"Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation"

I love antique books, and during the last few years I've been collecting a few notable science books from the nineteenth century. I like to write about them on this blog, teaching myself many new things in the process.

Here is a book set the stage for Darwin! Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation was an anonymously published book of natural history from 1844. It was a best seller, said to have even been read by Lincoln! According to the author--eventually revealed to be Robert Chambers--all thing sin existence developed from earlier forms through what we would now call transmutation or evolution. Although his science (and racist view of humans) are deficient, his notions of development of species and natural law, that were created but not necessarily guided by Providence, were influential at a time when similar theories by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck were not held in high scientific regard.

The book caught the attention of young Darwin, well ahead of his Origin of Species. He was already developing his hypotheses about special development, and because of the popular responses to Vestiges, he was able to foresee some of the controversies that would greet his own work.

Good ol' Wikipedia has a summary of the book's arguments and history of publication: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestiges_of_the_Natural_History_of_Creation