The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin
In his introduction, Darwin reveals that for many years he had no intention of publishing his notes on this topic, 'as I thought that I should thus only add to the prejudices against my views'. By 1871, he felt that his fellow scientists would show a greater openness of mind to his arguments, even when taken to their logical conclusion and applied to the descent of man from the apes - the aspect of his theory which had been so widely mocked since the notorious question asked by Bishop Wilberforce at the Oxford debate of 1860: was it through his grandmother or his grandfather that Thomas Huxley, Darwin's champion, considered himself descended from a monkey? However, the book's focus on the area of sexual selection and the evolutionary importance of secondary sexual characteristics across the animal kingdom meant that the book was received without the public outrage that Darwin had feared.
“[Darwin’s] second great book. . An intellectually daring feat.” —Richard O. Prum, in The Evolution of Beauty
CHARLES DARWIN (1809-82) was an evolutionary biologist, best known for his controversial and ground-breaking On the Origin of Species (1856). JAMES MOORE is Reader in History of Science & Technology at the Open University. He is currently working on a biography of Alfred Russel Wallace.
ADRIAN DESMOND is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Biology Department at UCL. He is the author of a 2-volume biography of Huxley and is editing Huxley's family correspondence.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780140436310 |
| ISBN 10 | 0140436316 |
| Title | The Descent of Man |
| Author | Charles Darwin |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Penguin Books Ltd |
| Year published | 2004-02-26 |
| Number of pages | 864 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |