1899 antique CHARLES DARWIN~EVOLUTION,DECENT 0 MAN,SEX SELECTION,NATURAL HISTORY

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.1899 antique CHARLES DARWIN~EVOLUTION,DECENT 0 MAN,SEX SELECTION,NATURAL HISTORYor search ANTIQUE.COTTAGE listings.This listing is for the book shown. Measures approx 5.25" x 8".From 1899, the second edition, revised and augmented with illustrations, of The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, by Charles Darwin, published by D. Appleton and Co., New York. 8x5 inches, bound in reddish cloth, 8x5 inches, 688 pages. With a bookplate, Library of William E. & Lucie H. Hoblitzelle, and a second bookplate, Ex Libris Kathy Geist. Illustrated with many engravings.Binding is tight. Red cloth over board cover is darkened and worn with age. Light storage scent.On-line research indicates the following:The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex is a book on evolutionary theory by English naturalist Charles Darwin, first published in 1871. It was Darwin's second book on evolutionary theory, following his 1859 work, On the Origin of Species. In The Descent of Man, Darwin applies evolutionary theory to human evolution, and details his theory of sexual selection. The book discusses many related issues, including evolutionary psychology, evolutionary ethics, differences between human races, differences between sexes, the dominant role of women in choosing mating partners, and the relevance of the evolutionary theory to society. Charles Darwin's Origin of Species had been met with a firestorm of controversy in reaction to Darwin's theory, largely because it clearly implied that human beings were evolved from animals, contradicting the biblical story in the Book of Genesis. Darwin chose not to make the link explicit in Origin, and although he first thought of the idea in 1837, he put off publishing it for a generation.[1] A single line hinted at such a conclusion: "light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history". But the conclusion was obvious to his contemporaries, and became the subtext if not the center of many debates over his theory (such as those between T.H. Huxley and Richard Owen over the brains of apes). When writing The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication in 1866, Darwin intended to include a chapter including man in his theory, but the book became too big and he decided to write a separate "short essay" on ape ancestry, sexual selection and human expression, which became The Descent of Man.Darwin's writing on the subject in The Descent of Man came twelve years after his work on Origin, and was by no means the first work on human evolution. As such, the book is a response to various debates of Darwin's time far more wide-ranging than the questions he raised in Origin. It is often erroneously assumed that the book was controversial because it was the first to outline the idea of human evolution and common descent. Coming out so late into that particular debate, while it was clearly Darwin's intent to weigh in on this question, his goal was to approach it through a specific theoretical lens (sexual selection), which other commentators at the period had not discussed, and consider the evolution of morality and religion. The theory of sexual selection was also needed to counter the argument that beauty with no obvious utility, such as exotic birds' plumage, proved divine design, which had been put strongly by the Duke of Argyll in his book The Reign of Law (1868).Human faculties The major sticking point for many in the question of human evolution was whether human mental faculties could have possibly been evolved. The gap between humans and even the smartest ape seemed too large, even for those who were sympathetic to Darwin's basic theory. Alfred Russel Wallace, the "co-discoverer" of evolution by natural selection, believed that the human mind was too complex to have evolved gradually, and began over time to subscribe to a theory of evolution that took more from Spiritualism than it did the natural world. Darwin was deeply distressed by Wallace's change of heart, and much of the Descent of Man is in response ... read more

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