A Book that Shook the World: Essays on Charles Darwin's Origin of Species

A BOOK THAT SHOOK THE WORLD

A BOOK THAT r SHOOK THE WORLD Anniversary Essays on Charles Darwi n' s Drigitl of Species Julian S. Huxley Theodosius Dobzhansky Reinhold Niebuhr Oliver L. Reiser Swami Nikhilananda

UNIV~~RSI'rY ()f"

PI'rrrSBURGH PRESS

Library of Congress Card No. 58-13698

© 1958 by the University of Pittsburgh Press

Lithoprinted in IT.S.A.

E D \Y A R 0 S

B R () TilE H S,

Ann Arbor, ~Ii('higan

I

~

C.

~ . Jt.~

tv,d

A:u..cf J ~-II·.r~

I

PREFACE

CENTURY AGO,. 1858, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace jointly announced to the Linnean Society of London their independent discovery of natural selection as the method of evolution. And the following year, in 1859, Charles Darwin published his famous classic, Origin of Species. Countries over the world today are celebrating the centenary of these events and honoring Darwin and his book as the beginning of new biological thought. The University of Pittsburgh Press publishes the five essays in this book as its share in this important centenary celebration. Each essay has been written by a specialist in an individual field of interest and study affected by Darwin's book. Each is a man of distinction in today's world of research and thought. Each writes to show the effect of the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species on his own field.

A

***** Julian Sorell Huxley, English biologist and writer, is the son of Leonard Huxley, editor of Cornhill Magazine, and the grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, nineteenth-century biologist. He was educated at Eton and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was awarded at graduation the Newdigate poetry prize in 1908. He has taught and lectured at Oxford, at Kings College, London, at Rice Institute, Texas, in Australia, and before many learned societies. He has contributed substantially to the making of scientific films for British and American use. He has received many well-deserved honors and awards for his scholarship, his researches, and his writing. He has taken an active and leading part in important international educational and cultural organizations. He has published many books, essays, and articles, scholarly and popular. Theodosius Dobzhansky, a graduate of the University of Kiev, holds honorary degrees in science from the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and the College of Wooster, Ohio. He has taught and lectured in the field of genetics at the University of Kiev, the lTniversity of Leningrad, the University of Sao Paulo, and the California Institute of Technology, and he has been professor of v

:,~ ",Y"

. ~r

?~...-

, /,

;/~f':.

.~,

!,..~;,:.

>#,

!:',"":'. "r~,/p;

>~~

:1:.,

/ ... / '

\~~ ~ ~//

:~,'J".~r:!

~".,.'i";:~':f~

: ~~/''!/';'''~'

,#.:!

--