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Edited by
Lightbinders, 1997
Reviewed by
A quarter of a century ago, molecular biology overwhelmed the imaginations and occasionally the intellect of many biologists. They viewed a generalist like Charles Darwin as a quaint Victorian naturalist who belonged to the past. Darwin scholar and MacArthur Fellow Michael T. Ghiselin describes, in the second edition of his book The Triumph of the Darwinian Method, the state of Darwinian scholarship back then: "There was a long tradition of treating Darwin as a man of modest intellect whose ideas should never have been taken seriously in the first place."
That is when Ghiselin began to read and analyze every available book and paper written by the reclusive Englishman. "As a result, Darwin was transformed. Rather than a man of modest intellect who plodded along from fact to fact, he was a first-rate thinker and theoretician, and one of the most successful polymaths of all time," Ghiselin writes.
The release of the second CD-ROM edition of Darwin by Lightbinders, Inc., allows the rest of us to share a bit of Ghiselin's experience as he rediscovered Charles Darwin. In addition to Ghiselin's book, the new CD includes complete editions of Darwin's The Origin of Species, The Descent of Man, The Voyage of the Beagle, The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, four other major works, and a collection of "diverse and seldom published short papers."
This collection alone would make the CD a useful Darwin reference, but it is made substantially greater by the inclusion of a biographical dictionary, a detailed timeline of Darwin's life, and a bibliography of 1,500 works. The purpose of all this material is not to detail the life and times of Charles Darwin or the theory of evolution; the subject is Darwin's life work, which touched on topics ranging from developmental psychology to zoology.
This mass of information is brought together, linked, and illustrated using Dynatext software - software that lets users read any of the CD- ROMs published by Lightbinders. The table of contents appears on the left of the screen (optional) and the text appears on the right. The text includes links to footnotes and other information, much like a Web page. Thumbnail versions of all figures can be enlarged with a click of the mouse. Click the mention of a slug in The Voyage of the Beagle, for instance, and a rich color picture of Aplysia in its natural environment fills a window. The Origin of Species mentions that Andean condors lay few eggs compared to other birds. The close-up color photograph of a condor brings you closer to the bird than one can probably ever get in person. These and other illustrations make striking impressions when combined with Darwin's surprisingly accessible prose. Other illustrations, drawings, and maps would be familiar to Darwin, for they are taken from his collections and books.
The CD-ROM makes good use of other features unique to its medium. Users can:
If you are a Darwin scholar, these features will make this CD-ROM a must buy - both as a convenient way to access and compare a large body of Darwin's better-known books and as the only available source for some of his lesser-known writings. Teachers and students at the college level and advanced high school level will also find this an important and entertaining resource.
However, this CD-ROM may not be of interest to a scientist who wishes to casually browse Origin of the Species or Voyage of the Beagle. These works are browsed more conveniently the old fashioned way - with a book. Darwin's writing style is generally straightforward. If, as Ghiselin recommends, readers new to Darwin begin with The Voyage of the Beagle and follow his other recommendations, the journey should be enjoyable and rewarding.
We installed the CD-ROM on three Windows computers and a Mac (it can also be used with Unix). The process is straightforward and involves the installation of about 6 megabytes of Dynatext software. If you are not a computer sophisticate, you might not know exactly why you are loading certain things, but soon you will be jumping around sampling Darwin's work, so it doesn't matter much anyway.
Ghiselin believes there is no definitive biography of Darwin and so no full-length book version of the scientist's life is included in this collection. The Darwin timeline, which provides a chronology of important events in the scientist's life, and the biographical dictionary, describing nearly everyone mentioned in the texts, satisfy this requirement for now. Still, it would be nice to see a biography included in future editions.
p>This edition of Darwin will probably not be a moneymaker for the publisher: It costs only $49.95. (Try to buy all of Darwin's works for that price.) The CD-ROM is the work of author Ghiselin; editor Pete Goldie, who is also the president of Lightbinders; and many volunteer scholars who offered free advice and free material. As a result, the second edition has more than twice the material of the first.Four years ago, a CD-ROM like this would have cost hundreds of dollars. That it is available today for $50 suggests that the "electronic information media revolution" may be living up to some of its promise.
Dean Haycock is a journalist who writes science articles for many magazines and newspapers. He received his Ph.D. in neuroscience from Brown University.
Harvey Motulsky founded GraphPad Software to create and distribute intuitive software for scientific graphics and curve fitting and statistics after doing pharmacology research at the University of California, San Diego, for ten years. He is also the author of Intuitive Biostatistics, published by Oxford University Press.
From the CD-ROM Darwin, read Charles Darwin's thoughts on:
Charles Darwin maintains a respectable presence on the Web. Sites range from brief biographies and discussions of his work to full-text online versions of his most well-known books.
Enter Evolution: Theory and History - a site from the University of California's Museum of Paleontology. It discusses evolution and provides many links to Darwin's predecessors and to other famous naturalists.
The Charles Darwin Research Station - part of the Charles Darwin Foundation for the Galapagos Islands. The foundation is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to scientific research in the Galapagos Islands.
L'evolution et Darwin - one of the best of the Darwin sites, though written in French. It provides a fairly extensive discussion of all aspects of evolution and Darwin's work, with many links and chapters. The material seems quite up to date.
HMS Beagle's Reading Room has featured two Darwin pieces: The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, 1861: Excerpted Musings on Design and Slavery, edited by Frederick Burkhardt (see extensive Endlinks therein), and a passage from Alan Moorehead's Darwin and the Beagle (see beautiful paintings therein).
Works by Darwin that are available on the Web:
Works by the researcher who nearly scooped Darwin on natural selection:
You may purchase this CD-ROM directly from: Lightbinders, Inc., for $49.95. Lightbinders may also be reached by e-mailing darwin@lbin.com; writing Lightbinders at 2325 Third Street, Suite 324, San Francisco, CA, 94107; phoning (800) 432-3766; or faxing (415) 621-5898.
