Darwin
and the Darwinian Revolution
Gertrude Himmelfarb
Reprint of the 1959 Classic.
From The Publisher
In her enduring study of the
impact of Darwinism on the intellectual climate of the nineteenth century,
Gertrude Himmelfarb brings massive documentation to bear in challenging
the conventional view of Darwin's greatness. Touching on biography, history,
and philosophy, she traces the origins and development of Darwin's views
against the opinions of his time; assesses the influences on him; and shows
what he intended his theory to mean, what his readers took it to mean,
and what it has in fact meant. By such a route Ms. Himmelfarb recaptures
"a sense of how a scientist, with the most innocent of intentions and the
best of faith, can give birth to a theory that has an ancestry and a posterity
of which he may be ignorant and a life of its own over which he has no
control."
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