Charles Darwin: Victorian Mythmaker

[Read by Richard Burnip]Brilliant, daring, and ambitious, Charles Darwin explores this legendary man as never before, and challenges us to reconsider our understanding of both Darwin and modern science itself.With the publication of On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin, hailed as the man who ''discovered evolution,'' was propelled into the pantheon of great scientific thinkers, alongside Galileo, Copernicus, and Newton. Eminent writer A. N. Wilson challenges this long-held assumption. Contextualizing Darwin and his ideas, he offers a groundbreaking critical look at this revered figure in modern science, arguing that Darwin was not an original scientific thinker, but a ruthless and determined self-promoter who did not credit the many great sages whose ideas he advanced in his book.Armed with an extraordinary breadth of knowledge, Wilson explores how Darwin and his theory were very much a product of their place and time. The ''survival of the fittest'' was really the survival of middle class families like the Darwins -- members of a relatively new economic strata who benefited from the rising Industrial Revolution at the expense of the working classes.