Darwin and the Making of Sexual Selection / Evelleen Richards.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Richards, Evelleen, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882.

Darwin, Charles.

Sexual selection--History.

Sexual selection.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (704 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2017]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Darwin's concept of natural selection has been exhaustively studied, but his secondary evolutionary principle of sexual selection remains largely unexplored and misunderstood. Yet sexual selection was of great strategic importance to Darwin because it explained things that natural selection could not and offered a naturalistic, as opposed to divine, account of beauty and its perception. Only now, with Darwin and the Making of Sexual Selection, do we have a comprehensive and meticulously researched account of Darwin's path to its formulation-one that shows the man, rather than the myth, and examines both the social and intellectual roots of Darwin's theory. Drawing on the minutiae of his unpublished notes, annotations in his personal library, and his extensive correspondence, Evelleen Richards offers a richly detailed, multilayered history. Her fine-grained analysis comprehends the extraordinarily wide range of Darwin's sources and disentangles the complexity of theory, practice, and analogy that went into the making of sexual selection. Richards deftly explores the narrative strands of this history and vividly brings to life the chief characters involved. A true milestone in the history of science, Darwin and the Making of Sexual Selection illuminates the social and cultural contingencies of the shaping of an important-if controversial-biological concept that is back in play in current evolutionary theory.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

List of Abbreviations

Acknowledgments

PROLOGUE. "An Awful Stretcher"

PART ONE. Beauty, Brotherhood, and Breeding: The Origins of Sexual Selection

ONE. The Ugly Brother

TWO. Good Wives

THREE. "Bliss Botanic" and "Cocks Heroic": Two Darwins in the "Temple of Nature"

FOUR. Beauty Cuts the Knot

FIVE. Reading the Face of Race

SIX. Good Breeding: The Art of Mating

SEVEN. "Better Than a Dog Anyhow"

EIGHT. Flirting with Fashion

NINE. Development Matters

PART TWO. "For Beauty's Sake": The Making of Sexual Selection

TEN. Critical Years: From Pigeons to People

ELEVEN. Putting Female Choice in (Proper) Place

TWELVE. The Battle for Beauty: Wallace versus Darwin

THIRTEEN. Writing the Descent: From Bird's- Eye View to Masterful Breeder

FOURTEEN. The Post- Descent Years: Sexual Selection in Crisis, Female Choice at Large

EPILOGUE. Last Words

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Previously issued in print: 2017.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 22. Okt 2019)

Other Format:

Print version :

OCLC:

979417715