Metaphysics, Materialism, and the Evolution of Mind: The Early Writings of Charles Darwin - Softcover

Darwin, Charles

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226136590 ISBN 13: 9780226136592

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2011

Synopsis

First published in 1974 as a companion volume to Darwin on Man by Howard E. Gruber, Paul Barrett’s transcriptions of Darwin’s M and N notebooks served to shed new light on the evolutionist’s methods and motivation.

According to Stephen Jay Gould in the New York Times Book Review, “Darwin kept [these notebooks] primarily in 1838, when he was 29 years old. In them, he recorded his early conviction of evolutionary continuity between humans and all other animals. . . . These notebooks display all the features of humanistic intellect that his detractors denied. We find erudition in his comments on Plato, Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Whewell, Burke, Montaigne, Lessing and Spencer. . . . We appreciate an artistic bent in his delight with nature and her prophet Wordsworth. . . . We grasp the breadth of his bold attempt to clothe all human thought and behaviour in a new evolutionary garb. . . . Charles Darwin was reconstructing the world and he knew exactly what he was doing.”

About this title

About the Author:

Paul H. Barrett was Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Michigan State University, and editor of The Collected Papers of Charles Darwin, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) was an English naturalist whose writings on evolution are considered some of the most influential work in the history of modern science.

Review:

"The serious Darwinist will want to possess the two notebooks with Barrett's notes and also a section including 'Old and useless Notes about the moral sense & some metaphysical points' ('useless' to Darwin in the 1850s, but not to us)." -Isis"

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0226136590
• ISBN 13: 9780226136592
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 252
• Editor: Barrett Paul H.