Building on the work of Darwin and Mendel, the biologist William Bateson (1861–1926) was the first scientist to combine the study of variation, heredity and evolution, and to use the term 'genetics'. This book was first published in 1894 after many years of experimental and theoretical work - particularly in the embryology of the acorn worm genus Balanoglossus - which had been guided by the principle that embryonic developmental stages replay the evolutionary transitions of adult forms of an organism's ancestors. Bateson was the first to challenge this theory, which made him unpopular among the scientific establishment of the time, but he was proved right. Organising his material by anatomical sections, Bateson explores speciation, phylogeny and discontinuous and continuous variation among a wide range of species, including vertebrates, invertebrates and plants. This pioneering work offers great insight into how the study of genetics and inheritance itself evolved.
An award-wining biologist takes us on the dramatic expeditions that unearthed the history of life on our planet.Just 150 years ago,most of our world was an unexplored wilderness.Our sense of how old
St George Jackson Mivart was an eminent biologist, who was at first an advocate for natural selection and later a passionate opponent. In this beautifully illustrated 1871 text, Mivart raised objections to natural selection as a means for evolution. These included problems in explaining: 'incipient stages' of complex structures (e.g. the mammalian eye); the existence of similar structures of divergent origin; dramatic and rapid changes in form; the absence of transitional forms from the fossil record; and issues in geological distribution. Citing the giraffe's neck, the rattle of the snake and the whale's baleen, Mivart argued for the necessity of an innate power underlying all organic life. Mivart's book did not seriously undermine the concept of natural selection - Darwin and Huxley soon countered his 'formidable array' of arguments - but it helped move the debate forward. Sadly, it also led to a rift between Mivart and Darwin.
Sir Charles Lyell (1797–1875) is remembered today as much for his profound influence on the young Charles Darwin as for his own work as a geologist: Darwin read the three volumes of his Principles of Geology (1830–3) as they came out, and was greatly interested in Lyell's theory of the huge effects over geological time of an accumulation of tiny, almost unobservable changes. The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man was published in 1863, and went into three editions in that year alone. The work synthesises the then existing evidence for the earliest humans in Europe and North America and – as indicated by its subtitle, With Remarks on Theories of the Origin of Species by Variation – discusses Darwin's theory and 'the bearing of this hypothesis on the different races of mankind and their connection with other parts of the animal kingdom.'
On the Origin of Form presents a new account of evolution and the origin of life based on the premise that the body form of any species is encoded not in the DNA but in the patterned structure of the
Consciously echoing the title of Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in its own choice of title, this book argues that the social sciences need to recognize the influence o
Kinship, religion, and economy were not "natural" to humans, nor to species of apes that had to survive on the African savanna. Society from its very beginnings involved an uneasy ne
This clothbound edition includes over one hundred delicately detailed and informative contemporary illustrations, many of them relating to the discoveries Darwin made during the second voyage of the r
Introduction by Edward J. Larson ? ?Perhaps the most readable and accessible of the great works of scientific inquiry, The Origin of Species sold out its first printing on the very day it was publishe
Introduction by Edward J. Larson ?Perhaps the most readable and accessible of the great works of scientific inquiry, The Origin of Species sold out its first printing on the very day it was publishe
One of evolution's fundamental questions is how the skein of life on Earth remains unbroken yet is constantly renewed by new species. What accounts for the scientific paradox that all organisms and sp
This collection features five essays from noted theologians, philosophers, geneticists, and biologists who discuss the sweeping impact of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species on their respective
The second collection of Grant Morrison's groundbreaking run on ANIMAL MAN reprints issues #10-17, plus the 19-page story from SECRET ORIGINS #39, this volume shows Animal Man moving more and more dee
