Darwin’s Backyard: How Small Experiments Led to a Big Theory

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Description

Darwin’s Backyard goes beyond the portrait of Charles Darwin as a brilliant thinker to be aware of him as a nimble experimenter delving into a few of evolution’s great mysteries.

James T. Costa takes readers on a journey from Darwin’s childhood through his voyage on the HMS Beagle where his ideas on evolution started. We then follow Darwin to Down House, his bustling home of forty years, where he kept porcupine quills at his desk to dissect barnacles, maintained a flock of sixteen pigeon breeds in the dovecote, and cultivated mountaineering plants in the study, and to Bournemouth, where on one memorable circle of relatives vacation he fed carnivorous plants in the soup dishes.

Using his garden and greenhouse, the surrounding meadows and woodlands, and even taking over the cellar, study, and hallways of his home-turned-field-station, Darwin tested ideas of his landmark theory of evolution with an astonishing array of hands-on experiments that may be done on the fly, without specialized equipment.

He engaged naturalists, friends, neighbors, circle of relatives servants, and even his children, nieces, nephews, and cousins as assistants in these experiments, which involved the whole thing from chasing bees and tempting fish to eat seeds to serenading earthworms. From the experiments’ results, he plumbed the laws of nature and evidence for the revolutionary arguments of On the Origin of Species and his other watershed works.

Beyond Darwin at work, we accompany him against the backdrop of his enduring marriage, chronic illness, grief on the lack of three children, and joy in scientific revelation. This unique glimpse of Darwin’s life introduces us to an enthusiastic correspondent, crowd-sourcer, circle of relatives man, and, most of all, an incorrigible observer and experimenter.

Includes directions for eighteen hands-on experiments, for home, school, yard, or garden.

60 line drawings

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