Darwin's First Theory

Description

in the tradition of Blue Latitude, an immersion into the landscape that absorbed Charles darwin and led him to conceive his original theory of plate tectonics, which segued in to the Theory of Evolution. Everybody knows—or thinks they know—Charles Darwin, the father of evolution and the man who altered the way we view our place in the world. But what most people do not know is that Darwin was on board the HMS Beagle as a geologist—on a mission to examine the land, not ora and fauna.Tracing Darwin's footsteps in South America and beyond, geologist Rob Wesson sets out on a trek across the Andes, repeating the nautical surveys made by the Beagle's crew, hunting for fossils in Uruguay and Argentina, and exploring traces of long vanished glaciers in Scotland and Wales. By following Darwin's path literally and intellectually, Rob experiences the landscape that absorbed Darwin, follows his reasoning about what he saw, and immerses himself in the same...