Darwin’s Origin of Species: A Biography (BOOKS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD Book 2) by Janet Browne (PDF)

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No book has changed our understanding of ourselves more than Darwin’s Origin of Species. It caused a sensation on its first day of publication in 1859 and went on to become an international bestseller. The idea that living things gradually evolve through natural selection profoundly shocked its Victorian readers, calling into question what had been for many the unshakeable belief that there was a Creator.In this book, Janet Browne, Charles Darwin’s foremost biographer, shows why Darwin’s Origin of Species can fairly claim to be the greatest science book ever published. She describes the genesis of Darwin’s theories, explains how they were initially received and examines why they remain so contentious today. Her book is a marvellously readable account of the work that altered forever our knowledge of what it is to be human.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐I needed this book for my history class. (Evolution of modern Biology). While some books for this era are quiet dry. This book has an amazing summary of Darwin and his accomplishments, as well about his child hood. It is something I can see myself rereading at a later date.

⭐Darwin book explained info on many species.

⭐This book is very disappointing, in that it fails to accomplish its main task. It’s supposed to help us see how The Origin of Species changed the world, right? To do that it would have to make us see what the belief system was that Darwin’s book upset. What did intelligent, educated people believe about animal and other species before Darwin came along? Why was his thesis so shocking? I am sure Janet Browne herself understands this thoroughly, but she makes the Number One mistake of bad pedagogues, which is to fail to imagine what her readers know and don’t know – to fail to see the subject from her readers’ point of view. We all live in a world steeped in the idea that species evolved over vast spans of time, through random variations, into the ones we know today, which are still evolving. Before Darwin, however, a different dogma was in the air, and I could not grasp from Browne’s text what it was.She should have devoted a whole chapter to putting us back into that mind-set, so we could then appreciate the shock of Darwin’s theory.

⭐Interesting view of Darwin’s life and times as well as some of his interactions with colleagures,and reaction to Origin of Species and Descent of Man is presented in a logical and flowing narrative. The only reason for four stars instead of five is that I wanted to know more about some topics.

⭐In the second sentence of the first page, the author writes that Darwin was born in April, 1809. In fact, he was born two months earlier, on February 12. My guess is that Ms Browne is a fine historian, but come on, that’s a pretty egregious mistake for a historian, especially given the interesting historical coincidence of the date (the same as Abraham Lincoln’s). Because of that obvious error on the very first page, my reading of the book was spoiled by the nagging question of what other facts may have been misstated.

⭐It is short book, but well written. It puts the Origin of Species in context of Darwin’s time and in the context of modern time. It explains the time and effort it took Darwin to develop his evidence.

⭐This is one of the most famous books ever written. Every educated person should have some familiarity with it. I’m glad to be able to add it to my library. This book arrived undamaged and quickly. Thanks.

⭐Everything about Charles Darwin can be found in Ms. Browne’s book which was brilliantly written. Everyone who loves science should read this book.

⭐In 1831, when Darwin set off on his voyage round the world, he could not have known that his ideas would still be in circulation in his bicentenary year. Twenty-five years later, finally working on the Origin, he said, “I am like Croesus overwhelmed with my riches of facts”. That he didn’t give up, that he persevered despite the intellectual challenge, the likely social censure and his own ill-health, and that he distilled out of complexity one of the most important universal laws ever discovered, are all reasons why we continue to hold him in such high esteem. Janet Browne tells the remarkable story – spanning two centuries – of the book and its impact in this compelling and compact account.For Darwin, facts were not Gradgrindian blows to the soul but living creatures (though often soon to be extinguished by his habit for either collecting or shooting them). His childhood love of nature and sense of wonder at the diversity of life found an early expression in William Paley’s theology of a designer-god, which suited his intended career as one those naturalist-parsons who enjoyed “a comfortable niche in a country parish”. Like Paley, “Darwin saw organisms that were excellently adapted to their way of life”. Unlike Paley and almost everyone else, Darwin saw that sometimes organisms were very poorly designed and very often came off worse in the struggle for survival. He “shattered all previous images of pastoral harmony”. He saw that “the urge to succeed was brutal” and “it seemed unlikely that a divine architect would deliberately create such wasteful, purposeless features.” As he watched his own daughter die, he asked, “How could a caring, beneficent creator extinguish such an innocent child?”Although it was never Darwin’s intention to destroy “the presence of God in nature”, “his appeal to natural law unmistakably contributed to the general push towards secularization”. He “replaced Paley’s vision of perfect adaptation with imperfection and chance” and repeatedly challenged the idea that species were separately and divinely created. But could his precious facts alone prove that species really did change? “Natural selection is not self-evident in nature… Darwin had no crucial experiment that conclusively demonstrated evolution in action… Everything in his book required the reader’s imagination.”Browne deals briefly with the unsavoury ideas often linked – however loosely – with Darwin. “Eugenic doctrines around 1900 were invariably coupled with other ideological extensions of Darwinism.” Browne points out that “racism and genocide predated Darwin” and nor were they solely confined to the West. “Nevertheless, evolutionary views, and then the new science of genetics, gave powerful biological backing to those who wished to partition society according to ethnic difference or promote white supremacy.” Darwin’s own insight was “that humans were all brothers under the skin”, a view vindicated by modern evolutionary biology.Of course, for many religious people the real difficulties are not with the scientific details nor with misapplications such as social Darwinism, but with their fear that Darwin’s dangerous idea will “free the world from theological dogma” and that naturalism will ultimately drive out religion. For contemporaries like Huxley, that was certainly the hope: not for him the inane notion that evolution was perhaps “a purposeful process regulated by God”. Others couldn’t see what all the fuss was about: Tennyson, for example, wondered what difference it would make if man really had descended from apes.In the Origin, Darwin himself deliberately avoided discussing human origins and he sidestepped the question of “a divine presence in the natural world” although he knew his theory would change forever the terms in which such debates were conducted. Once again, however reluctant Darwin was as a protagonist, religion had to shift its ground as a result of scientific progress. I personally follow Dawkins and Dennett in seeing evolution as irreconcilable with all but the most washed-out religious ideas, but I now have a better understanding of why Darwin kept his more radical thoughts out of the Origin and safe inside his private notebooks. Janet Browne’s engaging and enjoyable book keeps Darwin the author and scientist centre stage but never loses sight of Charles Darwin the loving husband and parent.

⭐Janet Browne is deservedly the reigning monarch of Darwiniana, including her two-volume biography, work on the Letters, and previous compact edition of the Origin. I have used the last for non-majors courses in Natural Selection who want to know what NS is without the weight of 19th century examples. This book is valuable for Majors who understand Natural Selection from evolution lectures, but not necessarily the context in which the theory was developed. I have read and used both, and would not be without either. Now if I can just save up for the bronze statue of Himself….

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