Hi,
this time I will make a review of another book I just finished:
Book: The Illustrated Origin Of Species
Author: Charles Darwin (Richard E. Leakey)
Genre: Science
Pages: 220
Rating: 9/10
I started to read this book last week so I have completed it pretty quickly which is a bit suprising on my manners.
I decided to read it because my mum said that I should read it before I continue on Selfish Gene by Dawkins, so I know the basics of evolution. You probably heard about the original book: On the Origin of Species purely written by famous founder of evolution: Darwin.
This is sixth edition or so with foreword by Richard E. Leakey who is apparently paleoanthropologist and politician. Not only foreword but also several paragraphs in the book and also the illustrations are added by him. This version is shorter than the original.
The book is very good but still there are some things which I would change. There were some passages where the book was written too simply and sometimes you had to go once or twice over it. Also one or two chapters seem to be kind of weird since they start with paragraph saying that Darwin is wrong in this chapter because now we know that it is different. Those were sometimes a bit boring but I can understand that still at least it meets the “historical” value that Darwin himself wrote it.
What I found really interesting is that there were probably only few sentences where he mentioned God and Christianity, while you may remember that this book was and is often used as argument against creationism.
It simply seems that he is trying to avoid it. In one part where he talk about how cuckoo lays her eggs in nests of different birds and then the young throws brutally all the other eggs and youngs out of the nest because she needs more food, Darwin says that he does not think that God would create something so brutal and that it had to be because of uncompromising natural selection. He says the same thing about one kind of insect that lies his eggs into caterpillar which is then eaten from inside.
I really like the chapter about ants. Darwin explains their verious behaviors and I found very interesting those slaver ants. Also cool is the part where he writes that seeds can for example spread through mud that is sticked to birds leg. One of his friends even sent him a leg of a bird with dirt sticked to it to prove it!
If you want to get such an introduction as I did or you just admire Darwin, go on read the book, you will like it a lot!
Dragallur
Science and rationality 