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Darwiniana
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from form—was the attempt to prove that heat, light, electricity, magnetism, and even mechanical power, are variations or transmutations of one force, atheistical in its tendency ? The supposed establishment of this view is reckoned as one of the greatest scientific triumphs of this century. Perhaps, however, the objection is brought, not so much against the speculation itself, as against the attempt to show how derivation might have been brought about. Then the same objection applies to a recent ingenious hypothesis made to account for the genesis of the chemical elements out of the ethereal medium, and to explain their several atomic weights and some other characteristics by their successive complexity—hydrogen consisting of so many atoms of ethereal substance united in a particular order, and so on. The sp
- GenresScience
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1877
7 people are currently reading
40 people want to read
About the author
Asa Gray
740 books7 followersAsa Gray, botanist and the chief advocate of theories of Charles Robert Darwin, greatly enlarged and improved the description of North American flora.
People consider the most important Asa Gray of the 19th century. They consider his Darwiniana as an important explanation of not necessarily mutually exclusive religion and science. Gray adamantly insisted that a genetic connection must exist between all members of a species. He also strongly opposed the ideas of hybridization within one generation and the special sense that allowed not a Creator to guide evolution.
As a professor at Harvard University for several decades, Gray regularly visited, and corresponded with, many of the leading natural scientists of the era, including those who held regard. Gray made several trips to Europe to collaborate with leading scientists of the era, as well as the southern and western United States. He also built an extensive network of specimen collectors.
A prolific writer, he instrumentally unified the taxonomic knowledge of the plants. People know the most popular was his Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States, from New England to Wisconsin and South to Ohio and Pennsylvania Inclusive of many works of Gray simply today as Gray's Manual . Gray solely authored the first five editions of the book and co-author of the sixth, which Isaac Sprague illustrated. People published further editions as a standard in the field. He also worked extensively on a phenomenon, now called the "Asa Gray disjunction", namely, the surprising morphological similarities with many eastern Asian plants. After Gray, people named several structures, geographic features, and plants.
People consider the most important Asa Gray of the 19th century. They consider his Darwiniana as an important explanation of not necessarily mutually exclusive religion and science. Gray adamantly insisted that a genetic connection must exist between all members of a species. He also strongly opposed the ideas of hybridization within one generation and the special sense that allowed not a Creator to guide evolution.
As a professor at Harvard University for several decades, Gray regularly visited, and corresponded with, many of the leading natural scientists of the era, including those who held regard. Gray made several trips to Europe to collaborate with leading scientists of the era, as well as the southern and western United States. He also built an extensive network of specimen collectors.
A prolific writer, he instrumentally unified the taxonomic knowledge of the plants. People know the most popular was his Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States, from New England to Wisconsin and South to Ohio and Pennsylvania Inclusive of many works of Gray simply today as Gray's Manual . Gray solely authored the first five editions of the book and co-author of the sixth, which Isaac Sprague illustrated. People published further editions as a standard in the field. He also worked extensively on a phenomenon, now called the "Asa Gray disjunction", namely, the surprising morphological similarities with many eastern Asian plants. After Gray, people named several structures, geographic features, and plants.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 24, 2017
It's a long read and at times hard to follow, but good none the less. I found it very interesting how he and other Christians might have responded to Darwin's theory.
April 11, 2014
A surprisingly easy read, given that it was written almost 150 years ago by one of America's pre-eminent scientists. "Darwiniana" is a collection of reviews and articles written by botanist Asa Gray, the foremost defender of Darwinism in the years following the publication of "Origin of Species" and a committed Christian.
For three decades following "Origin," Gray fought against two extremes, each arguing Darwinism overturned millennia of belief in God. Rather, he both wholeheartedly accepted Darwin's theory and doggedly fought to show that it was compatible with theism. "Darwiniana" is a chronicle of that fight, and it contains especially his two significant reviews of "Origin" in the months immediately after its publication – first in the Journal of American Science, where he struck at conservative scientists like Louis Agassiz for their refusal to abandon their belief in the fixity of species, then in the Atlantic, where he took the defense of Darwin to a popular audience.
Gray wrote with clarity, wit and an overwhelming knowledge of not only his field of botany, but of geology, biology and philosophy, from which he drew to defend both God and Darwin. Many today on both sides of the so-called conflict between science and religion could take a lesson from his principled, civil discourse in defense of the middle ground.
For three decades following "Origin," Gray fought against two extremes, each arguing Darwinism overturned millennia of belief in God. Rather, he both wholeheartedly accepted Darwin's theory and doggedly fought to show that it was compatible with theism. "Darwiniana" is a chronicle of that fight, and it contains especially his two significant reviews of "Origin" in the months immediately after its publication – first in the Journal of American Science, where he struck at conservative scientists like Louis Agassiz for their refusal to abandon their belief in the fixity of species, then in the Atlantic, where he took the defense of Darwin to a popular audience.
Gray wrote with clarity, wit and an overwhelming knowledge of not only his field of botany, but of geology, biology and philosophy, from which he drew to defend both God and Darwin. Many today on both sides of the so-called conflict between science and religion could take a lesson from his principled, civil discourse in defense of the middle ground.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews