Books 2013: On the Origin of Species

Another person I've been following on Twitter is Charles Darwin (@cdarwin). Yes, I know. It sounds silly, but somewhere out there someone is posting Darwin quotations on Twitter on a regular basis. I am quite fascinated. (I also follow Ernest Shackleton!) For a while I thought about reading a Darwin biography, but concluded that I needed to read the real thing first. So I downloaded the 1859 classic On the Origin of Species, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life to my Kindle. The book is written for a wide audience, so you don't need to be a biologist to understand him. But I must say I struggled sometimes, especially in separating genera from class from group from type from variety etc. With its more than 500 pages, I wouldn't describe it as an easy read, but still enjoyable.

His enormous impact on science and biology is undisputable, and I'm quite impressed by the way he forwards his arguments and makes them as solid as possible. He writes quite confidently about his opponenets: "The day will come when this will be given as a curious illustration of the blindness of preconceived opinion." (Location 6019) And he was, of course, right.

After a while I got used to his style of writing and became almost hooked on reading. He has a much more lyrical way of writing than most modern scientists, especially the second half of the book. The very ending is almost poetical:

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have bee, and are being, evolved. (Location 6109)

 It took a while to read, but I'm glad I did it. For December, I'll go for something lighter, however:-)