Saturday, August 4, 2012

There is no single draft of greatness



In case you have students who believe that rewriting is something only done in school, show them this interactive display of Darwin's 6 revisions of On the Origin of Species -- you can play it like a movie (I recommend the Fast setting) to watch the work 'evolve,' and even hover over specific segments to read the actual text of the book itself.

And speaking of counterclaims -- there's a great surprise -- as an entire chapter (in red) appears suddenly in the 6th version -- it is Darwin directly addressing counter arguments that have been made against natural selection.

The title is a nice pun, too, on the full title of Darwin's work:  On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.

Click on the image below or go to http://benfry.com/traces/ (does not work well in Chrome - use Firefox or Safari)

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