OverDrive would like to use cookies to store information on your computer to improve your user experience at our Website. One of the cookies we use is critical for certain aspects of the site to operate and has already been set. You may delete and block all cookies from this site, but this could affect certain features or services of the site. To find out more about the cookies we use and how to delete them, click here to see our Privacy Policy.
Easily the most influential book published in the nineteenth century, Darwin’s The Origin of Species is also that most unusual phenomenon, an altogether readable discussion of a scientific subject. On its appearance in 1859 it was immediately recognized by enthusiasts and detractors alike as a work of the greatest importance: its revolutionary theory of evolution by means of natural selection provoked a furious reaction that continues to this day.
The Origin of Species is here published together with Darwin’s earlier Voyage of the ‘Beagle.’ This 1839 account of the journeys to South America and the Pacific islands that first put Darwin on the track of his remarkable theories derives an added charm from his vivid description of his travels in exotic places and his eye for the piquant detail.
Easily the most influential book published in the nineteenth century, Darwin’s The Origin of Species is also that most unusual phenomenon, an altogether readable discussion of a scientific subject. On its appearance in 1859 it was immediately recognized by enthusiasts and detractors alike as a work of the greatest importance: its revolutionary theory of evolution by means of natural selection provoked a furious reaction that continues to this day.
The Origin of Species is here published together with Darwin’s earlier Voyage of the ‘Beagle.’ This 1839 account of the journeys to South America and the Pacific islands that first put Darwin on the track of his remarkable theories derives an added charm from his vivid description of his travels in exotic places and his eye for the piquant detail.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Excerpts-
From the book
Suppose we measure the power of a scientific theory as a ratio: how much it explains divided by how much it needs to assume in order to do that explaining. By this criterion, Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is second to none. Think of what it explains — and I really mean explains in the fullest sense of the word: your existence and mine; the form, diversity, and apparently designed complexity and elegance of all living things, not only on this planet but probably wherever in the universe organized complexity may be found. The explanatory work that the theory does, then — the numerator of the ratio — is immense. But the theory itself — the denominator — could hardly be smaller or more simple; you can write it out in a phrase: ‘Non-random survival of randomly varying hereditary elements.’ That isn’t quite how Darwin himself would have put it (he phrased it in terms of the survival and reproduction of individual organisms). But it captures the essence of his idea in a way that — I am convinced — he would recognize and, indeed, enjoy if he were alive today.We can probably pare the denominator down even further, to a single essential: heredity. Given that there exists a system of high fidelity copying, two things will follow immediately: there will be a population of the entities copied; and, since no copying process is perfect (there is mutation, in other words), they won’t all be exactly the same. It then follows that successful hereditary types will tend to increase in number at the expense of unsuccessful hereditary types. That is probably all that is needed for life to get going and, given enough time, to evolve living machinery whose complexity and diversity progresses without obvious limit.Consider where we would be without Darwin’s idea. We’d presumably have some sort of science of biology. Students would take degrees in the subject, books would be written, Nobel prizes in physiology and medicine would be won. We might know in some detail how living organisms work; we’d know that a human body is a teeming army of cells, a thousand times more numerous than the people in the world; we’d know that every one of these cells is a mass-production moleculefactory packed with the membranous equivalent of miles of sophisticated conveyor belt. We’d know a great deal about how our bodies work, and how the bodies of shrimps, elephants and redwood trees work. We’d be compelled to recognize how complicatedly organisms are fitted to survive in their particular worlds. But we wouldn’t have the foggiest idea why. We’d read volumes about living things but we wouldn’t have a clue about where they came from originally nor why they work so efficiently and purposefully. It would undoubtedly be the most baffling problem in biology — probably in the whole of science and the whole of philosophy. This was the problem that Darwin decisively solved. We are now as certain as one can ever be in science that a version of Darwin’s solution is the correct one.The Darwinian solution to the riddle of existence is so powerfully simple, so felicitous to the modern mind, that it is hard for us to understand why it had to wait until the midnineteenth century before anyone thought of it. It is further surprising — and probably telling — that this great inspiration, which looks so elegant from the modern armchair, eluded centuries of philosophers, mathematicians and polymaths. Plato and Aristotle never even got close, fooling about with ‘essences’ and ‘ideal forms’; Leibnitz and Newton gave us calculus (which might seem a more...
Title Information+
Publisher
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
OverDrive Read
Release date:
EPUB eBook
Release date:
Digital Rights Information+
Copyright Protection (DRM) required by the Publisher may be applied to this title to limit or prohibit printing or copying. File sharing or redistribution is prohibited. Your rights to access this material expire at the end of the lending period. Please see Important Notice about Copyrighted Materials for terms applicable to this content.
Please update to the latest version of the OverDrive app to stream videos.
Device Compatibility Notice
The OverDrive app is required for this format on your current device.
Bahrain, Egypt, Hong Kong, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen
You've reached your library's checkout limit for digital titles.
To make room for more checkouts, you may be able to return titles from your Checkouts page.
Excessive Checkout Limit Reached.
There have been too many titles checked out and returned by your account within a short period of time.
Try again in several days. If you are still not able to check out titles after 7 days, please contact Support.
You have already checked out this title. To access it, return to your Checkouts page.
This title is not available for your card type. If you think this is an error contact support.
There are no copies of this issue left to borrow. Please try to borrow this title again when a new issue is released.
| Sign In
You will be prompted to sign into your library account on the next page.
If this is your first time selecting “Send to NOOK,” you will then be taken to a Barnes & Noble page to sign into (or create) your NOOK account. You should only have to sign into your NOOK account once to link it to your library account. After this one-time step, periodicals will be automatically sent to your NOOK account when you select "Send to NOOK."
The first time you select “Send to NOOK,” you will be taken to a Barnes & Noble page to sign into (or create) your NOOK account. You should only have to sign into your NOOK account once to link it to your library account. After this one-time step, periodicals will be automatically sent to your NOOK account when you select "Send to NOOK."
You can read periodicals on any NOOK tablet or in the free NOOK reading app for iOS, Android or Windows 8.
