Evolution's Workshop

God and Science on the Galapagos Islands

Edward J. Larson

320 pages, parution le 26/02/2002

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Résumé

With their bleak but extraordinary landscape and their weird and wonderful wildlife, the Galápagos Islands have long been at the centre of scientific and ecological discovery.

It was here in 1835 that the young Charles Darwin took his first pioneering steps towards the theory of evolution. The islands came to be called ‘Darwin's Eden' and ‘The Galápagos Wonderland' but not everyone saw them that way. Six years after Darwin, Herman Melville was horrified by their inhuman desolation and strange creatures. For him the archipelago was ‘evilly enchanted ground'. Edward Larson's rich and absorbing book tells the full story of this isolated island universe, from Spanish conquistadores and British buccaneers, through Darwin's discoveries and post-Darwinian debates to the fabulous expeditions of the Roaring Twenties, and on to the present-day struggle to conserve the archipelago's unique environment.

Contents

Preface
Introduction : Enchantments Old and New

Part 1 : Creationist Conceptions

Cursed by God and Nature
The Natural Theology of Hell
What Darwin Saw

Part 2 : Evolutionary Debates

Collecting on Classic Ground
California Stakes Its Claim
The Amateurs Take Over

Part 3 : Ecology Matters

Brave New World
The House That Lake Built
Paradise in Purgatory

Appendix
Notes
Index

L'auteur - Edward J. Larson

Edward J. Larson is a Professor with a joint appointment in History and Law at the University of Georgia. He is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Summer for the Gods, and also the author of Trial and Error: The American Controversy over Creation and Evolution and Sex, Race and Science. He lives in Athens, Georgia.

Caractéristiques techniques

	PAPIER
Éditeur(s)	Penguin
Auteur(s)	Edward J. Larson
Parution	26/02/2002
Nb. de pages	320
Format	13 x 20
Couverture	Broché
Poids	239g
Intérieur	Noir et Blanc
EAN13	9780141005034