Reference Reviews

Lawrence Looks at Books

All Things Darwin: An Encyclopedia of Darwin's World. Patrick H. Armstrong. 2 vols. 564p. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008. 978-0-313-33492-4; 0-313-33492-7. 2007-26482. $149.95.

All Things Darwin: An Encyclopedia of Darwin's World On June 18, 1858, Charles Darwin received what he described as a "bolt from the blue," a brief paper by a naturalist acquaintance entitled "On the Tendency of Varieties To Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type." With a shock, Darwin realized that the concept of natural selection, on which he had been working for twenty years but not published, was essentially described in a manuscript that the younger Alfred Russel Wallace had sent him for comment. Two weeks later, Darwin's friends, Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker, had Wallace's paper and a fourteen-year old outline of Darwin's ideas read at a meeting of the Linnean Society of London. Darwin spent the next year struggling to flesh out his outline with arguments and evidence that he had been amassing since his voyage on the "H.M.M. Beagle" twenty-eight years before. In November 1859, On the "Origin of Species" appeared in print, and the scientific community was never the same again.
The difference in the two men's approach to the idea of natural selection is telling. While Wallace described his first intimation as a flash of insight while traveling on the South Seas, Darwin had derived his theory from years of painstaking observation and comparison of natural phenomena, as well as wide reading of scientific literature. This new guide to Darwin's work and career explores the development of his evolutionary ideas. The 185 articles reflect the influence of Darwin's personal experience and methods on his formulation of groundbreaking theories concerning the natural world. Emphasis is placed on both his travels and the writings of predecessors and contemporaries that influenced his work. The latter groups include leading theorists, friends, family and philosophical opponents. Also examined are the frequent subjects of Darwin's investigations, from beetles, crabs and earthworms to coral reefs, marsupials and peppered moths. Key concepts such as convergent evolution, gradualism and mutations are explained. Darwin's writings on botany, geology and zoology are examined to reveal changes in his own ideas and beliefs. Important sites in his travels which influenced the formulation of specific ideas are also explored. Other entries review Darwin's legacy and influence in the scientific community. All in all, Darwin scholar Patrick Armstrong provides an intriguing view of a scientific mind at work, and an excellent tool for understanding the pioneering concepts in evolutionary theory. This guide will serve interested readers from high school to adult.

— John Lawrence