| PRODUCT DETAILS | | On the Origin of Species |  | |
On the Origin of Species
On the Origin of the Species ranks as one of the most important and influential books ever written, and one that remains as controversial today as upon its initial publication 150 years ago. Here, eminent biologist and staunch Darwinist Richard Dawkins narrates his own expertly abridged version of Darwin’s groundbreaking book. In cutting passages that are now proven to be wrong, mostly those dealing with genetics, Dawkins streamlines the book for modern tastes while preserving its sound scientific underpinnings. What’s truly remarkable, Dawkins notes, is how much Darwin got right. Remarkable, too, is the clarity of Darwin’s prose, which, while necessarily technical in nature, makes the scientific basis for his theory of natural selection accessible to laypeople. For those wavering between creationism and evolution, or for anyone who wants a better understanding of Darwinism, Dawkins’ brilliant reading is the perfect entry into a book that truly changed the world.
Manufacturer: CSA Word
Price Range: $17.85 - $29.95
 On the Origin of Species
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| User Reviews |  | On the Origin of the Species
rating: 4
On the Origin on the Species was exactly what I ordered - I wish it were not so hard to get original text for classic readings.
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No better way to experience this
rating: 5
Okay I am a bit embarrassed; how have I gotten to this age without having read this vital book? Well, I am a bit behind on my reading (the stack of books waiting to be read looks almost big enough to ski down), so when I saw this audiobook version of Darwin's classic, I could not resist. The original text (with original title, by the way: the word "On" later being dropped by Darwin), abridged and read by Professor Richard Dawkins: what could be better? Dawkins presents this material, about which he is quite passionate, and reads it in his always-pleasant, somewhat musical voice. This book--and I know this is cliche--should truly be read by everyone, and this is a very agreeable way to expose oneself to this brilliant material.
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Does not waste time with controversy; just read the book.
rating: 5
This is a quick review of the book not a dissertation on Darwin or any other subject loosely related. At first I did not know what to expect. I already read " The Voyage of the Beagle: Charles Darwin's Journal of Researches" (see my review). I figured the book would be similar. However I found "Origin" to be more complex and detailed.
Taking in account that recent pieces of knowledge were not available to Charles Darwin this book could have been written last week. Having to look from the outside without the knowledge of DNA or Plate Tectonics, he pretty much nailed how the environment and crossbreeding would have an effect on natural selection. Speaking of natural selection, I thought his was going to be some great insight to a new concept. All it means is that species are not being mucked around by man (artificial selection).
If you picked up Time magazine today you would find all the things that Charles said would be near impossible to find or do. Yet he predicted that it is doable in theory. With an imperfect geological record many things he was not able to find at the writing of this book have been found (according to the possibilities described in the book.)
The only draw back to the book was his constant apologizing. If he had more time and space he could prove this and that. Or it looks like this but who can say at this time. Or the same evidence can be interpreted 180 degrees different.
In the end it is worth reading and you will never look at life the same way again.
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How to Worship Charles Darwin
rating: 4
This edition of the Origin is a rare item: a book for the classroom that actually does the job. It contains a bibliography, explanatory notes, a chronology of Darwin's life, and a register of names. The appendices contain selections from Darwin's other works and selections from Darwin's sources and contemporaries. All for $9.95!
In addition to these nuts and bolts, the editor has composed an Introduction to initiate students into the sublimity of Darwin's World. Here's how it begins: `(The Origin) is one of the two or three most significant scientific works of all time-one of those works that fundamentally and permanently alter our vision of the world.' Interested? Here's more: this surpassing achievement `requires no specialized scientific training'-great news for students mortified by maths. And more: Origin is `also a great literary classic' that is `eloquent, imaginatively evocative, and rhetorically compelling'. Holy Darwin! How good can it get? Even English lit students might go for that.
Surprise: editor Joseph Carroll is an English lit prof. His speciality is the evolutionary analysis of literature, an innovation that he pioneered. Lit departments aren't science-friendly territory. Often they run an anti-science line, linking it to exploitation, global warming, racism, misogyny and the like. Come to think of it, isn't Darwinism among the worst offenders?! Survival of the fittest, let the weak perish and the rich get richer, eugenic breeding to clean out the bungled and botched, that kind of thing. To block such negative thoughts, Carroll preaches an oration of superlatives about the Great Man that exceeds anything I've encountered. In scientific achievement, personal character, wisdom, and influence, Lord Darwin in his shining eminence leaves all others in the shadows. Here is Carroll on Darwin's most important contribution to culture: `The vision of nature Darwin offers is not that of some broad, abstract, intellective pattern, but that of living impulse, eager, frantic, animating every single organism, vast and minute, in inconceivable numbers, everywhere on earth, persisting throughout all time of organic life'. It is a vision of `competitive struggle', of the `great battle of life', and the `war of nature'. Interestingly, in this context Carroll notes that Darwin specifies an empirical finding that would `annihilate my theory'--a species that developed `an adaptation solely for the benefit of some other species'. That's because, Darwin believed, as Victorians typically believed, that every organism looks out for Number 1. It's called `individualism'.
What about that? Is there any species with adaptations that benefit only another species? Sorry to say this, but yes, there are. The pattern is called `inquilinism', which lies at the extreme end of the spectrum of parasitism. See E. O. Wilson, Sociobiology, p 371. Note: Darwin says unequivocally that his theory is `annihilated', yet for some reason the ardent Darwinian Wilson doesn't draw that conclusion.
An English prof isn't expected to know about inquilinism, but literary visions of nature are another matter. Poets and novelists homed in on the implications of godlessness of the mechanistic universe well before the Origin was published. Among those usually mentioned is Alfred Tennyson's In Memorium (1850), whose famous lines `Who trusted God was love indeed / And love Creation's final law -- / Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw / With ravine, shriek'd against his creed' convey the temper of his sombre, lengthy meditation on nature. `Nature red in tooth and claw' became a byword among Victorians for the world they had come to inhabit. We might expect Carroll to seize on this fact, to stress how Darwin's vision fitted into the new cognitive-symbolic structures created by poets. But not a word of that! Carroll disregards not only Tennyson, but all imaginative writing that formed the context of Darwin's publications. Why this silent denigration of the importance of his own field?
Probably because even summary recognition of the literary dimension of Victorian culture would expose the historical inaccuracy of Carroll's extravagant claims for Darwin's originality. For example, he attributes massive innovative force to Darwin's replacement of creationism by purely naturalistic explanation in natural history. In fact, this was no innovation at all; the physical and hard biological sciences had long since oriented on exclusively natural causes. The only `scientists' still clinging to creative intervention in nature were naturalists-those amateur bird watchers and rock collectors who often enough were clergymen. Since Darwin identified himself with naturalists, it was `natural' for him to challenge creationism. But this challenge had been forcefully launched in 1844 in the anonymously published best-seller Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. The author, Robert Chambers, wrote a defence of no-exception naturalism far more frontal, eloquent, and incisive than anything from Darwin's pen (Darwin was loath to give offence, especially to his pious wife Emma).
Not only had the sciences eliminated divine causality, so had theology! In 1846 the entirely secularist The Life of Jesus Critically Examined was translated from German into English by the novelist George Eliot (aka Marian Evans). Eliot enjoyed a close friendship with Herbert Spencer; together they edited the Westminster Review. They were part of an intellectual circle that included Thomas Huxley, George Lewes, J.S. Mill, H.G. Atkinson, and Harriet Martineau. Martineau, who translated August Comte's Positive Philosophy, published in 1851 Letters on the Laws of Man's Nature and Development, which projected humanist unbelief as the end point of millennia of cultural improvement. Carroll, whose speciality is the literature of this period, particularly the writings of George Eliot, presumably knows all of this. Yet he utters not a word about it! Why not? Perhaps because these facts reverse the relation between Darwin and his public that Carroll extols: far from being the mighty innovator who transforms English thought (`revolution'), he reiterates and magnifies the then aspiring progressive culture. That culture seized on the Origin and magnified it because the weight of Darwin's high social status brought with it the promise of the triumph of progressivism (the real meaning of the `Darwinian revolution'). Indeed, one of the first reviews of Origin hailed it as `the Whitworth gun of liberalism', a clear salute to the political dimension of the evolution belief. The author of the review was Thomas Huxley.
Carroll apparently doesn't see that a Darwinian analysis of literature needs to be complemented by a literary analysis of Darwinism.
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On the Origin of Species
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