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Makers of modernity

Angels and Ages by Adam Gopnik ,

Knopf, $24.95

Reviewed by Sam Kean

THAT Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were both born on 12 February 1809 is surely nothing more than coincidence. Seeing

a deep cosmic link is for mystics and Whiggish historians.

Adam Gopnik sets out to

In his rightful place

Evolutionary Writings by Charles

Darwin, edited by James A. Secord ,

Oxford University Press, $25/£12.99

Reviewed by Amanda Gefter

THIS fantastic anthology paints an enthralling and complex portrait of Darwin’s ideas and his character, with selections ranging from

his adventures on the Beagle to On the Origin of Species and his autobiographical writings. Especially enlightening are the snippets of book reviews, editorials and personal letters contemporary to the texts, which, with James Secord’s excellent introduction, put his work into a rich historical context and illuminate the debates over religion, morality and human nature that still rage.

Scholarly jewels

Evolution: The first four billion years

edited by Michael Ruse & Joseph Travis,

Belknap, $39.95/£25.95

Reviewed by Laura Spinney

THIS curious hybrid of essay and encyclopedia aims to provide both background on Darwin’s theory and a snapshot of modern

evolutionary biology. It should have stuck to the essays, among which there are some real gems, including Michael Benton ’s concise chronology of life.

IN HIS OWN WORDS

“My whole soul is absorbed with worms just at present!”

To William Turner Thiselton-Dyer ,

23 November 1880, when Darwin

was working on his final publication

The Formation of Vegetable Mould

Through the Action of Worms .

Published the following year, just

six months before he died, it shows

that he retained an undiminished,

almost childlike passion for his

research. Shelley Innes

“ Poor Baby died yesterday evening. I hope to God he did not suffer so much as he appeared .”

To Joseph Hooker , 29 June 1858.

Darwin was famously absent from

the Linnean Society meeting of two

days later when, in a hastily written

paper, natural selection was formally

presented to the world. His

correspondence at the time is,

however, dominated by a domestic

crisis. Scarlet fever had hit his family,

taking the life of his youngest child,

baby Charles. Alison Pearn

“If any man wants to gain a good opinion of his fellow men, he ought to do what I am doing: pester them with letters”

To John Jenner Weir, 6 March 1868 .

In 60 years of letter-writing,

Darwin badgered nearly 2000

people into exchanging more

than 15,000 letters with him, many

providing detailed observations of

plants, animals and people from all

over the world. His correspondents

discussed both his ideas and theirs,

helping to shape his published

works. Today the letters are a

window not only into Darwin’s life

and mind, but also into the lives of

these, often otherwise unknown,

collaborators. Alison Pearn

Shelley Innes and Alison Pearn

are editors with the Darwin

Correspondence Project. To

view transcripts of more than

5000 of Darwin’s letters, visit

www.darwinproject.ac.uk

Back to the beginning

The Young Charles Darwin by Keith

Thomson , Yale University Press,

$28/£18.99

Reviewed by Rowan Hooper

IT HAS always irked me that Darwin is known by the iconic image of him as a bearded ancient being, when his world-changing

ideas came to him as a virile young man. Happily, this book redresses the balance.

We see how he was a mediocre student, a “slacker” at university even though he read voraciously. Highly sensitive, introspective and obsessive – he made lists of everything, and it has been suggested that he had Asperger’s syndrome – he eventually pushed an idea to its logical conclusion and changed the world forever .

Theory on the rocks

Darwin’s Lost World by Martin Brasier ,

OUP, £16.99/$34.95

Reviewed by Douglas Palmer

THE seeming lack of fossils in Precambrian rocks was a problem for Darwin’s theory of evolution: where were the ancestors of the plethora of

fossils in the earliest Cambrian strata? This is Brasier’s engaging account of the investigation by palaeontologists into whether the Cambrian explosion was really an outburst of life or only of fossils.

persuade us otherwise. His dual biography argues that science is inextricably bound to modern liberal democracy, and hence that these two men helped to make the modern age. If their lives’ work seems unrelated, it is only because the dispute over Darwin’s ideas is ongoing and visible while Lincoln’s once-disputed convictions – that democracy is a viable long-term form of government – have become ingrained in us to the point of invisibility.

Gopnik’s breezy book tills no new soil, but it blends essay and biography so superbly that you don’t care. Especially good are his reflections on death: thousands died in wars waged by Lincoln, and the struggle to escape death dominates Darwin’s ideas. Yet neither’s philosophical views of death were much consolation for private tragedy.

Gopnik knows well enough that Darwin and Lincoln’s shared birth date is a mere accident of history, but he comes as close as anyone can in convincing you otherwise.

The art of evolution

On the Origin of Species,

150th anniversary edition edited

by William Bynum, Penguin, £30

EVEN artist Damien Hirst joins in

the Darwin celebrations with his

cover image Human Skull In Space

for this special anniversary edition

of Origin. Eleanor Harris

7 February 2009 | NewScientist | 49

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