The letters in this volume cover two of the most momentous years in Darwin's life. Begun in 1856 and the fruit of twenty years of study and reflection, Darwin's manuscript on the species question was a little more than half finished, and at least two years from publication, when in June 1858 Darwin unexpectedly received a letter and a manuscript from Alfred Russel Wallace indicating that he too had independently formulated a theory of natural selection. The letters detail the various stages in the preparation of what was to become one of the world's most famous works: Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, published by John Murray in November 1859. They reveal the first impressions of Darwin's book given by his most trusted confidants, and they relate Darwin's anxious response to the early reception of his theory by friends, family members, and prominent naturalists. This volume provides the capstone to Darwin's remarkable efforts for more than two decades to solve one of nature's greatest riddles - the origin of species.

In this provocative work, David N. Stamos tackles the problem of determining exactly what a biological species is: in short, whether species are real and the nature of their reality. Although many have written on this topic, The Species Problem is the only comprehensive single-authored book on this central concern of biology. Stamos critically considers the evolution of the three major contemporary views of species: species nominalism, species as classes, and species as individuals. Finally, he develops his own solution to the species problem, a solution aimed at providing a universal species concept worthy of the Modern Synthesis. This book will be of interest to philosophers of biology and of science in general, to historians of biology, and to biologists concerned with one of the most significant (and practical) conceptual issues in their field.

Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817–1911) was an internationally renowned botanist, a close friend and early supporter of Charles Darwin, and one of the first—and most successful—British men of science to become a full-time professional. He was also, Jim Endersby argues, the perfect embodiment of Victorian science. A vivid picture of the complex interrelationships of scientific work and scientific ideas, Imperial Nature gracefully uses one individual’s career to illustrate the changing world of science in the Victorian era. By analyzing Hooker’s career, Endersby offers vivid insights into the everyday activities of nineteenth-century naturalists, considering matters as diverse as botanical illustration and microscopy, classification, and specimen transportation and storage, to reveal what they actually did, how they earned a living, and what drove their scientific theories. What emerges is a rare glimpse of Victorian scientific practices in action. By focusing on science’s material practices and one of its foremost practitioners, Endersby ably links concerns about empire, professionalism, and philosophical practices to the forging of a nineteenth-century scientific identity.

This is the second volume in Brett Kahr's 'Interviews with Icons' series, following on from Tea with Winnicott. Professor Kahr, himself a highly regarded psychoanalyst, turns his attention to the work of the father of psychoanalysis. The book is lavishly illustrated by Alison Bechdel, winner of the MacArthur Foundation 'Genius' Award.Sigmund Freud pays another visit to Vienna's renowned Cafe Landtmann, where he had often enjoyed reading newspapers and sipping coffee. Freud explains how he came to invent psychoanalysis, speaks bluntly about his feelings of betrayal by Carl Gustav Jung, recounts his flight from the Nazis, and so much more, all the while explaining his theories of symptom formation and psychosexuality.Framed as a 'posthumous interview', the book serves as the perfect introduction to the work of Freud while examining the context in which he lived and worked. Kahr examines his legacy and considers what Freud has to teach us. In a world where manifestations of sexuality and issues of the mind are ever more widely discussed, the work of Sigmund Freud is more relevant than ever.

Today we hear renewed calls for a dialogue between science and religion: why has the old question of the relations between science and religion now returned to the public domain and what is at stake in this debate? To answer these questions, historian and sociologist of science Yves Gingras retraces the long history of the troubled relationship between science and religion, from the condemnation of Galileo for heresy in 1633 until his rehabilitation by John Paul II in 1992. He reconstructs the process of the gradual separation of science from theology and religion, showing how God and natural theology became marginalized in the scientific field in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In contrast to the dominant trend among historians of science, Gingras argues that science and religion are social institutions that give rise to incompatible ways of knowing, rooted in different methodologies and forms of knowledge, and that there never was, and cannot be, a genuine dialogue between them. Wide-ranging and authoritative, this new book on one of the fundamental questions of Western thought will be of great interest to students and scholars of the history of science and of religion as well as to general readers who are intrigued by the new and much-publicized conversations about the alleged links between science and religion.

The scientific method is just over a hundred years old. From debates about the evolution of the human mind to the rise of instrumental reasoning, Henry M. Cowles shows how the idea of a single "scientific method" emerged from a turn inward by psychologists that produced powerful epistemological and historical effects that are still with us today.

Tell me, sir, is it on your grandmother's or your grandfather's side that you are descended from an ape? In June of 1860, some of Britain's most influential scientific and religious authorities gathered in Oxford to hear a heated debate on the merits of Charles Darwin's recently published Origin of Species. The Bishop of Oxford, "Soapy" Samuel Wilberforce, clashed swords with Darwin's most outspoken supporter, Thomas Henry Huxley. The latter's triumph, amid quips about apes and ancestry, has become a mythologized event, symbolizing the supposed war between science and Christianity. But did the debate really happen in this way? Of Apes and Ancestors argues that this one-dimensional interpretation was constructed and disseminated by Darwin's supporters, becoming an imagined victory in the struggle to overcome Anglican dogmatism. By reconstructing the Oxford debate and carefully considering the individual perspectives of the main participants, Ian Hesketh argues that personal jealousies and professional agendas played a formative role in shaping the response to Darwin's hypothesis, with religious anxieties overlapping with a whole host of other cultural and scientific considerations. An absorbing study, Of Apes and Ancestors sheds light on the origins of a debate that continues, unresolved, to this day.

Silver Winner, 2017 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards in the Philosophy category In 1848, almost a year and a half before Edgar Allan Poe died at the age of forty, his book Eureka was published. In it, he weaved together his scientific speculations about the universe with his own literary theory, theology, and philosophy of science. Although Poe himself considered it to be his magnum opus, Eureka has mostly been overlooked or underappreciated, sometimes even to the point of being thought an elaborate hoax. Remarkably, however, in Eureka Poe anticipated at least nine major theories and developments in twentieth-century science, including the Big Bang theory, multiverse theory, and the solution to Olbers' paradox. In this book—the first devoted specifically to Poe's science side—David N. Stamos, a philosopher of science, combines scientific background with analysis of Poe's life and work to highlight the creative and scientific achievements of this text. He examines Poe's literary theory, theology, and intellectual development, and then compares Poe's understanding of science with that of scientists and philosophers from his own time to the present. Next, Stamos pieces together and clarifies Poe's theory of scientific imagination, which he then attempts to update and defend by providing numerous case studies of eureka moments in modern science and by seeking insights from comparative biography and psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and evolution.

The triumphs of recent biology - understanding hereditary disease, the modern theory of evolution - are all thanks to the fruit fly, the guinea pig, the zebra fish and a handful of other organisms, which have helped us unravel one of life's greatest mysteries - inheritance. Jim Endersby traces his story from Darwin hand-pollinating passion flowers in his back garden in an effort to find out whether his decision to marry his cousin had harmed their children, to today's high-tech laboratories, full of shoals of shimmering zebra fish, whose bodies are transparent until they are mature, allowing scientists to watch every step as a single fertilised cell multiples to become millions of specialised cells that make up a new fish. Each story has - piece by piece - revealed how DNA determines the characteristics of the adult organism. Not every organism was as cooperative as the fruit fly or zebra fish, some provided scientists with misleading answers or encouraged them to ask the wrong questions.