- This book is an "intellectual journey through time," which began with the death of Charles Darwin in April 1882 and continues to the present day, the era of the internet and neural networks.
- The reader will learn why Darwin, even now, 140 years after his passing, remains the most discussed, most cited, and most... hated scientist of all time.
- The book will tell how the perception of Darwin's personality and his ideas has changed over time, how they were distorted, utilized, and reinterpreted by his successors for their own (not always selfless) purposes.
- We will learn how American billionaires, German national socialists, Russian revolutionaries, Bolsheviks in Soviet Russia, as well as outstanding writers and philosophers (from Fyodor Dostoevsky to Osip Mandelstam) related to Darwin and his theories.
- The discussion will cover the creation of the theory of natural selection and how it managed to endure and survive to this day, despite fierce attacks, remaining the most well-known and popular evolutionary theory.
- The author also discusses many other fascinating and not always well-known topics: genomic catastrophes and mass extinctions, the origin of death and the benefits of aggression, why evolution cannot create an octopus horse or a flying frog, the gluttony of cuckoos, and the laws of human forgetfulness.
- The author of the book, a professional biologist who has pondered the biography of Darwin and his writings for many years, gives his answer to the question of why it is Darwin's theories that have the honor of forever changing humanity's understanding of itself, its origins, and its place in the world. And in general, what it is like to live in the "Darwinian universe."
The name of Darwin appears on all lists of the most famous scientists of all time, regardless of who compiled them. This is a man who forever changed humanity's understanding of nature, life on Earth, and of itself. However, the name of this brilliant researcher, visionary, and revolutionary in science continues to disturb minds, provoke anger and hatred, and even now, almost a century and a half after his death, there are still those eager to kick the dead lion. This image became a bright metaphor in Maxim Vinarsky's book dedicated to the posthumous biography of Darwin, for just as a person's life continues as long as they are remembered, so too does the biography of a scientist continue as long as his legacy lives on. The theory created by Darwin underwent various interpretations and distortions after his death, sometimes twisted and dangerous. His evolutionary teachings were used by proponents of the most opposing political movements and ideologies, completely distant from the issues of theoretical biology. Fortunately, the brilliant hypotheses he voiced gain further development in modern evolutionary science, and that is the main thing.
Quotes:
"Darwin was destined to become the greatest destroyer of illusions in human history. He encroached on our species' high opinion of itself, and people do not forgive this to anyone."
"Is the main character of my book guilty of the horrors brought to the world by Nazi ideology? My answer: yes, guilty — but to the same extent that the Sermon on the Mount is 'guilty' of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. Or the ancient Greek philosopher Democritus, the creator of the first atomic theory, is guilty of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki."
"Darwinism is the scientific theory of matured humanity, sufficiently mature to abandon the childish faith in miracles. It corresponds to that moment in each person's life,
when they realize that their parents are not eternal and that one day they will find themselves in this world alone and will have to answer for themselves."
"Supporters of the Divine axiom are convinced that the complex cannot develop from the simple, that any complexity in nature was created by an even more complex Designer, who has no unsolvable tasks. In the 'Darwinian universe,' there is no need for such a Designer; everything arises 'by itself,' like the whimsical frosty patterns on glass."
- More than 30 black-and-white illustrations throughout the text
