Nature and Man's Fate: Who Will Bell The Cat? (1)

None of the content of this book reflects my own beliefs or opinions! See the prologue:    • Nature and Man's Fate: An Immoral Boo...  

Chapter 1 discusses the idea of evolution before Charles Darwin (The Vestiges of Creation, 1844, published anonymously by Robert Chambers. Herbert Spencer, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert.... Lamarck's Philosophie zoologique of 1809. Maupertuis, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_...) and the reaction to Erasmus Darwin's works (The Botanic Garden 1789-1791, Zoonomia 1794-1796, and The Temple of Nature 1803). The book says that Charles likely did not see much of Erasmus's work, but in fact he did read them and made commentary on them (https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ra....
Also discussed is geology, mentioning James Hutton's Theory of the Earth as a paper in 1785, as a book 1795. And Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology 1830-33. Importantly Charles Darwin took the first volume of the Principles on his voyage on the Beagle. John Stevens Henslow, who Darwin came to know well, advised him to bring the Principles: "to read and study it, but on no account accept the views therein advocated."
Finally Charles Darwin's discoveries on the Galapagos islands are described as the moment that "the voyage had served its hidden purpose."

Hardin, Garret. 1959. Nature and Man's Fate. Mentor Book, N.Y.: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Sources for chapter 1 as they are formatted in the book:
For Charles Darwin's Life:
Barlow, Nora. 1946. Charles Darwin and the Voyage of the Beagle. 279 pp. N.Y.: Philosophical Library.
Darwin, Francis, ed. 1887. The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin. 2 vols. N.Y.: D. Appleton. 1898.
Poulton, Edward Bagnall. 1909. Charles Darwin and The Origin of Species. xv and 302 pp. London: Longmans, Green.
Erasmus Darwin:
Garfinkle, Norton. 1955. Science and religion in England, 1790-1800: the critical response to the work of Erasmus Darwin. Jour. Hist. Ideas, 16:376-388.
Paul, C. Kegan. 1876. William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries. 2 vols. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
"Thanks to William Kennedy for Coleridge":
Coleridge, Ernest Hartley, ed. 1895. Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 2 vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
"Thanks to Douwe Stuurman for Goethe."
Copleston,
Mencken, H.L. 1942. A New Dictionary of Quotations. xiii and 1809 pp. N.Y.: Knopf.
da Vinci,
MacCurdy, Edward. 1939. The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. 1247 pp. N.Y.: Braziller, 1954.
The geology battle:
White, Andrew Dickson. 1896. A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom. 2 vols. N.Y.: Appleton. 1900.