Volume 15, Number 11 · December 17, 1970
The Evolution of Charles Darwin
By Gavin de Beer
The Triumph of the Darwinian Method
by Michael T. Ghiselin
California, 287 pp., $7.50
In a recent issue of the London Times Literary Supplement, a reviewer of Darwin's correspondence with Henslow marveled how the untried young man, a prospective candidate for Holy Orders, could sail away in the Beagle with nothing but courage and horse sense and without ever having had a training in natural science, and come back five years later an experienced hard-headed man of science. This brought down an indignant protest from Professor Harold Fruchtbaum who contended that, before the voyage, Darwin was one of the best trained and most experienced all-round naturalists in England; all this on the basis of his having collected pebbles and beetles, accompanied fishermen on their trawls, watched a Negro skin birds, and attended some lectures at Edinburgh and Cambridge.
Review, 3574 words
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