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Biology in Transition - The Life and Lectures of Arthur Milnes Marshall (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R2,361
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Biology in Transition - The Life and Lectures of Arthur Milnes Marshall (Hardcover)
Series: History of Evolutionary Biology
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Arthur Milnes Marshall was a 19th-century scientist who gave
lectures addressing the biological debates of his time. They
covered topics including evolution, embryology, development and
inheritance, with Charles Darwin's name and those of other
important biologists distributed liberally throughout. Marshall was
a zoologist, embryologist, anatomist and Darwin enthusiast, as well
as an accomplished mountaineer and sportsman. He was a humanist, an
admired academic teacher and brilliant public educator. The
lectures reveal his passion for communicating his subject, to his
students and to the working men and women of Manchester, and they
provide a remarkable snapshot of the state of biological science at
the close of the 19th century. His death in 1893 aged only 41, on a
climbing expedition in the Lake District, left a fascinating time
capsule in the form of lectures from a critical transitional period
in the history of biology. Evolution by natural selection was the
established doctrine but genes were undefined, with Mendel's work
yet to be recognised. Embryology was suggesting recapitulation but
ancestry, genetics and missing links awaited liberation from
theoreticians and the stones of palaeontology. Microscopy was
flourishing and cell science was finding its feet, but DNA and
molecular science were far in the future. Had Marshall lived and
worked into the 20th century, these lectures would undoubtedly have
been superseded and forgotten. Instead, they reveal biology's
transformation from a descriptive exercise to an experimental
science, its rejection of purpose and design in evolution, and the
shift of its axis from continental Europe to Britain and the United
States. Professor Martin Luck discovered these lectures (published
by CF Marshall in two volumes shortly after his brother's death)
languishing in a university corridor. His careful curation,
introductions to each lecture and copious annotations on the
organisms, theories and scientists discussed, illuminate their
significance as prequels to modern biology. Marshall's own story
brings the lectures and their social context into sharp relief.
Biology in Transition will interest anyone curious about the
history of science, especially biology, evolution, genetics and its
19th-century pioneers.
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