Book description
Published amid a firestorm of controversy in 1859, this is a book that
changed the world. Reasoned and well-documented in its arguments, it
offers coherent views of natural selection, adaptation, the struggle for
existence, survival of the fittest, and other concepts that form the
foundation of evolutionary theory. Charles Darwin, a Victorian
scientist and naturalist, has become one of the most famous figures of
science to date. Born in 1809 to an upper-middle-class medical family,
he was destined for a career in either medicine or the Anglican Church.
However, he never completed his medical education and his future changed
entirely in 1831 when he joined HMS
Beagle
as a self-financing, independent naturalist. On returning to England in
1836 he began to write up his theories and observations which culminated
in a series of books, most famously On the Origin of Species by Means
of Natural Selection
in 1859, where he challenged and contradicted contemporary biological
and religious beliefs with two decades worth of scientific investigation
and theory. Darwin's theory of natural selection is now the most widely
accepted scientific model of how species evolve. He died in 1882 and was
buried in Westminster Abbey. Damien Hirst is an internationally renowned
English artist, who has dominated the art scene in England since the
1990s. Known in particular for his series of works on death, Hirst here
provides a contemporary, visual take on Darwin's theory of evolution -
the struggle between life and death in nature. William Bynum is
Professor Emeritus of the History of Medicine at University College,
London, and was for many years Head of the Academic Unit of the Wellcome
Institute for the History of Medicine. He edited the scholarly journal
Medical History
from 1980 to 2001, and his previous publications include Science and
the Practice of Medicine in the Nineteenth Century
; The Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine
(co-edited with Roy Porter); The Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations
(with Roy Porter), The Dictionary of Medical Biography
(with Helen Bynum), and History of Medicine: A Very Short Introduction
. He lives in Suffolk.
