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Loading... Darwin and the Barnacle: The Story of One Tiny Creature and History's Most Spectacular Scientific Breakthrough (edition 2004)by Rebecca Stott
Work InformationDarwin and the Barnacle: The Story of One Tiny Creature and History's Most Spectacular Scientific Breakthrough by Rebecca Stott
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Loved it. Primary sources throughout,letters used to provide humanizing details so that the great scientist can be seen as the husband and father as well. Enough detail on the barnacles to help a layman understand how they shaped Darwin’s thinking, without being too dry or technical for the non-specialist ( ) This book covers a part of Darwin's life that all too often gets relegated to a footnote or a sidebar - the years he spent with the humble barnacle, learning about classification, morphology, and taxonomy, preparatory to writing his "big species book". This book examines how that period shaped Darwin's later years, and the role that it played in development of his trademark theory. A really good introduction to how science is done. Having read this and found out some of Darwin's skills and meticulousness as a researcher into the family of the barnacle; I was a little disappointed not to have found out more about how it prepared him for publishing his Origin of the Species. A lot is surmised about his scientific endeavour although there are some good insights into his personal character and the manner in which he lived and brought up his children. The author also succeeded in describing mid Victorian Britain especially the Great Exhibition ; I think that is where her skills are greatest and not in the science per se. However on balance this book has persuaded me to read more about Darwin as a person and to pull out my battered copy of the Voyage of the Beagle and reread that knowing what I now know about his later scientific endeavours. no reviews | add a review
In 1846 Darwin had a secret: an essay sealed in an envelope and locked in his study drawer which would overturn human understanding of time and nature forever. Before he published, he had just one more riddle to solve, that of the strange anatomy of a barnacle, nick-named Mr Arthrobalanus, found in South America during the voyage of the Beagle. Abberant creatures like these are the key to the processes of natural selection, but eight years later, with a study filled with hundreds of barnacle specimens, the case is still unclosed. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)576.82Natural sciences and mathematics Life Sciences, Biology Genetics and evolution Evolution Theories of evolutionLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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