The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex Vol I eBook Charles Darwin
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The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex Vol I eBook Charles Darwin
A must read for every biologist as well anyone interested in biological evolution. The Victorian English is a bit stilted but it is understandable, especially on a Kindle Reader that will show the older definitions of obsolete or archaic words. Every reader should remember that when Darwin wrote this, the mechanism of inheritance was not understood, the Mendelian concepts of inheritance were not published for another 10-20 years, the ideas of chromosomes and genes were several more decades in the future, and the work of Watson & Crick identifying DNA as the carrier of genetic information and the mechanism of duplication and change was published in 1953, eighty years after publication of is work!Product details
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The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex Vol I eBook Charles Darwin Reviews
Wow... This is a mammoth read! If you only read the first few chapters, you will be horrified by his use of language. Called disabled people "monstrosities" and "idiots" - I will use the term loosely now! But, this was the terminology used in that period of time, so I will try not to scream "racist", etc.
Most of this book is scientific in nature. Very matter of fact, according to the information he has available. The amount of research he used and quoted beggars belief when you consider this was a time without computers, etc. I am amazed at the information he could source and use.
The research used in relation to "savages" is extensive, and I wonder if we would ever refer to other races of mankind as "savages" because they do things differently.
In this age, we strive to find a meaning for life, have a quest for equality, and long for a better future. Perhaps, as Darwin points out, in our fight for these principles we lost control and therefore we now have an ageing and growing population, and struggle to make ends meet. War is something that has gone on from our basic beginnings, and it appears that it is something we can not prevent.
However, women have a huge role to play in the future of humanity. Thank goodness we are no longer killed as he noted from the chapters on infanticide!
I have to rate this book a 4 purely for the scale and depth of research. I do not have to agree with his conclusions and that it my given right. I wonder how he would have felt knowing that many of his scientific ideas led to genocide, and justification of mass slaughter. If only we were equipped with the benefit of hindsight!
I have to admit that I skipped some chapters on insects, etc, but I did read the bulk of it. If you want to try good luck! It'll take you a while... And you might roll your eyes at a lot of his speculation! )
When Charles Darwin in 1859 finally made public his theory of evolution by natural selection in “On the Origin of Species”, he avoided writing about human evolution, except for saying that “Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.”
But by the early 1870s he felt confident enough to openly discuss the evolution of humans from animals. He did this in “The Descent of Man” (1871) and in “The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals” (1872).
The full title of this book is “The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex”, and this shows the double purpose that Darwin had in writing it. Firstly, he produces evidence to show that humans are the “modified descendants” of animal ancestors. Secondly, he explains the importance of sexual selection in nature, as an important adjunct to his theory of natural selection.
Alfred Russel Wallace had come up with the idea of natural selection independently of Darwin, although he had done so, as he himself acknowledged, twenty years after Darwin first thought of the idea. Wallace had become a friend and scientific colleague of Darwin, but now he had let the side down by ending up believing in spiritualism and arguing that the human brain/mind could not have evolved. Darwin, on the other hand, stuck to his guns and showed how even the “higher” intellectual and moral capacities of humans could have arisen as a result of evolution.
Wallace and Darwin also disagreed over sexual selection. Wallace did not agree that it was the important factor that Darwin asserted it was. Darwin may have taken his argument too far when he claimed that sexual selection was the prime factor in producing “racial” differences in humans, but overall his case for sexual selection is well made in this book.
I am a great fan of Charles Darwin, but not an uncritical one. One problem is that, despite having developed the revolutionary (and correct) theory of natural selection as the mechanism for evolutionary change, Darwin mistakenly allowed a subsidiary role for the Lamarckian idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. This book is unfortunately full of examples of this latter idea.
I also have to point out that there are some things in this book that make for uncomfortable reading. Here I am talking about some of Darwin’s views on class, race, nationality and gender, which reflect the prejudices of a rich, white, European male of his time.
We can’t hold Darwin responsible for the worst excesses of later eugenicists or for all those various attempts by Social Darwinists of one sort or another to justify the horrible inequalities inherent in the capitalist system by claiming that those inequalities are “natural”. But in this book we can see that Darwin himself was influenced by eugenic theories and that he himself held some of the views that would later be called “Social Darwinism”.
For example, it is embarrassing to read that Darwin thought that men had “greater intellectual vigour and power of invention” than women. And, in probably the worst passage that I’ve ever read by Darwin, he favourably quotes another writer’s dreadful racist stereotype of the Irish.
On the other hand, Darwin was always a strong opponent of slavery, and he rightly argued that all humans, whatever their “race”, belonged to a single species and were descended from a single common ancestor. (Some of the worst racists of the time were claiming that the “superior” Europeans and the “inferior” Africans and other races were descended from separate species.)
Stephen Jay Gould summed up Darwin as being “radical in his scientific ideas, liberal in his political and social views, and conservative in personal lifestyle...”
Darwin’s ideas have given us a real understanding of nature. But we must not fall into the trap of thinking that social problems and inequalities can also be explained by Darwinism.
Phil Webster.
(England)
A great book. It shows so many layers and varieties that nature provides. If any one claims a universal law, it must be false.
A must read for every biologist as well anyone interested in biological evolution. The Victorian English is a bit stilted but it is understandable, especially on a Reader that will show the older definitions of obsolete or archaic words. Every reader should remember that when Darwin wrote this, the mechanism of inheritance was not understood, the Mendelian concepts of inheritance were not published for another 10-20 years, the ideas of chromosomes and genes were several more decades in the future, and the work of Watson & Crick identifying DNA as the carrier of genetic information and the mechanism of duplication and change was published in 1953, eighty years after publication of is work!
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