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In Darwin's Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace: A Biographical Study on the Psychology of History (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780195148305)
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Michael Shermer
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Description
xVirtually unknown today, Alfred Russel Wallace was the co-discoverer of natural selection with Charles Darwin and an eminent scientist who stood out among his Victorian peers as a man of formidable mind and equally outsized personality. Now Michael Shermer rescues Wallace from the shadow of Darwin in this landmark biography.
Here we see Wallace as perhaps the greatest naturalist of his age--spending years in remote jungles, collecting astounding quantities of specimens, writing thoughtfully and with bemused detachment at his reception in places where no white man had ever gone. Here, too, is his supple and forceful intelligence at work, grappling with such arcane problems as the bright coloration of caterpillars, or shaping his 1858 paper on natural selection that prompted Darwin to publish (with Wallace) the first paper outlining the theory of evolution. Shermer also shows that Wallace's self-trained intellect, while powerful, also embraced surprisingly naive ideas, such as his deep interest in the study of spiritual manifestations and seances. Shermer shows that the same iconoclastic outlook that led him to overturn scientific orthodoxy as he worked in relative isolation also led him to embrace irrational beliefs, and thus tarnish his reputation.
As author of Why People Believe Weird Things and founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, Shermer is an authority on why people embrace the irrational. Now he turns his keen judgment and incisive analysis to Wallace's life and his contradictory beliefs, restoring a leading figure in the rise of modern science to his rightful place.
Author: Michael Shermer
ISBN-10: 0195148304
ISBN-13: 9780195148305
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Language: English
Published: 08/15/2002
Pages: 448
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.80lbs
Size: 9.48h x 6.50w x 1.40d
Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 07/01/2002 pg. 941
Booklist 09/01/2002 pg. 33
Library Journal 10/01/2002 pg. 124
Choice 02/01/2003 pg. 1004
New York Review of Books 12/18/2003 pg. 32
Here we see Wallace as perhaps the greatest naturalist of his age--spending years in remote jungles, collecting astounding quantities of specimens, writing thoughtfully and with bemused detachment at his reception in places where no white man had ever gone. Here, too, is his supple and forceful intelligence at work, grappling with such arcane problems as the bright coloration of caterpillars, or shaping his 1858 paper on natural selection that prompted Darwin to publish (with Wallace) the first paper outlining the theory of evolution. Shermer also shows that Wallace's self-trained intellect, while powerful, also embraced surprisingly naive ideas, such as his deep interest in the study of spiritual manifestations and seances. Shermer shows that the same iconoclastic outlook that led him to overturn scientific orthodoxy as he worked in relative isolation also led him to embrace irrational beliefs, and thus tarnish his reputation.
As author of Why People Believe Weird Things and founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, Shermer is an authority on why people embrace the irrational. Now he turns his keen judgment and incisive analysis to Wallace's life and his contradictory beliefs, restoring a leading figure in the rise of modern science to his rightful place.
Author: Michael Shermer
ISBN-10: 0195148304
ISBN-13: 9780195148305
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Language: English
Published: 08/15/2002
Pages: 448
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.80lbs
Size: 9.48h x 6.50w x 1.40d
Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 07/01/2002 pg. 941
Booklist 09/01/2002 pg. 33
Library Journal 10/01/2002 pg. 124
Choice 02/01/2003 pg. 1004
New York Review of Books 12/18/2003 pg. 32
By Michael Shermer
xMichael Shermer is founding publisher and editor-in-chief of Skeptic magazine, and is director of the Skeptics Society. He has authored several popular books on science, including Why People Believe Weird Things, How We Believe, Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do they Say It? and Borderlands of Science (OUP). He lives in Los Angeles, California.
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