Name: On the Origin of Species
Rating: 4.14 (50 reviews)

Charles Darwin (Biologe, Naturforscher)

On the Origin of Species

Krishei Ralleca

Charles Darwin

The instant best-seller and source of controversy of 1859, this classic has lost none of its appeal or importance. A reprint of the original edition, value priced with a new jacket.

By Means of Natural Selection Or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life

The Origin of Species

Gavin

I read the Illustrated Edition (2008) put together by David Quammen, which is very beautiful. Filled with sketches, portraits, maps and suggestive remarks from the diaries. Particularly good if, like me, you've struggled with the plaintext. 

Keys:


  
 Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring. The offspring, also, will thus have a better chance of surviving, for, of the many individuals of any species which are periodically born, but a small number can survive. I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection. 




  
 Looking not to any one time, but to all time, if my theory be true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking most closely all the species of the same group together, must assuredly have existed; but the very process of natural selection constantly tends, as has been so often remarked, to exterminate the parent forms and the intermediate links. Consequently evidence of their former existence could be found only amongst fossil remains 




  
 There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. 


(That last sentence had "by the Creator" tacked on in the second edition.)

You would never guess the prose was written in a rush: possibly because the arguments were formed at the slowest possible rate.

This book doesn't really need any known basic information about biology, I think this book is really great for teens so that their knowledge and way of thinking expands and mature.

Marie Rogowski

I cant believe I finally finish this. as a biologist one has to read this book. his argumentation is mostly correct but is very long and hard to follow . being used to modern science his writing style is rather weird. I am glad i read it but i did not allways enjoy it.

Gabriel Gonçalves Veloso

The Origin Of Species

Jawad

Greg Pyle

Rasmus

Perhaps the most readable and accessible of the great works of scientific imagination, The Origin of Species sold out on the day it was published in 1859. Theologians quickly labeled Charles Darwin the most dangerous man in England, and, as the Saturday Review noted, the uproar over the book quickly "passed beyond the bounds of the study and lecture-room into the drawing-room and the public street." Yet, after reading it, Darwin's friend and colleague T. H. Huxley had a different reaction: "How extremely stupid not to have thought of that." Based largely on Darwin's experience as a naturalist while on a five-year voyage aboard H.M.S. Beagle, The Origin of Species set forth a theory of evolution and natural selection that challenged contemporary beliefs about divine providence and the immutability of species. A landmark con- tribution to philosophical and scientific thought, this edition also includes an introductory historical sketch and a glossary Darwin later added to the original text. Charles Darwin grew up considered, by his own account, "a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard of intellect." A quirk of fate kept him from the career his father had deemed appro- priate--that of a country parson--when a botanist recommended Darwin for an appointment as a naturalist aboard H.M.S. Beagle from 1831 to 1836. Darwin is also the author of the five-volume work Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle (1839) and The Descent of Man (1871).

On the Origin of Species

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