Evolving Thoughts

That’s not an Origin of Species; *this* is an Origin of Species

Origin.jpgI would strongly suggest that if you find Kirk Cameron’s “edition” of the Origin of Species that you quietly dispose of it in an environmentally conscious manner. However, if you want a good edition, I recommend this one by Jim Endersby, a well known historian of the nineteenth century, from Cambridge University Press. It has an extensive historical introduction, and two useful appendices, on the evolution of the Origin itself, and the biographical information of those mentioned. It has a real discussion of the impacts of Darwin’s theory, not that ersatz “Darwin caused Hitler” rubbish Cameron promotes.

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Comments (13)

  1. I wouldn’t dispose of the whole book – I’d just remove the first 50 pages and keep it to give out to evangelicals when they come to visit.

    1. You presume they haven’t done the usual fundagelical trick of selective quotation. What’s the bet they drop the text from the “evolution of the eye” where Darwin explains why the eye is not a problem?

      I’ve seen academics publish bad editions of the Origin; this is likely to be worse.

    1. As usual, you get what you pay for. However, I’ll bet there’s a paperback on the way.

      1. You only need to pay 3.59 GBP for The Origin of Species (Wordsworth Classics of World Literature) at amazon?

        paperback I know, but isn’t it the thoughts that count rather than the binding?

    2. It’s a cunning plan by John – you’ll look at it, and wonder if there’s anything cheaper out there about species.

  4. Unfortunately, at $115 this is priced too high to be usable and unless the introduction is earth-shaking, I think I’ll stick with this edition which combines a first edition facsimile with annotations and a biographical register. Nothing against Jim, but you gotta wonder what Cambridge were thinking with that price!

  5. Thanks for the endorsement, but I couldn’t agree more about the price. If you can persuade a library or two to buy it, Cambridge will bring out a paperback, but I couldn’t persuade them to price the thing more realistically from the outset.

    1. As of today your ‘Origins’ is available in three universty libraries in Germany: Frankfurt, Hamburg and Kiel. Not brilliant but in this day and age of budget cuts not bad for a book at that price.

  8. All these are true enough (and I would suggest that the Darwin Online site is the most reliable – some of the online versions mix and match the first, second and third editions), but if you want a proper scholarly edition, this is it.

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