Darwin's On the Origin of Species

Daniel Duzdevich

Description

Decoding Darwin for contemporary readers

Learn more about the book on the author's website Read an interview with the author on ArtLab Listen to an IU Press podcast with the author.

Charles Darwin's most famous book On the Origin of Species is without question, one of the most important books ever written. While even the grandest works of Victorian English can prove difficult to modern readers, Darwin wrote his text in haste and under intense pressure. For an era in which Darwin is more talked about than read, Daniel Duzdevich offers a clear, modern English rendering of Darwin's first edition. Neither an abridgement nor a summary, this version might best be described as a "translation" for contemporary English readers. A monument to reasoned insight, the Origin illustrates the value of extensive reflection, carefully gathered evidence, and sound scientific reasoning. By removing the linguistic barriers to understanding and appreciating the Origin, this edition aims to bring 21st-century readers into closer contact with Darwin's revolutionary ideas.

Foreword by Olivia Judson
A Note to the Reader
Acknowledgments
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859) by Charles Darwin
Introduction
Chapter 1: Variation under Domestication
Chapter 2: Variation in Nature
Chapter 3: The Struggle for Existence
Chapter 4: Natural Selection
Chapter 5: Variation
Chapter 6: Difficulties with the Theory
Chapter 7: Instinct
Chapter 8: Hybrids
Chapter 9: The Imperfection of the Geological Record
Chapter 10: The Succession of Organisms in the Geological Record
Chapter 11: The Geographical Distribution of Life
Chapter 12: Geographical Distribution of Life, Continued
Chapter 13: Affinities between Organisms; Morphology, Embryology, and Rudimentary Organs
Chapter 14: Summary and Conclusion
Notes
Recommended Further Reading
Index

Sujets

• Life Sciences
• Sciences et techniques
• Biology
• History of science
• Evolution
• Darwin
• Charles Darwin
• 454 Life Sciences
• History
• Science

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 24 février 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9780253011749
• Langue: English

Extrait

DARWIN S ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
DARWIN S ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
A MODERN RENDITION
DANIEL DUZDEVICH
WITH A FOREWORD BY OLIVIA JUDSON
This book is a publication of
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone orders 800-842-6796
Fax orders 812-855-7931
2014 by Daniel Duzdevich
Foreword 2014 Olivia Judson
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48 - 1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Duzdevich, Daniel, [date].
Darwin s On the origin of species : a modern rendition / by Daniel Duzdevich; with a foreword by Olivia Judson.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-253-01166-4 (cl : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-01170-1 (pb : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-01174-9 (eb) 1. Evolution (Biology) 2. Natural selection. I. Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882. On the origin of species. II. Title.
QH366.2.D89 2014
576.8 2 - dc23
2013034380
1 2 3 4 5 19 18 17 16 15 14
Nagysz leimnek .
Akik ismerik az let l nyeges dolgait .
CONTENTS

Foreword by Olivia Judson

A Note to the Reader

Acknowledgments

Introduction
1
Variation under Domestication
2
Variation in Nature
3
The Struggle for Existence
4
Natural Selection
5
Variation
6
Difficulties with the Theory
7
Instinct
8
Hybrids
9
The Imperfection of the Geological Record
10
The Succession of Organisms in the Geological Record
11
The Geographical Distribution of Life
12
The Geographical Distribution of Life, Continued
13
Affinities between Organisms: Morphology, Embryology, and Rudimentary Organs
14
Summary and Conclusion

Recommended Further Reading

Index
FOREWORD
Olivia Judson
WHY READ ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY CHARLES DARWIN ? After all, it was first published more than 150 years ago, and much of the science is out of date. When Darwin was writing, for example, the rules of genetic inheritance had not been figured out, the causes of genetic variation were unknown, and the discovery of the structure of DNA - the molecule that contains genetic information - was almost 100 years in the future. In Darwin s time no one knew how old the earth was, nor that the continents move across its surface. Viruses had not been discovered. In short, the landscape of scientific knowledge was far less filled in.
Nevertheless, there are excellent reasons to read it anyway.
Here s one: It is among the most important books ever written. Publication of the Origin transformed biology and transformed our understanding of ourselves. Before the Origin , biology was essentially descriptive, an accumulation of unconnected facts and details called natural history. The patterns in nature were inexplicable. After the Origin , the patterns made sense, and the facts and details became part of a vast and sweeping picture. Before the Origin , we humans considered ourselves the pet creations of a deity. After the Origin , we became part of nature, related to every other being on the planet, with an ancestry that stretches back, back, back, across the eons, to the dawn of life.
It was a huge blow to human vanity. In showing that the earth orbits the sun, not the other way around, Copernicus had removed us from the center of the universe; then Darwin removed our special status as divine creations. Yet seen through the lens of evolution, our myriad imperfections - our capacities for violence and cruelty, our tendencies toward sexual infidelity, our irrationality - become comprehensible. Our finest attributes - our immense capacity for love, kindness, and self-sacrifice; our ability to cooperate; our consciousness; our languages; and our ability to articulate the world and study the universe - become more amazing. With the Origin we became one species among hundreds of millions - and the more astonishing for it.
Here s a second reason to read the Origin: Darwin was a genius. Thus, as well as being a transformative text, the Origin is a window into the mind of one of the world s greatest thinkers. To spend time with such a mind is an inspiration. The Origin is a book that, in my experience, becomes more profound on each reading. It is a book you can have a conversation with over a lifetime.
Yet Darwin was not a genius in the traditional mold. He was not obviously brilliant - at university he was an indifferent student - nor was he flamboyant. He did not write beautiful, elegant equations; nor did he wear peculiar costumes, gamble, cut off his ear, or engage in reckless love affairs. Indeed, having concluded that a wife would be better than a dog, he married his first cousin Emma Wedgwood shortly before his thirtieth birthday and remained with her until his death in 1882; they had ten children, of whom seven survived to adulthood. After his marriage, his life was outwardly dull, consisting of domestic stability, hard work, frequent illness, extensive correspondence, and regular walks. To be sure, there was drama, but it was mostly internal, as he began to realize that his discoveries would wrench human thought in new directions.
Instead of flamboyance and brilliance, Darwin s genius lay in a mix of curiosity and courage, persistence and passion; it lay in great powers of observation and an attention to tiny details. This, after all, was a man who spent eight years writing the definitive study of barnacles, who made important discoveries about orchids, carnivorous plants, and earthworms, and who, as a young man, published a theory of the formation of coral reefs that is still considered correct. More than that - and this is where he is so exceptional - he took this vast accumulation of knowledge and put it all together into a grand new vision of the world. A vision that, in outline and grandeur, remains intact to this day. His work, moreover, can be understood by anyone who cares to try.
Charles Robert Darwin was born on 12 February 1809, the fifth child of a well-to-do family. At the age of sixteen he went to the University of Edinburgh to study medicine but did not stay the course, being horrified by the gory, screaming reality of surgery without anesthesia. When he quit, his father (himself a doctor) told him, You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family. Plan B was to become a clergyman, and so Darwin was dispatched to study at the University of Cambridge. There, by a peculiar coincidence, he lived for a time in rooms that, more than sixty years earlier, had been occupied by William Paley - the natural theologian and moral philosopher who argued that the appearance of design in nature is evidence of a designer (i.e., God), just as a watch is evidence of a watchmaker, and whose writings were part of the curriculum. At Cambridge, Darwin collected beetles, shot birds, read the adventures of the great explorer Alexander von Humboldt, feasted with friends, and otherwise enjoyed himself prodigiously, in an aimless sort of way.
Then things changed. In 1831, when Darwin was twenty-two, he was invited to sail around the world on HMS Beagle in the position of companion to the captain - a post for which his family background as a gentleman was one of the chief qualifications. (His father disliked the idea, objecting that it was a wild scheme and would make him unfit for being a clergyman. Which it did - though not in the way his father was expecting.) The voyage lasted almost five years and took him to (among other places) Australia, South America, and the Gal pagos Islands; it marked the beginning of his intellectual transformation. The Beagle returned to England in October 1836, and early in 1837, with all thoughts of becoming a clergyman having been abandoned, Darwin opened his first notebook on the transmutation of species. That is, on evolution.
Before the Origin , most naturalists believed that species were fixed entities created by a deity to fit their particular environments. Darwin himself started out with this belief. Doubt began to seep in while he was on board the Beagle , as he observed the living world firsthand and began to notice puzzling facts. If living beings have been specially created for their environments, why do the animals and plants that live on islands resemble those from the nearest mainland, where the environment is often quite different? Why is it possible for an animal created for Europe to thrive when introduced to Australia? Some geese almost never swim, yet they have webbed feet. Why? Many fish that live in the total darkness of caves are blind, yet they have the remnants of eyes. Why? Woodpeckers have many traits that make them good at climbing trees and ferreting insects out from under the bark, yet some woodpeckers with those traits eat only fruit, while others live on treeless plains. Why? Why? Why? Such questions perplexe