| The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals | |
|---|---|
| Author | Charles Darwin |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Subject(s) | Emotion |
| Publisher | John Murray |
| Publication date | 1872 |
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals is a book by the British naturalist Charles Darwin published in 1872, on how humans and non-human animals[1] express their emotions. It was, along with his 1871 book The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, part of Darwin's attempt to address questions of human origins and human psychology using his theory of evolution by natural selection.
When writing The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication in 1866, Darwin intended to include a chapter including man in his theory, but the book became too big and he decided to write a separate "short essay" on ape ancestry, sexual selection and human expression which became two large volumes in The Descent of Man. After completing work on the proofs of The Descent of Man in January 1871, Darwin started on another book, using left over material on emotional expressions.
Darwin noted the universal nature of facial expressions in the book: "...the young and the old of widely different races, both with man and animals, express the same state of mind by the same movements."
He became diverted into making extensive revisions to the Origin of Species, then in the spring of 1872 Darwin pressed on with The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, pointing to shared evolution in contrast to Charles Bell's Anatomy and Physiology of Expression which claimed divinely created muscles to express man's exquisite feelings. Darwin drew on world wide responses to his questionnaires, hundreds of photographs of actors, babies and "imbeciles" in an asylum, as well as his own observations, with particular empathy for the grief following a family death.
The proofs, tackled by his daughter Henrietta and son Leo, needed major revision which made him "sick of the subject, and myself, and the world". It was to be one of the first books with photographs, with seven heliotype plates, and Murray warned that this "would poke a terrible hole in the profits". The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals proved very popular, selling over 5,000 copies.
A second edition was published by Darwin's son around 1889. It did not contain several revisions wanted by Darwin, which were not published until the third edition of 1999 (edited by Paul Ekman).[2]
Although Konrad Lorenz in 1965 said Darwin could be seen as a "patron saint" of ethology based on this work, ethology has generally focused on behavior, not on emotion.[2]
See also
- Friedrich Gustav Jakob Henle, whose book figures 2 and 3 are borrowed from
- Laughter
- Gelotology
Notes and references
 |
This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (April 2009) |
- ^ Largely birds and mammals
- ^ a b Black, J (Jun 2002), "Darwin in the world of emotions" (Free full text), Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 95 (6): 311–3, ISSN 0141-0768, PMID 12042386, PMC 1279921, http://www.jrsm.org/cgi/pmidlookup?view=long&pmid=12042386
- Desmond, Adrian; Moore, James (1991), Darwin, London: Michael Joseph, Penguin Group, ISBN 0-7181-3430-3
- The 1994 American edition (reprint): Desmond, Adrian; Moore, James (1994), Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, ISBN 0393311503, http://books.google.com/books?id=A31Izksd2I0C&printsec=frontcover
External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals |
- Freeman, R. B. (1977), The Works of Charles Darwin: An Annotated Bibliographical Handlist (2nd ed.), Folkstone: Dawson, http://darwin-online.org.uk/EditorialIntroductions/Freeman_TheExpressionoftheEmotions.html.
- Darwin, Charles (1872), The expression of the emotions in man and animals, London: John Murray, http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F1142&viewtype=text&pageseq=1.
Free e-book versions available on the internet:
- Google Book Search:
- Project Gutenberg: New York, D. Appleton and Company, 1899
- Chimpanzee Facial Expression & Vocalizations
- Dog Laughter Vocalization Spectograph
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