The Descent of Man (Great Minds Series) [Paperback]

Aside from the fascinating (and mostly accurate) accounts of natural and sexual selection, confirmed decades later by new discoveries in the fossil record and the advent of DNA, this volume presents a fascinating letter from Darwin to Wallace confirming what a superficial examination of species makes apparent: that Darwin was well aware that 'blending' inheritance couldn't be right, and that hereditary traits must be passed on by some particulate process. This is obvious when we realise that our parents are male and female, but we are not born intermediate hermaphrodites. In this sense, and in so many others, Darwin was well ahead of his time.

It is naive, as Dawkins points out in his introduction, to consider the views of this Victorian gentleman (politically conservative, scientifically radical) through post-Nazi hindsight. Contrary to popular belief, Darwinism does not excuse mass extermination in pursuit of 'perfection'; indeed, lengthy passages of this book are given over to emphasising that 'savage' races (an uncontroversial label at the time, whose meaning has since drifted) are not separate species or sub-human. Darwin's limited recommendations for improving ourselves must be considered with this qualification; let us not forget that at the time such views were entirely acceptable.

Darwin accounts for racial differences through sexual selection: superficial but diverse surface differences masking underlyingly highly similar organisms. Skip forward 130 years, and Dawkins's introduction also reminds us that DNA has re-affirmed this and led many scientists to advocate the abandonment of 'race' as a biological concept; through humanity passing through what Dawkins calls an "evolutionary bottleneck" in the last few thousand years, there is more genetic difference between any two groups of chimpanzees than there is between any of the human 'races'.

A great book, which can be dipped into through the highly-entertaining index. Darwin's knowledge of natural history was phenomenal; here we can read at length and leisure the amazing range of creatures' adaptive behaviours, with a plausible explanation of how they share a common ancestry.

Wonderful, in each sense of the word.

(This review relates to the Penguin Classics Edition)

Gosh, this is a long book.

There are three sections. Sections I and III look at the evidence for the development of humans from more primitive creatures and sexual selection in humans. Section II (about half the book) is devoted to sexual selection in everything from insects to mammals.

So is it worth reading? In their introduction, Adrian Desmond and James Moore suggest that it forms the second volume of a trilogy (with On the Origin of Species and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals) and that you really need to read all three to understand Darwinism as Darwin saw it. Part of this is to do with Darwin's two big ideas: natural selection and sexual selection. The other part is about the interrelationship of Darwin's science with the worldview of a Victorian country gentleman and the politics of the day; not least the politics of race, which is explored more thoroughly in Desmond and Moore's recent Darwin's Sacred Cause: Race, Slavery and the Quest for Human Origins.

If you're serious about Darwin and have read "On the Origin of Species", I would recommend tackling this, although you might be forgiven for not ploughing through the whole of Section II. As other reviewers have mentioned, Darwin's language, his views on race and gender and his ideas on the "improvement" of the human race can make uncomfortable reading in the 21st century.

In addition to the text and original black and white illustrations, there is an excellent introduction, a comprehensive index and the occasional foreign language quotations are given in both the original and an English translation.

A seminal work, such as this, deserves to be read as it represents original, source material for ideas that rocked the world. Unfortunately Darwin is often criticised by people who may never have accessed his original work but take a political and chronologically privileged dislike to how this important source material may, or may not, have been subsequently interpreted. I refer of course to the above review.
Such works as this need to be read with an appreciation of the context in which they were written i.e. a long time ago and within an entirely different world view. Cheap, agenda-ridden, pseudo-intellectual critisism made with the benefit of hindsight and taking a twenty-first century perspective will hopefully not dissuade people from accessing fantastic source material such as this and making their own minds up. Read it, and make your own mind up (before somebody else does it for you).