Colin Tudge

Selectioneering

Darwin’s Ghosts: In Search of the First Evolutionists

By

Bloomsbury 383pp £25 order from our bookshop

Science is a human pursuit and the history of its ideas, like all human history, is messy; the bigger the idea, the messier its history tends to be. No idea that anyone has had since, say, Muhammad founded Islam, has had more impact than Charles Darwin’s grand notion of evolution by means of natural selection, presented to the world in what he regarded as no more than a sketch in On the Origin of Species in 1859. The idea had its roots in natural history, of course, but also in politics, economics, metaphysics and religion, and has been developed by battalions of thinkers – some generous and humble, some jealous and mean-spirited. It takes great skill and scholarship to tell the story well, and Rebecca Stott does it wonderfully. 

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'Pollan has no doubt that the use of psychedelics could have a powerfully beneficial effect on a range of condition… ,
    • A memoir about an Untouchable family and the 'formation of modern India': 'Ants among Elephants' by @gidla_sujatha… ,
    • RT : First founded in Edinburgh in 1979, is considered a trusted independent source for reviews of new book… ,
    • 'In different ways Hatherley makes gritty Lódź and poor old which-country-are-we-in-this-week Lviv sound entrancing… ,
    • In this issue Lucy Popescu discusses the miscarriages of justice occurring in the investigation over Maltese journa… ,
    • 'Rodin’s fascination with ancient Greek sculpture is part of a long and distinguished French tradition.' A review o… ,
    • The New Testament, in a new translation by David Bentley Hart, reviewed by Salley Vickers ,
    Follow Us