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Named by Sigmund Freud as 'one of the ten most significant books' ever written, Darwin's Descent of Man continues to shape the way we think about what it is that makes us uniquely human.  In their introduction, James Moore and Adrian Desmond, acclaimed biographers of Charles Darwin, call for a radical re-assessment of the book, arguing that its core ideas on race were fired by Darwin's hatred of slavery. The text is the second and definitive edition and this volume also contains suggestions for further reading, a chronology and biographical sketches of prominent individuals mentioned.  Charles Darwin (1809-82), a Victorian scientist and naturalist, has become one of the most famous figures of science to date. The advent of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1859 challenged and contradicted all contemporary biological and religious beliefs.  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T. H. Huxley (18251895) was Darwins bloody-fanged bulldog. His giant scything intellect shook a prim Victorian society; his Devils gospel of evolution outraged. He put agnostic  into the vocabulary and cave men into the public consciousness. Adrian Desmonds fiery biography with its panoramic view  of Dickensian life explains how this agent provocateur rose  to become the centurys greatest prophet. Touching the crowning achievements and the crushing depths of both the man and  his times, this is the epic story of a courageous genius whose life summed up the social changes from the Victorian to the modern age. Written with enormous zest and passion, Huxley is about the making of our modern Darwinian world. }T. H. Huxley (18251895) was Darwins bloody-fanged bulldog. His giant scything intellect shook a prim Victorian society; his Devils gospel of evolution outraged. He put agnostic into the vocabulary and cave men into the public consciousness. 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Out of his provocations came our image of science warring with theology. And out of them, too, came the Wests new faith-agnosticism (he coined  the new word).Champion of modern education, creator of an intellectually dominant profession, and president of the Royal Society, in Desmonds hands Huxley epitomizes the rise of the middle classes as the clawed power from the Anglican elite. His modern godless universe, intriguing and terrifying, millions of years in the making, was explored in his laboratory at South Kensington; his last pupil, H. G. Wells, made it  the foundation of twentieth-century science fiction.Touching the crowning achievements and the crushing depths of both the man and his times, this is the epic story of a courageous genius whose life summed up the social changes from the Victorian to the modern age. 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Out of his provocations came our image of science warring with theology. And out of them, too, came the Wests new faith-agnosticism (he coined  the new word).Champion of modern education, creator of an intellectually dominant profession, and president of the Royal Society, in Desmonds hands Huxley epitomizes the rise of the middle classes as the clawed power from the Anglican elite. His modern godless universe, intriguing and terrifying, millions of years in the making, was explored in his laboratory at South Kensington; his last pupil, H. G. Wells, made it  the foundation of twentieth-century science fiction.Touching the crowning achievements and the crushing depths of both the man and his times, this is the epic story of a courageous genius whose life summed up the social changes from the Victorian to the modern age. 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