Impossible Monsters

Dinosaurs, Darwin and the War Between Science and Religion

Michael Taylor

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English

Bodley Head
19 March 2024

Religion & beliefs; Religion & science; Popular science; Evolution; Palaeontology; Dinosaurs & the prehistoric world

From fossil-hunting to the end of faith- a gripping narrative history of the seventy-five-year culture war that transformed how we think about the universe and our place in it

In 1811, when the self-schooled daughter of a carpenter pulled some strange-looking bones from Britain's southern shoreline, few people dared to question that the Bible told the accurate history of the world. But Mary Anning had discovered the 'first' dinosaur, and over the next seventy-five years - as the science of palaeontology developed, as Charles Darwin posited theories of evolutionary biology, and as religious scholars identified the internal inconsistencies of the Scriptures - everything changed.

By the 1850s, dinosaurs were a prominent feature of the second Crystal Palace exhibition. By the 1860s, when Matthew Arnold stood on Dover Beach and saw faith ebbing away, Britain had plunged into a crisis of religious belief. By the 1870s, T.H. Huxley - Darwin's 'bulldog' - was preaching a new history of the world in which mankind was merely an accident of evolution. By 1886, following a six-year battle which had seen him beaten, imprisoned, and forcibly removed from Parliament, Charles Bradlaugh was able to take his seat in the House of Commons as the first openly atheist MP.

Told through the lives of the men and women who found these vital fossils and who fought about their meaning, some humble, some eccentric, some utterly brilliant, Impossible Monsters tells the story of the painful, complicated relationship between science and religion over these seventy-five years, of the growth of secularism, and of the role of dinosaurs and their discovery in changing perceptions about the Bible, history and mankind's place in the world.

By: Michael Taylor
Imprint: Bodley Head
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 153mm, Spine: 37mm
Weight: 619g
ISBN: 9781847926791
ISBN 10: 1847926797
Pages: 352
Publication Date: 19 March 2024
Audience: General/trade , Professional and scholarly , College/higher education , ELT Advanced , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Michael Taylor is an historian of colonial slavery, the British Empire and the British Isles. He graduated with a double first in history from the University of Cambridge, where he earned his PhD - and also won University Challenge. He has since been Lecturer in Modern British History at Balliol College, Oxford, and he is currently a Visiting Fellow at the British Library's Eccles Centre for American Studies.

Reviews for Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin and the War Between Science and Religion

An outstanding and gripping revelation ... essential reading -- Simon Sebag Montefiore on The Interest Impressively researched and engagingly written -- Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times, on The Interest A magnificent book ... riveting * Evening Standard on The Interest * Taylor can tell a story superbly * Economist on The Interest * Scintillating ... brisk, gripping ... compulsively readable * Guardian on The Interest *