On the Origin of Species
One long argument, built from pigeons and barnacles, for descent with modification and against the need for a designer.
Darwin spent twenty years assembling evidence before publishing in 1859, and the argument still reads as a patient accumulation of fact rather than a manifesto. Domestic breeding, the geological record, the distribution of species across islands, the difficulty of the eye: each chapter closes another exit. Natural selection needs no designer and no goal, only variation, inheritance and time. He called it one long argument, and it is.
Recommended by 2 People
Mark Kurlansky
It addresses biodiversity long before the word was invented, and climate change, and has some fundamental messages that we need to understand, such as the fact that everything that happens changes everything else. It is a starting point for understanding how everything works. Towards the end of the book Darwin says, “There is a grandeur in this view of life.” And there is. It is so magnificent the way it works.
Interview · January 2012
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