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Luck, or Cunning, as the Main Means of Organic Modification

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Nature, Gardens & Animals

Luck, or Cunning, as the Main Means of Organic Modification

Samuel Butler

307 pages~6 hr 7 min read24 chapters$4.99
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Is evolution driven by blind luck or by a cunning built into life itself? Samuel Butler makes his case against pure chance, sparring with Herbert Spencer and Romanes over what really modifies living form. Sharp, contrarian, and gleefully argumentative. Take a seat in one of Victorian science's liveliest quarrels.

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Inside this book

24 chapters

  1. 1Luck, or Cunning As the Main Means of Organic Modification?
  2. 2Note
  3. 3Author’s Preface to First Edition
  4. 4Contents
  5. 5Chapter I Introduction
  6. 6Chapter II Mr. Herbert Spencer
  7. 7Chapter III Mr. Herbert Spencer (continued)
  8. 8Chapter IV [52a] Mr. Romanes’ “Mental Evolution in Animals”
  9. 9Chapter V Statement of the Question at Issue
  10. 10Chapter VI Statement of the Question at Issue (continued)
  11. 11Chapter VII (Intercalated) Mr. Spencer’s “The Factors of Organic Evolution”
  12. 12Chapter VIII Property, Common Sense, and Protoplasm
  13. 13Chapter IX Property, Common Sense, and Protoplasm (continued)
  14. 14Chapter X The Attempt to Eliminate Mind
  15. 15Chapter XI The Way of Escape
  16. 16Chapter XII Why Darwin’s Variations were Accidental
  17. 17Chapter XIII Darwin’s Claim to Descent with Modification
  18. 18Chapter XIV Darwin and Descent with Modification (continued)

+ 6 more. The full contents open with the book.

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