- Hardcover: 512 pages
- Publisher: Allen Lane; First Edition edition (29 Jan 2009)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1846140358
- ISBN-13: 978-1846140358
- Product Dimensions: 23.2 x 15.6 x 4.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
223,658 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #39 in Books > Biography > Social & Health Issues > Slavery
- #86 in Books > Science & Nature > Biological Sciences > Education > Higher Education > Human > Evolution > Human
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
In this remarkable book Adrian Desmond and James Moore, world authorities on Darwin, give a completely new explanation of how Darwin came to his famous view of evolution, which traced all life to an ancient common ancestor. Darwin was committed to the abolition of slavery, in part because of his family's deeply held beliefs. It was his 'Sacred Cause' and at its core lay a belief in human racial unity. Desmond and Moore show how he extended to all life the idea of human brotherhood held by those who fought to abolish slavery, so developing our modern view of evolution.
Through massive detective work among unpublished family correspondence, manuscripts and rare works, the authors back up their compelling claim. Leading apologists for slavery in Darwin's day argued that blacks and whites had originated as separate species, with whites superior. Creationists too believed that 'man' was superior to other species. Darwin abhorred such 'arrogance'; he declared it 'more humble & ... true' to see humans 'created from animals'. Darwin gave all the races - blacks and whites, animals and plants - a common origin and freed them from creationist shackles. Evolution meant emancipation.
Darwin's Sacred Cause restores Darwin's humanitarianism, tarnished by atheistic efforts to hijack his reputation and creationist attempts to smear him. Desmond and Moore argue that only by understanding Darwin's Christian abolitionist inheritance can we shed new light on the perplexing mix of personal drive, public hesitancy and scientific radicalism that led him finally in 1871 to publish The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. The result is an epoch-making study of this eminent Victorian.
About the Author
Adrian Desmond and James Moore's No 1 best-seller Darwin (1991) won the James Tait Black Prize, the Comisso Prize for biography in Italy, the Watson Davis Prize of the US History of Science Society and the Dingle Prize of the British Society for the History of Science. It was shortlisted for the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Award and the Rhône-Poulenc Prize and has been widely translated.
Adrian Desmond has written seven other books on evolution and Victorian science, including an acclaimed biography, Huxley. An Honorary Research Fellow in the Biology Department at University College London, he is editing (with Angela Darwin) The T. H. Huxley Family Correspondence.
James Moore's books include The Post-Darwinian Controversies and The Darwin Legend. He is Professor of the History of Science at the Open University and currently researching the life of Alfred Russel Wallace.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I was surprised by previous reviewers that judged this book a worthwhile read but difficult to get into. I found the whole drama of the war against the slave trade and Darwin's role in it to be a page turner right from the start. It is peppered with moments of high drama such as the flaming row about slavery between Darwin and Captain FitzRoy over dinner on The Beagle. Darwin was banished from the captain's table for about a week for daring to disagree with FitzRoy who believed the plantation slaves they had met that day were genuine when they said, in front of their master, that they did not want their freedom. I had not realised before that "Origin of Species" was not only triggered by Alfred Russel Wallace's communication of 1858. There was also an urgent need to discredit the false science of Professor Louis Agassiz at Harvard. His creation science maintained that Negroes were separately created as an inferior and separate species. He was therefore the darling of USA slavers and planters and at the time of publication of "Origin of Species" Agassiz was celebrated as the upholder of modern science whereas the anti-slavery movement and the science associated with it were generally considered to be old fashioned. Desmond and Moore describe how and why Darwin's little book succeeded, Agassiz was utterly discredited and the rest is history.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Desmond and Moore's earlier biography, "Darwin", is one of my favourite books, so I was really looking forward to reading "Darwin's Sacred Cause". But I have to say that I am not convinced by the central thrust of this book.
Charles Darwin was very strongly opposed to slavery, and he argued, quite rightly, that all human beings are of one species with a common ancestry. He was very critical of the mistaken theory that the different "races" of humans came into existence separately as separate species.
What Desmond and Moore claim is that Darwin's theory of common HUMAN origins inspired the development of his view that ALL LIFE is related by common descent through evolution. The "sacred cause" of opposition to slavery inspired Darwin's science.
But in his autobiography, which was initially written for private, family consumption, Darwin nowhere says anything about his anti-slavery views influencing his evolutionary theories. In fact Darwin explicity says that it was the distribution of fossil and living species which he encountered on the Beagle voyage that first got him seriously thinking about evolution. (Though I suppose that Desmond and Moore would say there was an underlying, unstated influence.)
There is also the fact that even if Darwin's anti-slavery views influenced his theory of the common origins of all life, it certainly was not a factor in inspiring him to come up with his theory of natural selection as the mechanism for evolution. It was natural selection that was Darwin's most important idea, and both he and, later, Wallace were inspired to come up with the theory by reading Malthus on population. (It is ironic that Malthus could be so reactionary and wrong about human population and society, and yet inspire a correct theory of natural selection.)
I find it quite plausible that Darwin's anti-slavery views were ONE influence on his evolutionary theory of life's common ancestry. But Desmond and Moore are overstating their case when they argue that it was THE influence on his theory.
In their earlier biography Desmond and Moore did a wonderful job of putting Darwin in the context of Victorian society. In this book they have homed in on one aspect of Darwin's social and political world, made a lens out of it, and then looked at everything through that lens, thus giving a distorted picture of a more complex reality.
This book is certainly worth reading - but with a critical eye. And for an alternative view of how Darwin's ideas developed, I recommend Niles Eldredge's book, "Darwin: Discovering the Tree of Life".
Phil Webster.
Charles Darwin was very strongly opposed to slavery, and he argued, quite rightly, that all human beings are of one species with a common ancestry. He was very critical of the mistaken theory that the different "races" of humans came into existence separately as separate species.
What Desmond and Moore claim is that Darwin's theory of common HUMAN origins inspired the development of his view that ALL LIFE is related by common descent through evolution. The "sacred cause" of opposition to slavery inspired Darwin's science.
But in his autobiography, which was initially written for private, family consumption, Darwin nowhere says anything about his anti-slavery views influencing his evolutionary theories. In fact Darwin explicity says that it was the distribution of fossil and living species which he encountered on the Beagle voyage that first got him seriously thinking about evolution. (Though I suppose that Desmond and Moore would say there was an underlying, unstated influence.)
There is also the fact that even if Darwin's anti-slavery views influenced his theory of the common origins of all life, it certainly was not a factor in inspiring him to come up with his theory of natural selection as the mechanism for evolution. It was natural selection that was Darwin's most important idea, and both he and, later, Wallace were inspired to come up with the theory by reading Malthus on population. (It is ironic that Malthus could be so reactionary and wrong about human population and society, and yet inspire a correct theory of natural selection.)
I find it quite plausible that Darwin's anti-slavery views were ONE influence on his evolutionary theory of life's common ancestry. But Desmond and Moore are overstating their case when they argue that it was THE influence on his theory.
In their earlier biography Desmond and Moore did a wonderful job of putting Darwin in the context of Victorian society. In this book they have homed in on one aspect of Darwin's social and political world, made a lens out of it, and then looked at everything through that lens, thus giving a distorted picture of a more complex reality.
This book is certainly worth reading - but with a critical eye. And for an alternative view of how Darwin's ideas developed, I recommend Niles Eldredge's book, "Darwin: Discovering the Tree of Life".
Phil Webster.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I agree with the previous reviewer that this book was hard to get into. It was about page 150 before it really got going. However, the idea of the book is a very good one: to provide some contemporary context for the development of Darwin's theory regarding the origins of man. In the end, I found this quite convincing. We often forget that his books were written against a background of politics and the abolition of slavery certainly dominated Darwin's times. I recommend reading the book for that reason but don't feel guilty if you skim the first half.
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Darwin's Sacred Cause
Darwin was one of the characters in "The Boys' Book of Heroes", my favourite read when I was 9 years old, and my knowledge of him as distinct from his thinking had barely changed... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Peter
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The book arrived fairly quickly (considering it came from the USA) and was in mint condition.
Published 21 months ago by J. L. Davis
Darwin's sacred cause
Very heavy going but quite interesting eventually if you get past halfway. It's not written in a very accessible style though and there are so many different names that it's... Read more
Published on 22 Mar 2009 by Penny Lane
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