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- The Book Page - provides free on-line classic and not-so-well known books, articles and more. Antiquarian science texts and articles - complete with original wood-cuts and copper-plate Figures; read “cover to cover”, or use your Browser’s search function to find and read specific sections. Choose from HTML, or pdf (eBook) or MS Reader format. Use the “Author List” or “Subject List” to view available texts. Several examples are listed below.
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Also included: - LECTURES ON EVOLUTION -
We live in and form part of a system of things of immense diversity and perplexity, which we call Nature;
and it is a matter of the deepest interest to all of us that we should form just conceptions of the constitution
of that system and of its past history. With relation to this universe, man is, in extent, little more than a
mathematical point; in duration but a fleeting shadow; he is a mere reed shaken in the winds of force. But as
Pascal long ago remarked, although a mere reed, he is a thinking reed; and in virtue of that wonderful capacity
of thought, he has the power of framing for himself a symbolic conception of the universe, which, although doubtless
highly imperfect and inadequate as a picture of the great whole, is yet sufficient to serve him as a chart
for the guidance of his practical affairs.
- FOSSIL REMAINS OF MAN -
I HAVE endeavoured to show, in the preceding Essay, that the ... Man Family, form a very well defined group of the Primates ...
It is a commonly received doctrine, however, that the structural intervals between the various existing modifications
of organic beings may be diminished, or even obliterated, if we take into account the long and varied succession of animals
and plants which have preceded those now living and which are known to us only by their fossilized remains.
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- Darwin -
The flora and fauna unique to the Galapagos Archipelago are considered by many to be critical to Darwin’s thinking and to the development of his theory of evolution – What did Darwin see, collect and write about his visit to the islands? and what, if anything, did he write in his journal about the unique population of finches found among the various islands? –Download The Voyage of the Beagle and search for “Galapagos” or “finches”. Read more by downloading Darwin's classic - The Voyage of the Beagle.
- Huxley -
Thomas Henry Huxley, “Darwin’s Bulldog”, defended the theory of evolution, publicly, in ways that Darwin never could, especially in connecting mankind to all the other animals – Why, then, did Huxley lecture and write about the relatively simple organism, yeast?
- Gray -
I AM invited to address you upon the relations of science to religion, -in reference, as I suppose,
to those claims of natural science which have been thought to be antagonistic to … religion, and to
those assumptions connected with the Christian faith which scientific men in our day are disposed to question … Asa Gray
- Maunder -
In 1877, the “most distinguished astronomer in Europe”, Schiaparelli, published the description of a network of lines that appeared on the planet Mars. Schiaparelli’s “canals” of Mars stood unchallenged for many years and sparked a controversy, lead by Percival Lowell as late as 1910, stating that the presence of “canals” on Mars proves the existence of inhabitants on that planet. What did the Superintendent of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. Walter Maunder, think of all this? download Are The Planets Inhabited (1913) and search for “Schiparelli”.
- Agassiz -
THERE are phenomena in nature which give the clew to so many of its mysteries, that their correct interpretation
leads at once to broad generalizations and to the rapid advance of science in new directions. The “parallel roads”
of Glen Roy offer such a problem. For half a century they have been the subject of patient investigation and the
boldest speculation. … The theory of formation …by continental upheavals and subsidences, advocated by
Sir Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin … has been duly discussed with reference to this difficult case, … but the matter
still remains a mooted point … I propose here to reconsider the facts of the case, and to present anew my own explanation
of them, now more than twenty years old, but which I have never had an opportunity of publishing in detail under a popular
form, though it appeared in the scientific journals of the day.
- Faraday -
I … bring before you, in the course of these lectures, the Chemical History of a Candle.
There is not a law under which any part of this universe is governed which does not come
into play and is touched upon in these phenomena. … There is no more open door by which you can enter
into the study of natural philosophy than by considering the physical phenomena of a candle.
- Wallace -
To the ordinary observer the colours of the various kinds of molluscs, insects, reptiles, birds, and mammals,
appear to have no use, and to be distributed pretty much at random. … the idea that we should ever be able
to give a satisfactory reason why one creature is white and another black, why this caterpillar is green and
that one brown, … would seem to most persons both presumptuous and absurd. We propose to show, however,
that in a large number of cases the colours of animals are of the greatest importance to them, and that sometimes
even their very existence depends upon their peculiar tints. ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE
- Muir -
THE Douglass squirrel is by far the most interesting and influential of all the California sciuridae, surpassing every other
species in force of character, numbers, extent of range, and in the amount of influence he brings to bear upon the health and
distribution of the vast forests he inhabits. I cannot begin to tell here how much he has cheered my lonely wanderings during
all the years I have been pursuing my studies in these glorious wilds; or how much unmistakable humanity I have found in him. John Muir - 1878
- Fossils -
- Several short articles on fossils, etc. - THE footmarks of an animal on soft mud or snow are objects people are quite familiar with, and they know how evanescent they are-here today, and gone tomorrow-a quality which the poet had in mind when he compared the perishable worldly record of men's deeds to "footprints on the sands of time."
It would then be a wonderful thing if foot-prints could be found which have been preserved more thousands of years than such impressions usually last for hours: that have, indeed, been kept intact so long that the very kinds of animals which stamped them have died away and become extinct.
And such is one of the wonders revealed by geological research, for footprints have been found which were made on the sands of seashores of ages ago, the impressions having, by a favourable combination of circumstances, been preserved for probably millions of years!
- Poincare -
Newton once communicated to Leibnitz an anagram something like this:
aaaaabbbeeeeii, etc.
Leibnitz naturally was wholly at a loss as to its meaning;
Henri Poincare - The Future of Mathematics - 1908
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