Harvard University Press Publicity Blog

First edition of The Origin of Species auctioned in England

Via MobyLives, one of the best publishing house blogs out there, we learn that a first-edition copy of On the Origin of Species has sold at auction for £35,000. Not just first-edition, either, but first print-run (there were 1,250, of which the publisher, John Murray, sold out immediately).

If you can't cough up the $52,000 or so (by our calculation) that such a treasure will run you, be aware that we've just published The Annotated Origin: A Facsimile of the First Edition of On the Origin of Species, which is the edition used in Harvard's Darwin Summer Course at Oxford. The book carries line-by-line annotations by James T. Costa, who developed what we think is the first modern university course specifically geared to teach Darwin with Darwin, that is, with the original text of Origin. Legend has it that Costa had the idea after hearing Stephen Jay Gould complain that everyone had an opinion on Darwin, but no one had actually read him.

||| The Annotated Origin: A Facsimile of the First Edition of On the Origin of Species

U.S. food policy and the effort to alleviate hunger

...the scholarship of Dr. Robert Paarlberg, a born and raised Hoosier, has greatly advanced my understanding of food security issues. His book, Starved for Science, is a must read for anyone attempting to understand the global food dilemma and how political factors are creating obstacles to the scientific advancements necessary to meet rising demand for food.

So said Senator Richard Lugar, we're told, on Tuesday at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Global Food Security. The Committee heard from Dr. Paarlberg on how he feels the U.S. can better evaluate and respond to hunger throughout the world. Paarlberg's book, Starved for Science: How Biotechnology Is Being Kept Out of Africa, takes aim at those who would deny African famers access to productive agricultural technologies in the name of a cultural aversion to farm science that has developed in the world's richest countries.

Paarlberg's statement to the committee is here (PDF link); Lugar's opening statement is here.

The placebo effect -- it works, go with it

The term has a negative connotation, as if relief delivered by one's own body is somehow illegitimate, but the effect is real, and more and more studies are being published to show that one has a degree of power over the body's healing from a variety of illnesses. That's one of the insights delivered by Esther Sternberg in following video on HUP's brand new YouTube channel:

The idea that environmental stimuli, as transmitted through one's senses, can play a role in the healing process is both quite old, in the sense that we can find similar sentiments expressed in the writings of the ancients, and quite new, at least in terms of its elaboration within the framework of Western empirical science. Sternberg's book Healing Spaces: The Science of Place and Well-Being articulates the growing scientific interest in these connections for the layperson. Sternberg is well-placed to fulfill this role; after receiving an MD from McGill University and specializing in rheumatology, she went on to teach at Washington University in St. Louis and now serves as Chief of the Section on Neuroendocrine Immunology and Behavior at the National Institute of Mental Health, as well as heading up the Integrative Neural Immune Program, a joint venture between NIMN and NIH.

Author of Men responds to Mansfield

Below, Richard Bribiescas, author of Men: Evolutionary and Life History, responds to Harvey Mansfield's review of his book in a February 26 article for Forbes.com.

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Mansfield says that in my book "nurture loses to nature." I disagree. On page 12 I say "The age-old argument of nature versus nurture is misguided. An organism's physiology (nature) is in many ways meant to respond to a changing environment (nurture). An unyielding physiology is seldom advantageous since the environment is never static.  In other words, are human males the product of nature or nurture?  The answer is yes."

He also quotes my statement "It doesn't take a degree in biology to notice that men and women are utterly different" but omits the rest of the paragraph. In full, the statement reads "It doesn't take a degree in biology to notice that men and women are utterly different. Physical and behavioral contrasts pervade everyday life. Men, on the average, are taller and physically stronger than women. Men don't have babies. Men make up half of the human population, but they are involved in far more than half of humankind's destructive and violent behavior. Men age differently than women do, and men die sooner and at a more rapid rate than women".

He then points out that a "cultural anthropologist, believing that culture, not biology, makes us different, would never make this statement." And he says that I am "spitting into the prevailing wind of feminism and gender-neutrality in Western societies." Well, again, I need to point out a comment I make early in the book "I don't think any biological anthropologist would deny that cultural and social forces have a tremendous effect on how humans, including males, behave and how their physiologies respond to environmental challenges." And on page 12, I also summarize how biology and Darwinism has been misused in the name of social and political agendas.  This is indeed an important point to recognize to move the field forward and to have an honest and open discussion.

As to whether I am 'spitting' into the wind of feminism and western gender-neutrality, I'm not sure what Professor Mansfield means here, unless he is taking a swipe at my research which involves the measurement of hormones in saliva. If that is so, well played -- he succeeded in getting a chuckle out of me. More importantly, it might be useful to read the wonderful works of my colleagues who contribute steadfast breezes to the prevailing wind of feminism. Their scholarly works are evident throughout my bibliography.

I am flattered that Professor Mansfield has used my book as the basis for an overarching critique of the ideas of Darwin and numerous colleagues who make the study of evolution such a vibrant scientific discipline. I do not think scientific authority has anything to do with ethics. My book's purpose was to ask readers to consider information that is supported by mounds of scientific research. The ultimate authority lies with the readers who must employ their own capacity for critical thought and decide for themselves whether the perspective presented in this book has any merit.

-- Richard Bribiescas, March 2, 2009

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||| More on Men: Evolutionary and Life History

Stop by Holyoke Center for our Darwin Day "Origin-a-thon"

Folks, this is your chance to read On The Origin of Species out loud to a bunch of people you don't know. Harvard University, in conjunction with our friends at the Harvard University Press Display Room, located in the Holyoke Arcade in the middle of fabulous, not-at-all-gentrified Harvard Square, will today host the "Origin-a-thon," in which volunteers will read out loud from Darwin's signature work, two pages at a time, for seven hours. That's right, seven hours! Stop by the Display Room any time between noon and seven today if you would like to subject others or be yourself subjected to such an exercise.

Did you know that we're also releasing an annotated edition of the Origin of Species this year? James Costa was Stephen Jay Gould's teaching assistant here at Harvard; when Gould kept referring to the odd circumstance that while everyone talks about the Origin, very few people actually read or teach from it, Costa went ahead and designed a course based on Darwin's work itself. His helpful annotations form a good chunk of The Annotated Origin: A Facsimile of the First Edition of On the Origin of Species, which we'll say is probably going to be the best way to try and tackle Darwin's masterwork if you're a modern reader.

**BONUS TRIVIA -- Some of the best sandwiches in Harvard Square are not actually in Harvard Square; they're at Darwin's, on Cambridge Street, just past Memorial Hall, across the street from Cambridge Rindge & Latin. Just get there early (like lunch instead of dinner), because they always run out of bread. There's a location a little up Mt. Auburn as well. Stay tuned for the Harvard University Press Cambridge Sandwich Tour, perhaps coming to this blog on the next slow news day.

"...probably the commemorative par excellence"

... with regard to the upcoming Darwin mega-anniversary year -- that's the verdict on Evolution: The First Four Billion Years from this week's edition of Booklist. Strange that we haven't mentioned this book yet on the blog, because it is, in layman's terms, a B-F-D (we leave the parsing to you, reader). Simply put, this book tells you, in one volume, where we're at in terms of evolutionary thinking -- the "state of the art" in the most literal sense. We've assembled a great cast of contributors as well -- experts all, as you'll see from a glance at the table of contents. The Foreword, by Edward O. Wilson, explains why we decided to do this volume -- we've reprinted it below for you.

Glowing green

... not with envy, but with GFP, or green fluorescent protein, discovered in the early 1960s by three scientists studying jellyfish off the west coast of North America. Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie, and Roger Y. Tsien have now been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their discovery of and subsequent research into the remarkable sustance known as GFP, which turned out to have all kinds of uses beyond making jellyfish light up (did you know, however, that the last German submarine destroyed during World War I had its position betrayed by bioluminescent plankton?). Once harnessed, GFP turned out to be one of the most significant scientific discoveries of the twentieth century -- after figuring out how to attach it to a protein, researchers could then follow the glow of the GFP to determine when that protein was made and where it traveled. It's fair to say that GFP revolutionized our understanding of molecular biology, transforming our study of everything from the AIDS virus to the workings of the brain.

The story of this remarkable discovery and of the scientists who produced it is told with aplomb in Vincent Pieribone and David F. Gruber's Aglow in the Dark: The Revolutionary Science of Biofluorescence, out in paperback from HUP. Aglow in the Dark is popular science at its best, traversing the continents and the decades to explain the the sheer wonder of bioluminescence and its near-miraculous applications in the life sciences.

More facts about GREEN (from the Sensational Color website, chock full of color facts):

• Green occupies more space in the spectrum visible to the human eye than most colors.
• Green is second only to blue as a favorite color.
• In several religions, green is the color associated with resurrection and regeneration.
• Green was the favorite color of George Washington, the first President of the United States.

GREEN quote of the day:

• "Absolute green is the most restful color, lacking any undertone of joy, grief, or passion. On exhausted men this restfulness has a beneficial effect, but after a time it becomes tedious." -- Wassily Kandinsky

||| Learn more about Aglow in the Dark.

Nerve fibers from neurons that contain the gene for yellow fluorescent protein.

The Birds

No need to run shrieking in terror from the New York Times' fabulous slide show of images from Audubon: Early Drawings and Egg & Nest, our dual (but not dueling, we hope) bird books out this season. Previous coverage of Audubon on the blog here, and don't miss Rosamond Purcell, author/photographer of Egg & Nest, TONIGHT at the Harvard Museum of Natural History (6pm, directions). Purcell should be on your radar; check out these bona fides from none other than Jonathan Safran Foer: "What kind of genius is Rosamond Purcell? Is she an artist? A scholar? A documentarian? A living cabinet of wonders? Her originality defies category, as does her newest triumph, Egg & Nest. Crack its shell."

Image: Tippi Hedren & Co. make a run for it in a still from Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963). 

On humans, dinosaurs, and Sarah Palin

When we read this LA Times story on Sarah Palin's apparent belief that humans and dinosaurs walked the earth together a mere 6,000 years ago, we wondered, despite acknowledging how patently awesome it would be to pet a dinosaur, where exactly such a belief comes from (hint: it's not from modern science). To that end, we asked our friend Ronald Numbers, who has made a calling out of tracking the origins and development of modern creationist thought, to fill us in on Young Earth creationism, where the idea came from, and whether or not, as its proponents claim, it can truly be called "science." Numbers is the author of the near-canonical The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design, released in an expanded edition last year, and is editor of the forthcoming Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion. So, a pretty good person to ask! Below is what he had to say.

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According to a recent article by Stephen Braun in the Los Angeles Times (September 28, 2008), Sarah Palin, the Republican candidate for Vice President of the United States, believes that the earth was created about 6,000 years ago and that humans and dinosaurs once lived together, a belief supported, she has claimed, by evidence of human footprints inside of dinosaur tracks. A conservative Christian with strong Pentecostal and Fundamentalist leanings, Palin favors teaching creationism along with evolution. "Teach both," she once urged during her race for governor of Alaska. "You know, don’t be afraid of information. Healthy debate is so important, and it’s so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both."

I don’t much care, and I don’t think other voters should care, about the religious peculiarities of candidates for public office—so long as their views don’t impinge on public policy. It makes little difference to me whether Joe Biden, a Catholic, subscribes to the doctrines of transubstantiation or the Immaculate Conception, or whether Mitt Romney affirms the divine inspiration of the Book of Mormon, if these doctrinal idiosyncrasies remain privately held convictions. But we have every right as voters to express concern about a Pentecostal being in charge of protecting the environment (think James Watt, President Reagan’s Secretary of the Interior) who believes that we are living in the Last Days before the total destruction of that environment; or, say, a Christian Scientist, who denies the efficacy of modern medicine, being appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services. In such instances, examining the religious beliefs of political candidates is not bigotry.

Starved for Science on NPR

Check out Robert Paarlberg, author of Starved for Science: How Biotechnology Is Being Kept Out of Africa, on NPR's Morning Edition yesterday. Paarlberg is out to make the case for GMOs as a tool for lifting farmers out of poverty by increasing agricultural yields in Africa and around the globe.