ENG 346: 19th-Century Literature: Victorian

Drawing on his own ambitious research in Darwin's manuscripts and at the Beagle's remotest ports of call, Sponsel takes us from the ocean to the Origin and beyond. He provides a vivid new picture of Darwin's career as a voyaging naturalist and metropolitan author, and in doing so makes a bold argument about how we should understand the history of scientific theories.

J. David Pleins traces Darwin's religious journey in five steps. He begins with Darwin's global voyage, where his encounter with religious and cultural diversity transformed his understanding of religion. Next, we follow Darwin as his doubts about traditional biblical religion take root. Pleins then examines Darwin's secret notebooks as he searches for a materialist theory of religion.

This concise biography reveals Charles Darwin as husband, father, and friend. Tim M. Berra, whose "Darwin: The Man" lectures are in high demand worldwide, tells the fascinating story of the person and the idea that changed everything. Berra discusses Darwin's revolutionary scientific work, its impact on modern-day biological science, and the influence of Darwin's evolutionary theory on Western thought. But Berra digs deeper to reveal Darwin the man by combining anecdotes with carefully selected illustrations.

Darwin's detractors tend to depict him as an anti-religious man determined to undermine biblical faith. Not so, says William Phipps, in this exploration of Darwin's religious struggles, based on Darwin's journals.

In this gem of historical scholarship, Mayr has achieved a remarkable distillation of Charles Darwin's scientific thought and his enormous legacy to twentieth-century biology. Here we have an accessible account of the revolutionary ideas that Darwin thrust upon the world.

This study shows that in science language functions in very much the same way as in literature: it is rhetorical in that it persuades readers to the authors point of view, and it is poetical in that with its metaphors and other figures of speech it shapes the experience of author and reader. The hermeneutical ontology proposed in this book steers away from the rocks of realism and anti-realism.