Stott, Rebecca. Darwin's Ghosts After the publication of his
seminal The Origin of Species, Darwin was chastised by his
fellows for not discussing the many thinkers and scientists who
had entertained similar evolutionary ideas and hypotheses before
him. Thus, in the third edition of his work, Darwin wrote up a
preface entitled “An Historical Sketch” to fill that gap. But
his preface was just what he called it…a sketch, little more
than a list of names with very little background or information.
Stott here remedies that lack, delving deeply into the
historical record to provide brief but information-rich
biographies of some of the great thinkers who preceded Darwin’s
theory of natural selection. She begins with Aristotle, who,
while exiled to the island of Lesbos, undertook one of the first
large-scale biological surveys of the rich sea life to be found
there. From there, Stott covers other such luminaries as
Leonardo da Vinci; 9th century Islamic polymath al-Jahiz; French
scientists Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Geo