ENGLISH

Darwin's Corals: A New Model of Evolution and the Tradition of Natural History

By Horst Bredekamp

Book information

Publisher
de Gruyter
Year
2019
ISBN
9783110680317, 9783110643343
DOI
10.1515/9783110680317
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
10 MB (10783051 bytes)
Pages
128\128
Library
degruyter.com
Time added
2023-07-26 12:15:19

Description

To this day Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory of the "survival of the fittest" has been visualized with the universal model of a tree of life. But early on in Darwin’s thinking the coral provided a fascinating alternative to the tree as a depiction of the evolution of the species. Horst Bredekamp shows how Darwin, a coral enthusiast and collector, found in it a more adequate illustration of evolution through natural selection: It grows anarchically in all directions and no longer upholds mankind as the "crown of creation." Using this example Darwin is proving himself to be both a destroyer and consummator of traditional natural philosophy. Since antiquity the coral had been a symbol of nature as a whole.

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