darwin was forty-nine years old, a gentleman scientist living quietly at Down House in the Kent countryside. He was not yet a focus of debate; his "big book on species" still lay on his desk as a manuscript. For more than twenty years he had been accumulating…
Why read it?
1 author picked Charles Darwin as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
The second volume of Janet Browne's great two-part biography is set in England, where Charles Darwin set to work in earnest. His epic book was still a manuscript when the true story began. Obsessed with finding answers, he focused on barnacles. He had them sent to him from all over the world and studied them in detail, itemizing their changes and differences until a new species emerged—along with his remarkable epiphany.
Reading the book, I could feel the same sense of astonishment and discovery: that species occurred by natural selection, not some Divine hand. But Darwin chose not to fight…
From Carl's list on the evolution of human values.
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