1997 Articles

Book Review On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (Collector's Edition.) By Charles Darwin. 470 pp., illustrated. Norwalk, Conn., The Easton Press, 1997. $43.25. No ISBN.

Pollack, Robert

The Origin of Species is the most radical reconfiguration of our place in the universe — as individuals and as a single species — since Moses brought down the Torah from Sinai. It remains today what it was on the day it was published in 1859: a model of clear thinking and close observation, a set of predictions that seem to be borne out by experiment whenever they have been tested, and a vision of our origin that offers us no hope of finding purpose or perfectibility in the biology of our species, or in that of any other.