24 November is reserved to Charles Darwin
24 November 1859: Charles Darwin publishes ‘On the Origin of Species’
The publication of Darwin’s letters and reports from South America and the Galapagos islands established his reputation as a geologist of real standing. Among his most important findings was that the finches found on different islands were fundamentally similar in shape, but displayed variations in size and claws – the result, he theorized, of ‘natural selection’.
Read the book online:
http://darwin-online.org.uk/converted/pdf/1861_OriginNY_F382.pdf
Bio:
https://www.biography.com/people/charles-darwin-9266433
#history #evolution #CharlesDarwin
I picked up a copy of the first edition this summer and have been slogging my way through it. I swear, he tried to make his sentences as long and convoluted as humanly possible. It’s almost as if he were writing it in German, and I’m fluent in German, so I know whereof I speak! To a certain extent, I could even understand why anti-evolutionists, or even those of the fence, who read Darwin might misunderstand it; it’s VERY difficult to read, even if one already has a strong background in biology and evolution.
ReplyDeleteIt’s particularly fascinating to read the first edition, before he made any of the massive number of corrections, additions, or other edits in later editions. It’s remarkable how much he leaned on the work of others, too. I’d always been under the impression that The Origin of Species was as primarily about the voyage of the Beagle, but it’s far more encompassing, and was written much longer after his early travels than I’d thought.
Despite having learned much about evolution during several stages of education, I’m glad to be reading it. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/dI2az8ZFCvVvF1bI1pMbfXpowCP0IBjhM1hWm0XdYyUSZiScejQ6JbSZFEhXE7thTo7fVVUwsC34TQ=s0
A copy of the original with his hand written notes is going up for auction and they believe it will go for $660,000... which is amazing. I would think it would net 3 times that amount...
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