LIFE AND HABIT 



Samuel Butler 



As publishers of such notable books as Sir Peter 

 Medawar's The Life Science and Gregory Bateson's 

 Mind and Nature, Wildwood has an interest in bio- 

 logical writings and evolutionary thinking, especially 

 in ideas that challenge orthodoxy and received 

 opinion. 



Butler was precisely such a thinker. Disregarded by 

 scientists, and especially by those around Darwin, on 

 the grounds that he was a * novelist' and a * satirist', 

 he critically examined the new orthodoxies of 

 evolutionism. Butler's ideas (and those of Lamarck) 

 are still alive and potent today. Modern theories of 

 *the selfish gene' find an echo in Butler's oft-quoted 

 remark that the chicken is an egg's way of making 

 another egg. And Butler's ideas still challenge ortho- 

 doxy. But whether Butler (*Darwin's finest critic' 

 Bateson called him) was right or wrong is not the 

 whole point, rather it is a chance to read contro- 

 versial scientific writing at its most lucid, witty and 

 stimulating. 



ISBN 7045 0425 1 £3.95 



