THE DEATH OF ADAM:
Evolution and Its Impact on Western Thought.

Writing as an historian, rather than a biologist, theologian or philosopher, John Greene describes analytically and synthetically the tremendous revolution in human thought that took place in the two centuries separating Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin. He connects the progress in biology with similar progress in astronomy, geology, paleontology, and anthropology and demonstrates the impact of the newly born mechanical view of nature on these sciences.
 
     Professor Greene discusses Darwin’s own ideas on science, religion, race, progress, economic competition, etc., in an analysis notable for originality and depth and breadth of approach. The analysis reveals the spiritual anxiety caused by the gradual crumbling of static creationism and describes the rise of a gospel of secular progress as a substitute faith for humans to live by.

See also Greene’s later Debating Darwin: Adventures of a Scholar that draws together a series of essays, old and new, on the origins and cultural impact of Charles Darwin’s ideas. He also enters into an epistolary dialogue with two leading evolutionary biologists, Theodosius Dobzhansky and Ernst Mayr, on the historical, philosophical, and religious aspects of this major revolution in Western thought and feeling. As a historian Greene challenges Mayr’s account of the rise of evolutionary ideas and advances his own interpretation.

And his American Science In the Age of Jefferson that views Jefferson at work as a facilitator and promoter of the sciences not only as the architect of the Lewis and Clark expedition but also in his Notes on the State of Virginia, which became the model for numerous state and regional civil and natural histories.

       GREENE, John C.;  388 pages.                                                                                  $ 19.95 (PB).
            Reissue (1959) 2007