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Preface
- Johns Hopkins University Press
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[ 9 ] v Preface i Have been LeCturing on the life of Charles Darwin for many years. These talks began as part of the introductory biology class I taught at the Ohio State University, and evolved into a public presentation as colleagues asked me to speak at their universities after my book, Evolution and the Myth of Creationism, was published in 1990. This lecture expanded as “Darwin Day” became more popular on university campuses, and I received more invitations. After each talk, several people usually asked me if the text and illustrations of my lecture were published. They were, of course, but not conveniently in one place. The information is scattered throughout dozens of books about Darwin’s life. What I offer here is not original Darwin scholarship, but a synthesis of existing essential information, along with a copious collection of illustrations conveniently gathered in one place. My lecture was originally derived from Darwin’s Autobiography and Voyage of the Beagle, R. B. Freeman’s Charles Darwin: A Companion, Gavin de Beer’s Charles Darwin: A Scientific Biography, and Alan Moorehead’s Darwin and the Beagle. In 2000 I revised the talk, based on the obscure but wonderful little book Down House: The Home of Charles Darwin, edited by Louise Wilson and published by English Heritage. I have paraphrased this narrative, integrated it with PrefaCe [ ix ] [ 10 ] my existing lecture, and augmented it with much additional information gleaned from many sources. For this reason I consider myself more of an editor or compiler than the author of this book. The aim is to show not only that Charles Darwin was one of the most important men who ever lived but also that he was a good man—a decent human being who had a wonderful family life. While polishing my lecture text for publication as this book, I visited the Darwin Exhibit at the Field Museum in Chicago in July 2007. At the museum’s gift shop, in addition to a Darwin coffee mug, t-shirt, and model of the HMS Beagle, I purchased a little book in Oxford University Press’s Very Interesting People series called Charles Darwin. It was authored by the three most important biographers of Darwin : Adrian Desmond and James Moore (Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist) and Janet Browne (Charles Darwin Voyaging and Charles Darwin: The Power of Place). I mined this superb, brief account of Darwin’s life for arcane tidbits that I had overlooked. Anti-evolution fundamentalists have attempted to demonize Darwin and his magnificently useful insight, the theory of evolution. Hopefully, the reader will come to understand that “Darwin” is not a dirty word and that the theory of evolution is the best explanation that science can produce about the biodiversity of the natural world. It may very well be one of the greatest ideas anyone has ever had. i am gratefuL to the people who invited me to give my Darwin lecture and to the audiences who continued to press me for more details over the years. This especially applies to the audience in 2001 at the Northern Territory Museum in Darwin, Australia, whose standing ovation and thunderous applause were things professors rarely experience [ x ] PrefaCe [54.227.136.157] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 02:17 GMT) [ 11 ] but secretly hope for in their classrooms. That stimulation and appreciation have allowed this small book to emerge. I appreciate the input of the anonymous reviewer who was clearly a Darwin scholar. I am grateful for the support of the Johns Hopkins University Press’s Senior Editor Vincent Burke and for the thoughtful copyediting skills of Kathleen Capels. Thanks also to the people and institutions that allowed me to reproduce illustrations under their control. As always, I have had the support of my wife, Rita, who long ago accepted the fact of piles of books lying all over the house and has learned to vacuum around them. PrefaCe [ xi ] This page intentionally left blank ...