Darwin's Laboratory

MacLeod, Roy & Rehbock, Philip F. (editiors)

ISBN 10: 0824816137 / ISBN 13: 9780824816131

Published by University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1994

About this Item

subtitled "Evolutionary Theory and Natural History in the Pacific" "In this volume of essays, sixteen scholars explore the many dimensions--biological, social, and political-of Darwinism in the Pacific." 540 pages. Still in shrink wrap. ; 6 3/8 x 9 3/4 " Near Fine in Near Fine dust jacket.

Seller Inventory # 11677

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Darwin's Laboratory
• Publisher: University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu
• Publication Date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0824816137
• ISBN 13: 9780824816131
• Binding: Hardcover
• Seller catalogs:
  • Science, Physical Sciences, & Math

About this title

Synopsis

No scientific traveler was more influenced by the Pacific than Charles Darwin, and his legacy in the region remains unparalleled. Yet the extent of the Pacific's impact on the thought of Darwin and those who followed him has not been sufficiently grasped. In this volume of essays, sixteen scholars explore the many dimensions - biological, geological, anthropological, social, and political - of Darwinism in the Pacific.
Fired by Darwinian ideas, nineteenth-century naturalists within and around the Pacific rim worked to further Darwin's programs in their own research: in Seattle, conchologist P. Brooks Randolph; in Honolulu, evolutionist John Thomas Gulick; in Adelaide, botanist Richard Schomburgk; and in Malaysia, biogeographer Alfred Russel Wallace. Lesser-known enthusiasts furnished Darwin with fresh material and replied to his endless inquiries, while young aspiring biologists from Cambridge tested Darwinian ideas directly in the "laboratory" of the Pacific. But the implications of Darwinism for the understanding of human nature and history turned it into a public theory as well as a scientific one. Anthropologists, geographers, missionaries, politicians, and social commentators - from Australia to Japan - all found ways to adapt Darwinism to their own agendas.
Darwin's Laboratory demonstrates the variety and richness of Darwinian ideas in the Pacific and, in so doing, shows how the region functioned as a testing ground for the theory of evolution. Further, it illustrates how Darwinian ideas and their European contexts helped invent and define the particular conception we have of the Pacific. Both the general reader and the specialist will find controversy, illumination, and entertainment in this, the first book to probe the extent of Darwinism and Darwinian thinking in the Pacific.