Darwin Under the Microscope

Abstract

Scholars familiar with Paul Johnson’s work know that when terms like “intellectual” or “genius” appear on the cover of one of his books, it is likely that some revisionist history is in the making. His brief monograph on Darwin is no exception. That Johnson could have the chutzpah to write such a short book about Darwin is something of a statement in itself. Studying Darwin’s life, his contributions to science, the rhetoric he used to convey his findings, and the fallout from his revolutionary theories about the natural world has occupied hundreds of scholars in disciplines from biology to political theory (with rhetorical theory wedged somewhere in the middle, I believe). In the year Darwin: Portrait of a Genius was published, at least a dozen other books about Darwin appeared. That number pales in comparison to the total published in 2009, the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth – more than fifty. Few of these are under two hundred pages, and several exceed five hundred.