A phenomenally successful and controversial book, issued anonymously in October 1844, about the \u201cdevelopment hypothesis,\u201d as evolutionary theory was sometimes called. Vestiges\u2019 author was its publisher, Robert Chambers of Edinburgh, who specialized in popular periodicals. He did not admit authorship until shortly before his death in 1871, even though the book had been an immediate sensation, going into four editions in the first seven months after its publication (and eventually into another eight editions).<\/p>\n
Chambers was one of several writers who advanced theories of evolution during the 1840s and 1850s. His approach was strongly Lamarckian, in that he held the view that inheritance of acquired characteristics caused evolutionary change; his knowledge of science was thin in the extreme. What distinguished Vestiges from other works were its journalistic style, calculated to appeal to the antielitist \u201cordinary reader,\u201d and its bold overview of cosmic evolution from the formation of the planets through the origin of life (ascribed to a \u201cchemico-electrical process\u201d) to the fossil record. It suggested that the human being was descended from a large frog.<\/p>\n
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A phenomenally successful and controversial book, issued anonymously in October 1844, about the \u201cdevelopment hypothesis,\u201d as evolutionary theory was sometimes called. Vestiges\u2019 author was its publisher, Robert Chambers of Edinburgh, who specialized in popular periodicals. He did not admit authorship until shortly before his death in 1871, even though the book had been an immediate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-v"],"yoast_head":"\n