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Robert J. Richards is the Morris Fishbein Distinguished Service Professor in History of Science at the University of Chicago, where he is professor in the department of History, Philosophy, and Psychology and in the Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science and directs the Fishbein Center for the History of Science and Medicine. His books include, most recently, Was Hitler a Darwinian? Disputed Questions in the History of Evolutionary Theory, also published by the University of Chicago Press. Michael Ruse is director of the Program in the History and Philosophy of Science at Florida State University. His books include The Gaia Hypothesis: Science on a Pagan Planet, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
Charles Darwin's ideas were controversial from the outset, so much so that Darwin's friend and supporter Thomas Henry Huxley said he sharpened up his claws and beak in order to defend them. Here in this volume the debate continues as two world-renowned historians explore what Darwin's proposals meant in his own day and to us now. The issue at stake is how best to understand Darwin as a thinker--was he influenced primarily by his personal social context, the industrializing entrepreneurial world of Britain in the Victorian era, or was he more in touch with the great intellectual currents flourishing in continental Europe? How did these questions influence his religious sensibilities and those of his readers? Back and forth, the ripostes sparkle with intellectual energy. Through Ruse's and Richards' eyes, we can see Darwin afresh, as the enthralling historical figure who not only transformed biology but also our deepest sense of who we are. --Janet Browne, author of Charles Darwin: The Power of Place
