A recent opinion article by Gregory Petsko in EMBO reports piqued my interest. It was titled The greatest book you never read and discusses the embarrassing reality that most biologists have not read The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin.
Some bloggers on NN have been discussing The Origin of Species in great detail, such as T. Ryan Gregory
Despite 8+ years as a microbiologist, I have never made an effort to acquire a copy of The Origin of Species or been required to read even a passage from it in my classes.
As I near the completion of my graduate career, I wonder can I accept a PhD in good conscience without having ever read this seminal work?
Its really not that long (400+ pages) and I am an avid reader. So the only decision that truly remains is which edition to take up?
Petsko briefly describes the multiple editions of The Origin of Species and recommends the first edition or an illustrated edition by David Quammen.
Amazon.com returns an overwhelming 25,295 results. So fellow NN members, do you have a recommendation for which version to read?
Elizabeth: no need to feel guilty. It might be a big confession for me to make, but I haven’t read the Origin either, at least not all the way through all at once, because I find Mr Darwin’s interminably verbose mid-Victorian sentence structure (which is more Barchester than Middlemarch) somewhat tiresome, that is to say, I get most of the way through what I imagine to be the length of a sentence but then my mind wanders and I find myself wondering on the descent with modification of buses as determined by selection acting by insensible gradations on the sureness whereby they are conducted to … Um … Ah…. Wherever it was they were going.
I’ve never read it either. I did consider downloading it onto my iPhone for 99c; I hate reading on screen for any length of time, but it would be good for my geek cred.
I wouldn’t beat yourself up, because, I would argue, you don’t need to read it. (How many physicists have read Principia?) I’ve, likewise, never got through the whole thing. But there are plenty of scientist writers – eg, Gould, Dawkins, Jones, and more – who’ve accommodated it brilliantly and brought it up to date for the general reader. Good to have a copy for reference, though.
I heard about the discrepanices in versions thru the grapevine. In his later ones Darwin kinda caved into public pressure over his theories about evolution and allowing more possibility for intelligent design to be a reason behind his observations. Whereas in the first ed. he just brazenly puts his ideas out there. I could be wrong. I tried reading thru the origin of spp. as well, but I couldnt get thru it, for similar reasons as Henry’s.
just for laughs.
When I started my undergrad studies in biology I bought the 1995 Gramercy Hardcover Edition. It sat on my shelve for almost 8 years before I actually opened it.
Since I am not a native speaker, the somewhat archaic English greatly diminishes my reading tempo, but it was well worth the effort.
However, the list of books “everybody should have read” takes a lifetime. So take your time!
Word of warning: you will no doubt find a breed of evolutionary biologist or philosopher of science who will declare loftily that unless one has read the Origin (which, they will say, is a remarkably lucid read) one can’t call oneself a biologist. Were I less the model of tact and diplomacy than I am, I’d invite such people to remove the broomhandles from their rectums. In any case, Bateson’s Materials for the Study of Variation (1894) is much more fun.
Greg Petsko recommends a version in his article to which you link, if you want to check that out.
I started to read it a couple of months ago, when I found an ancient Hungarian copy of it at a bookstore (it smells amaizing, like any should do) But I am only finished half of it, mostly becouse I read at least three books at the same time.
Ah, the smell of books. Now that labs and offices smell like laser printed documents, perhaps someone can put the smell of old books in a spray or air-refreshener, not solely to refresh our rooms, but also our minds.
I heart the smell of old books. As long as they’re not been-in-a-damp-basement-musty, that is.
Also the smell of vinyl in record stores, but that was somebody else’s blog post.
But, back on topic: Elizabeth, I haven’t read it either, and agree with Henry about Darwin’s writing style.
There are lots of interesting things to do in life. If reading the Origin seems to you to be one of them, then go for it. If not, I really wouldn’t worry about it.
@Henry and Richard: I recently finished reading Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles which was, at times, quite ornate, verbose, unwieldy, etc in the style of writing. I suspect Origin will be no more of a “page-turner”
I should point out that I am the sort of person who will read almost anything that is laying about. For example, a book entitled The Historic Gardens of Wales was found in our lunch room…I proceeded to read the entire thing over several meals.
So my plan is to obtain a copy of Origin and leave it in our lunch room for myself to read over bowls of oatmeal at a leisurely pace
Thank you all for your comments!
I read the first version. Eek, I actually did find the first half (in particular) of the Origin to be a page turner once you get past the first chapter (plus there’s a summary at the end of each in case your mind wanders). But then I can’t get enough Thomas Hardy and I honestly couldn’t put Tess down, so maybe a pattern.
I honestly couldn’t put Tess downSeriously? I struggled to finish it.
What a load of dreckIt doesn’t seem to have aged very well.What a load of dreck
She gasped, let her head hang melodramatically at such a cruel and cutting comment, then, with drooping wrist to brow, headed to Salisbury plain at sunrise to meet her unhappy fate in a moment of inevitable yet tragic irony…
E.M.- I had a hard time getting through the early chapter on variation under domestication, and I’ve heard the same from one or two other people, but it might be different for you of course!
..I liked Tess too, and Thomas Hardy’s other novels. :S
I loved Tess of the d’Urbevilles, but I can’t remember a chapter in it on variation under domestication. Perhaps that’s the part where she’s milking a lot of cows. Dunno. It was a long time ago.
The Origin is certainly no page-turner (that is, unless you happen to be fascinated by pigeon breeding), but I think it’s interesting to read it to find out straight from the source what Darwin did and didn’t write about evolution, specially considering that people are always making claims about what Darwin said and how that proves that he was brilliant/delusional/simply wrong or whatever. So, it definitively has historical interest if you want to participate in the debate about evolution. Of course, it also has the additional advantage that when you’re done with it you can adopt a smug, better-than-thou attitute towards your fellow scientist who decided to skip it (this is particularly useful when your data is not looking particularly promising)
P.S. Don’t mess with Thomas Hardy
Hmmm, the controversy invoked by Darwin’s theory of evolution seems to be a mild one compared to the brouhaha over Thomas Hardy’s Tess.
@Cath: together we seemed to have opened a can of worms here!
I will allow that I may have unfairly judged Hardy’s work since I had just read beforehand George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series (much more of a page-turner and no sappy characters moping about)
To each his own
Ah, all that pathetic fallacy. Actually I’ve only seen some movie adaptation of Tess, but was
forcedrequired to read The Mayor of Casterbridge in high school. And I actually enjoyed it. Something about the bite-sized chapters that Hardy used made it much more palatable (geddit?).I also will read almost anything, although I recently gave up on both Anna Karenina and Uncle Tom’s Cabin, neither of which I could get stuck into.
I just bought it… no kidding!. ;-)
I went to London
undercoverlast weekend and managed to go to the Darwin exhibition, and I felt that I have to read it (though I think it will be after I’m back from holidays… hahaha!)@Richard: oh god, it took me months to finish Anna Karenina. not that hte writing was rubbish but it just went on and on with no end in sight. I think I felt relief when she “got hit by a blimp”.
Linda – I feel less guilty about dropping it now. It was all the complicated names that were confusing me.
“Hit by a blimp” would be a good name for a blog, I think. ;)