How to Read Darwin

ISBN: 0393328813

Author: Ridley, Mark

Condition: New

Intent on letting the reader experience the pleasure and intellectual stimulation in reading classic authors, the How to Read series will facilitate and enrich your understanding of texts vital to the canon. Charles Darwins permanent legacy is his broad, abstract theories of evolution and natural selection, theories that he tested against an astonishing array of natural history evidence in his writing. Mark Ridley uses a question-and-answer approach to explain how Darwin carefully tackled problems, and shows here how the reader can understand Darwins arguments by first working out which question Darwin had implicitly set himself to answer.Ridley concentrates on understanding Darwins most important books, On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man, but he also examines a sample from one of Darwins other works on the emotions, as one representative from Darwins lesser-known works that ranged from flower pollination to coral reefs, from animal domestication to landscaping by earthworms.