Of Moths and Men: An Evolutionary Tale : the Untold Story of Science and the Peppered MothIn the 1950s, a British physician and amateur lepidopterist named H. B. D. Kettlewell went into the English woods to catch "evolution in action" among the now-famous Peppered Moths. His work became "Darwin's missing evidence," an evolutionary experiment as influential as any in the last century. Compellingly told, Of Moths and Men reveals Kettlewell to be a deluded scientist, a man tyrannized by his mentor, the powerful E. B. Ford, an imperious, eccentric Oxford don, a Darwinian zealot determined to crush all enemies in his path. In a revelatory, controversial work that will be debated for years to come, Judith Hooper uncovers the intellectual rivalries, petty jealousies, and faulty science behind one of the most famous experiments and myths in the history of evolutionary biology. Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. |
Contents
The moonlit world | 5 |
What Darwin missed | 17 |
Natural selection reduced to arithmetic | 36 |
The private lives of insects | 70 |
EB Ford and his enemies | 93 |
Triumph in Birmingham | 111 |
A most influential home movie | 127 |
A reptiles leg into a birds wing | 148 |
The goose that laid the golden eggs | 207 |
It was a bird feeder | 243 |
A damn good story | 280 |
Notes | 318 |
341 | |
Glossary | 356 |
365 | |
367 | |
Other editions - View all
Of Moths and Men: An Evolutionary Tale : the Untold Story of Science and the ... Judith Hooper No preview available - 2002 |
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References to this book
Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy Bryan van Norden Limited preview - 2007 |