Vestiges and the debate before Darwin
著者
書誌事項
Vestiges and the debate before Darwin
Thoemmes Press, 2000
内容説明・目次
内容説明
"Vestiges and the Debate Before Darwin" centres on Robert Chambers's "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" and reprints all the key documents in the controversy that surrounded its publication. "Vestiges" was first published in 1844. Chambers, one of the most successful publishers in Britain, managed to keep his authorship a secret throughout the ten editions published in his lifetime. The work reached a huge popular audience and was widely read by the social and intellectual elite. Despite initially favourable reviews, its publication sent shockwaves through the world of British science. Chambers suggested that the whole of nature, including mankind, could be explained by the action of a single universal evolutionary law - a law that suggested that not only did change happen in the past, but that it would continue into the future. Such a statement enflamed both religious conservatives (Sedgwick referred to the "inner deformity and foulness" of the work and its "gross and filthy views of physiology") and scientists (T.H. Huxley said that the author was "one of those who ...indulge in science at second-hand and dispense totally with logic", and physicist Sir David Brewster warned that "Vestiges" "stood a fair chance of poisoning the foundations of religion").
Understanding the upheaval that "Vestiges" caused in "polite" British Society is key to understanding Darwin's lat Reprinted here is the rare edition of "Vestiges" (1853), written in response to this widespread criticism, plus Chamber's "sequel", "Explanations", written largely as a reply to Sedgwick's highly critical review of "Vestiges". Periodical reviews and other important book-length refutations are also incorporated, including rare editions of works by Adam Sedgwick, William Whewell and Hugh Miller. With introductory essays by John M. Lynch of Arizona State University's Institute of Human Origins, this set should appeal to both historians of evolutionary thought and philosophers of science alike.
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