Darwin, Charles - John R. Durant (essay date 1985)
John R. Durant (essay date 1985)
SOURCE: "The Ascent of Nature in Darwin's Descent of Man," in The Darwinian Heritage, edited by David Kohn, Princeton University Press, 1985, pp. 283-306.
[In the following essay, Durant studies the development of Darwin's arguments for the transmutation of human beings through sexual and natural selection in The Descent of Man.]
What a chance it has been . . . that has made a man.
(Darwin, E Notebook, 68-69)
It is a fact familiar to all historians of science that Darwin was extremely slow to put his most important ideas into print. Having become a convinced transmutationist in 1837, he made such rapid progress over the next few years that he soon foresaw the prospect of writing a work that would revolutionize natural history. Yet it was not until 1844 that he produced an essay that was suitable for...
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