Editorial Reviews
Review
Eugenie C. Scott, National Center for Science Education : Numbers's carefully researched study helps us understand the origin of the wide-ranging attitudes towards creation and evolution found among conservative Christians today. Darwinism Comes to America is a worthy successor to The Creationists.
Edward J. Larson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion : In Darwin Comes to America, Ronald Numbers enriches our understanding of the origin debate by exploring the beliefs of a broader range of American scientists and religious sects than heretofore chronicled. Importantly, he extends the story into the late 1990s by including the repackaged anti-evolutionism of those championing "intellegent design."
David L. Hull, Northwestern University : In this fascinating book, Numbers transforms our understanding of the reception of Darwinism in America when he shifts his attention from a few major figures to a wider sampling of America scientists. He also chronicle the fortune of the Creationist opposition to Darwinism from its inception in the late nineteenth century to the Scopes trial in 1925 and the call for equal time today. this book would be ideal for an undergraduate course on science and society.
Frank J. Sulloway, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, author of Born to Rebel and Freud: Biologist of the Mind (Harvard) : Ronald Numbers has provided an exceptionally informative overview of a fascinating episode in the history of ideas. He dissects Charles Darwin's impact on American thought with admirable scholary sophistication, and in the process he succeeds in resolving a host of issues that have been fervently debated by previous generations of intellectual historians.
Book Description
In 1997, even as Pope John Paul II was conceding that evolution was "more than just a theory," local school boards and state legislatures were still wrangling over the teaching of origins--and nearly half of all Americans polled believed in the recent special creation of the first humans. Why do so many Americans still resist the ideas laid out by Darwin in On the Origin of Species? Focusing on crucial aspects of the history of Darwinism in America, Ronald Numbers gets to the heart of this question.
Judiciously assessing the facts, Numbers refutes a host of widespread misconceptions: about the impact of Darwin's work on the religious ideas of scientists, about the character of the issues that exercised scientists of the immediate post-Darwin generation, about the Scopes trial of 1925 and its consequences for American schools, and about the regional and denominational distribution of pro- and anti-evolutionary sentiments.
Displaying the expertise that has made Numbers one of the most respected historians of his generation, Darwinism Comes to America provides a much-needed historical perspective on today's quarrels about creationism and evolution--and illuminates the specifically American nature of this struggle.
Darwinism Comes to America,Ronald L. Numbers,Harvard University Press,0674193121,Christianity,Evolution,General,History,History of doctrines,Life Sciences - Evolution,Life Sciences - Evolution - Human,Philosophy & Social Aspects,Religion,Religious aspects,Science,Science/Mathematics,Theology, Doctrinal,United States
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