The groundbreaking first book by a major evolutionary biologist, published in 1912, that anticipated current thinking about organismal complexity. Julian Huxley’s The Individual in the Animal Kingdom, published in 1912, is a concise and groundbreaking work that is almost entirely unknown today. In it, Huxley analyzes the evolutionary advances in life’s organizational complexity, anticipating many of today’s ideas about changes in individuality. Huxley’s overarching system of concepts and his coherent logical principles were so far ahead of their time that they remain valid to this day. In part, this is because his explicitly Darwinian approach carefully distinguished between the integrated form and function of hierarchies within organisms and loosely defined, nonorganismal ecological communities. In The Individual in the Animal Kingdom, we meet a youthful Huxley who uses his commanding knowledge of natural history to develop a nonreductionist account of life’s complexity that
Originally published in 1934 as part of the Cambridge Comparative Physiology series, this book discusses the process of tissue differentiation in developing embryos of a variety of species. Huxley and de Beer examine important aspects of development such as symmetry, the mosaic stage of differentiation and the relationship between hereditary factors and differentiation. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the history of science or embryology.
Originally published during the early part of the twentieth century, the Cambridge Manuals of Science and Literature were designed to provide concise introductions to a broad range of topics. They were written by experts for the general reader and combined a comprehensive approach to knowledge with an emphasis on accessibility. The Individual in the Animal Kingdom by Julian Huxley was first published in 1912. The text contains an interdisciplinary discussion of individuality in nature, taking influence from both biology and philosophy.
