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

by Michael Taylor

Impossible Monsters is the captivating story of the discovery of the dinosaurs and how it upended our understanding of the origins of the world.‘An astonishing book about an extraordinary subject' PETER FRANKOPAN'As thrilling as it is sweeping' TOM HOLLAND‘The most talented young historian around ... A triumph’ SATHNAM SANGHERAIn 1811, a twelve-year-old girl uncovered some strange-looking bones in Britain’s southern shoreline. They belonged to no known creature and were buried beneath a hundred feet of rock. Over the next two decades, as several more of these ‘impossible monsters’ emerged from the soil, the leading scientists of the day were forced to confront a profoundly disturbing the Bible, as a historical account of the Earth's origins, was wildly wrong.This is the dramatic story of the crisis that engulfed science and religion when we discovered the dinosaurs. It takes us into the lives and minds of the extraordinary men and women who made these heretical discoveries, those who resisted them, as well as the pioneering thinkers, Darwin most famous among them, who took great risks to construct a new account of the earth’s and mankind’s origins.Impossible Monsters is the riveting story of a group of people who not only thought impossible things but showed them to be true. In the process they overturned the literal reading of the Bible, liberated science from the authority of religion and ushered in the secular age.‘Truly marvellous ... an intellectual thriller’ RICHARD HOLMES‘A stunning work ... of surprises and revelations’ STEVE BRUSATTE

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Science, Religion, Palaeontology, Dinosaurs, Evolution

475 pages, Hardcover

First published March 14, 2024

About the author

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 (2015) - 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.

(courtsey of Penguin Books, 2020.)

Librarian note: There are other authors on Goodreads with this name. This profile takes 8 spaces:Michael^^^^^^^^Taylor

Reviews

[Sarah-Hope · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michael Taylor's Impossible Monsters is a real treat for people who enjoy considering the ways issues/topics can affect other issues/topics. I like reading books about dinosaurs. I also like reading books about the history of religion. This makes Impossible Monsters a two-fer: the discovery of dinos impacting accepted religious belief and religious belief influencing the ways dinosaur fossils were originally understood.

The book has occasional slow spots, but for the most part Taylor keeps readers engaged and ready to turn to the next page. It's the reading equivalent of a multi-course meal, with one delicious item after another.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.

[Cindy · Rating 4 out of 5]

First, let me say that I was impressed with the narrator, James MacCallum. I could tell, just by the tone and volume of his voice, when he was reading a quote and when he was reading a parenthetical (or possibly footnote?) insertion. Quite a talent. For a nonfiction audio book this is important to me.
I also enjoyed the book itself. I knew some of this, but I learned very interesting things about exactly when scientists suspected dinosaurs evolved into birds, what Darwin really thought and said about religion, how the discovery of dinosaurs reinforced the theory of evolution, and more. Solid history read.

[columbo · Rating 5 out of 5]

them british scientists were so MESSYYYYY

[History Today]

Darwin once speculated that the first spark of life had originated long ago, ‘perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind’. According to his dark Malthusian vision, the natural world resembled ‘one great slaughter-house, one universal scene of rapacity and injustice’ governed by a simple law: ‘Eat or be eaten!’ That evocative image reeks of Victorian cut-throat capitalism – but it was forged at the end of the 18th century by Erasmus Darwin. Long before his grandson hit the headlines, many naturalists recognised some form of evolutionary theory and agreed that the Bible did not provide an accurate guide to the age of the earth.

Charles Darwin is routinely celebrated as a British hero whose principle of natural selection mirrored society’s industrialisation, but his ideas had older roots. He studied his grandfather’s work closely, and was constantly haunted by this embarrassing ancestor. During the notorious debate at Oxford in 1860, Bishop Wilberforce supposedly taunted Thomas Huxley – Charles Darwin’s ‘bulldog’ – by asking which of his grandparents had descended from an ape, but in his written review of On the Origin of Species, it was Darwin’s own ‘ingenious grandsire’ Erasmus whom he named, shamed and blamed.

Along with many of his contemporaries, this earlier Darwin plays no part in Michael Taylor’s Impossible Monsters. As his rousing title suggests, Taylor has mapped out an exciting if idiosyncratic route through the tangle of 19th-century thought, maintaining that evolution struggled to become accepted in the face of resolute religious opposition. He ‘unapologetically’ sets his story in Britain during the Victorian era, when ‘British opinion often mattered more’ than anybody else’s, and glosses over earlier views that the biblical account of creation failed to account for the geological facts.

Read the rest of the review at HistoryToday.com.

Patricia Fara is an Emeritus Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge.

[Yuliya Yurchuk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Книжка про те, як наука звільнялася від домінування релігії. Читається як пригодницький роман :)

[katie meddins (maresh) · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

this book begins where many forget. this book begins with twelve year old mary anning rummaging on the west country shoreline. this book begins with mary anning’s ichthyosaur, and the road she paved for the entire field of evolution, for earth science and biology.
this is not a book *about* mary anning, but it is one which gives her more credit than many.
as someone who works in the paleo sciences, i found this was a very well researched and accessible journey through the emergence of evolutionary thought and the impact that had on religion, science and politics throughout europe as well as further afield.
i may come back and write something longer, but i think this is an incredibly well compiled text that walks the reader through how huge swathes of this planet’s 4.04 billion years. whether your interest is the science, the politics, or the religion, i highly recommend this book.

[Pauline Stout · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a lot of book. Putting it better this is three books in a trench coat trying to be a book. It’s about the history of the discovery of dinosaurs/fossils but it’s also about the history of the theory of evolution but it’s also about the history of the fight between science and religion in the United Kingdom. It’s a lot.

Don’t get me wrong, I liked the book for the most part. There were a lot of really fascinating points in the writing. I love reading about the history of dinosaurs and fossils and how they were discovered. The history of the theory of evolution was mostly interesting. And the history of the battle between science and religion had some good parts. Can you tell which of the books in this book I liked more?

While there were interesting parts in this there were a lot of places that actively struggled to keep my attention. I had the audiobook version of this and there were multiple parts that I had to listen to again (sometimes multiple times) because I would suddenly realize that my brain had shut down a bit ago and I had no idea what was going on anymore. Most of this was well written but some parts were very dense and once again it took a couple relistens for me to catch what was going on.

I struggle to decide if I recommend this. If you’re in it for the fossil history I definitely do but other than that I’m not sure. Overall giving this a basic 3 stars and moving on with my reading year.

[Ed Stoddard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simply a superb and often gripping narrative account of the rise of secularism in 19th century Britain. The main battleground in the 21st century in the contested ground between science and religion is now the US, but the battle lines were drawn in Britain. Among other things I certainly learned a few things about British political history from this riveting read.

[Bridget Kruszka · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVED THIS BOOK.

It was dense, full of so much history, science, and commentary.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

For me this fell into a category of historical book where each chapter felt like new names and a new place but the same point. Wasn’t my thing.

[Emma Adelmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn’t realize when I started reading that this is primarily a history book rather than a paleontology book (but that’s on me for not reading the summary carefully enough). It can be rather dense and pedantic at times, especially towards the beginning — a bit more like a formal essay than a work of “popular history”. That, combined with my wilted attention span and a couple breaks to read other books, led to Impossible Monsters taking a little while for me to get through. But as I made more progress, I started to get way more into it. It was interesting to see how these deep-seated religious beliefs evolved and clashed with the infancy of science and secular thinking, and how the discovery of fossils played a central role. It’s obvious that this book was very well-researched. I particularly enjoyed the passages and quotes that really fleshed out the people who lived and died during these times and made them seem like more than just names in a textbook. We now live in a much better time for science, agnosticism/atheism, and free thinking, but after reading about some of the things that happened back in the 18th and 19th centuries, it’s funny to see that in some ways people haven’t changed at all.

[Rob · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent, illuminating, and entertaining history of the intellectual revolution of popular science in Victorian England. The discovery of dinosaurs is the jumping off point, but not the main subject (I was duped!) The true focus is the steady unravelling of Creationism and how Britain went, in less than a century, from a highly devout, Anglican, society which believed in a literal Genesis; to one that accepted evolution, palaeontology and the existence and extinction of fantastical monsters, and that the earth was in fact many millions of years old. It’s well structured around five key sections, each with a small cast of lynchpin figures, and the author Michael Taylor focuses on the people behind the discoveries: Mary Anning, Mantel, Darwin, Owen and Huxley. It’s richly engaging and really brightly told: proof again that history can be told with the vigour of a novel.

[James Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it. Taylor brings to life how one day not so long ago (truly not long ago - particularly in the scheme of our 4.4b old rock), a whole heap of bones got dug up pointing to the existing of an alien past full of inconceivable beings / impossible monsters. Who knows how this would be comprehended today.

I suspect theists are still struggling to square all this.

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stupendous read, detailing the early nineteenth century onwards growing schism between previously paired realms of religion and science. Impeccably researched, fascinating, funny and a joy learn from. Has the captivating snare of fiction whilst equally demonstrating its scientific merits and credentials. Hugely recommended.

[Angus McMaster · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating history of the resistance scientific discoveries faced at a time when the Protestant Church was all-powerful.

Justice for Mary Anning

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mission 2026: Binge reviewing (and rereading on occasion) all previous Reads, I was too slothful to review, back when I read them.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michio Kaku, and a constellation of other science communicators gently but persistently nudged me toward the vast, luminous world of popular science. From around 2003 onward, their books, lectures, and televised conversations opened doors to the core concepts of physics and the life sciences—doors I had once assumed were permanently closed to me.

In my school days, I was never an attentive or successful student of academic science. Equations felt opaque, definitions sterile, and classrooms rushed past wonder in favour of rote completion. Much later, with the distance of time and experience, I came to recognize the quiet flaws in traditional school pedagogy: curiosity was rarely nurtured, questions were often inconvenient, and understanding was frequently sacrificed for examination scores.

Outside that system, science revealed a very different face. Freed from the pressure of grades, it became narrative, philosophy, history, and human drama. I discovered that physics was not merely mathematics, but a language describing reality; that biology was not memorization, but an unfolding story of complexity, emergence, and survival. Once this realization took root, I never stopped gorging on science whenever the opportunity arose.

The turning point came in 2023. Stepping away from social media and its constant distractions, I committed myself to studying with care and intention. I began reading methodically, taking detailed notes, cross-referencing ideas, and comparing perspectives across disciplines. Over time, I worked through more than one hundred of the most influential and accessible books in popular science—spanning quantum mechanics, cosmology, evolution, neuroscience, and the philosophy of science.

This was not casual reading. It was slow, immersive, and comparative. Each book conversed with the next, correcting, expanding, or challenging earlier understandings. What emerged was not mastery, but clarity—and a sustained joy in learning that had once seemed unreachable.

I now share these books one by one, not as a display of quantity, but as a record of intellectual hunger rediscovered. These binge-posts are milestones in a long, unfinished education—proof that curiosity, once awakened, refuses to be silenced.

Reading Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin, and the Battle Between Science and Religion feels less like consuming a work of popular science and more like entering a long, echoing gallery where ideas rather than fossils are preserved.

Michael Taylor does not just recount the discovery of dinosaurs or rehearse the familiar Darwinian controversies; he reconstructs a moment in intellectual history when the ground beneath Western certainty began to shift. What emerges is a deeply textured narrative about belief under pressure — about what happens when the earth itself begins to speak in a voice older than scripture.

The book’s central power lies in its ability to restore shock to ideas that have long since been domesticated. Today, dinosaurs are cultural furniture: toys, films, museum mascots. Evolution is textbook knowledge. Deep time is a concept we casually invoke without existential dread. Taylor reminds us that none of this was inevitable.

There was a time when fossil bones did not signify wonder alone but terror — theological, philosophical, emotional. The nineteenth century did not inherit dinosaurs as curiosities; it discovered them as disruptions.

Taylor situates this upheaval within the slow emergence of geological thinking. Figures such as Charles Lyell expanded the age of the earth beyond anything previously imaginable. The implications of this expansion were not merely scientific. Time itself became destabilized. A universe once measured in biblical genealogies suddenly stretched into millions of years, then hundreds of millions.

The human story shrank accordingly. Taylor is particularly strong in conveying how destabilizing this recalibration of scale must have felt. Deep time is not just a scientific fact; it is a psychological experience. It forces the mind to confront its own smallness.

Into this widening temporal abyss enters Charles Darwin, though Taylor wisely avoids making Darwin the sole protagonist. Instead, Darwin becomes one node in a broader network of thinkers, collectors, clergymen, and amateur naturalists. This decentralization is one of the book’s most admirable scholarly decisions.

The story of evolution is too often reduced to a heroic narrative of solitary genius confronting ignorant opposition. Taylor replaces this myth with a far more interesting reality: a dense web of conversations, hesitations, reinterpretations, and gradual accommodations.

Dinosaurs themselves emerge in the narrative not as biological entities alone but as intellectual provocations. When Richard Owen coined the term “Dinosauria,” he was not merely naming a group of extinct reptiles; he was formalizing a new vision of the past. These were not isolated oddities but inhabitants of entire lost worlds. The earth, it seemed, had hosted vast chapters of life that had vanished completely.

Extinction, once a marginal idea, became unavoidable. And extinction posed a profound theological question: why would a divine creator permit entire species to disappear?

Taylor handles this theological dimension with admirable subtlety. Rather than caricaturing religion as reactionary or science as uniformly progressive, he reveals a spectrum of responses. Some religious thinkers integrated extinction into broader divine narratives, treating it as part of a grander cosmic design. Others resisted, clinging to literal readings of Genesis. Still others occupied uneasy middle grounds, attempting to reconcile empirical evidence with inherited belief. This nuanced portrayal is one of the book’s most valuable contributions, particularly in an era where the “science versus religion” binary is often rehearsed with tedious predictability.

One of the most compelling aspects of Taylor’s narrative is his attention to public culture. He understands that ideas do not live only in laboratories or manuscripts; they live in spaces where people encounter them. Museums, exhibitions, and public lectures become crucial theaters in this drama.

The reconstruction of prehistoric life in public displays transformed abstract debates into sensory experiences. When Victorian audiences encountered life-sized dinosaur models, they were not merely learning facts. They were walking among ghosts. The past became spatial, immersive, almost theatrical.

This emphasis on spectacle reveals Taylor’s sensitivity to the emotional dimensions of scientific change. Scientific revolutions are not purely rational events; they are also aesthetic and psychological ones.

The Victorian encounter with dinosaurs was infused with awe — an awe previously reserved for religious experience. In a subtle but persistent way, Taylor suggests that science did not eliminate wonder; it redistributed it. Cathedrals of faith found strange analogues in halls of natural history.

Darwin’s presence in the book is handled with refreshing restraint. Taylor neither sanctifies nor vilifies him. Instead, Darwin appears as a careful, often cautious thinker, acutely aware of the disruptive implications of his work.

The publication of evolutionary theory did not produce an instantaneous cultural explosion, as popular narratives sometimes suggest. Rather, it triggered a long process of digestion. Some theologians adapted surprisingly quickly, interpreting evolution as a mechanism of divine creativity.

Others reacted defensively. Still others simply remained uncertain. By slowing down the tempo of conflict, Taylor restores historical credibility to a story too often told in melodramatic strokes.

The treatment of the famous confrontation between Thomas Henry Huxley and Samuel Wilberforce exemplifies this historiographical maturity.

Rather than presenting it as a decisive battlefield victory for science, Taylor contextualizes it within a broader continuum of debate. The “battle” becomes less a singular clash and more an emblematic episode in a prolonged negotiation. This resistance to mythologizing elevates the book from popular history to serious intellectual narrative.

Stylistically, Taylor writes with a curator’s poise. His prose is lucid, measured, and quietly evocative. There is an attentiveness to detail that suggests both archival immersion and narrative discipline. Scenes unfold with tactile immediacy: dusty fossil beds, lecture halls humming with speculation, clergy poring over unsettling geological reports.

Yet the writing never succumbs to ornamental excess. It remains grounded, disciplined, and accessible — a balance that is notoriously difficult to achieve in works straddling academic and general readerships.

At a deeper level, the book is about epistemological humility. The nineteenth century, as Taylor presents it, becomes a laboratory of uncertainty. Established frameworks did not collapse overnight; they eroded slowly, under pressure from accumulating evidence. This slow erosion is perhaps the book’s most haunting motif. Intellectual revolutions, Taylor implies, rarely arrive as explosions. They seep. They accumulate. They unsettle quietly before they transform visibly.

Reading the book from a contemporary vantage point intensifies its resonance. The anxieties that haunted the Victorians have not vanished. Debates over evolution persist in some regions; conflicts over climate science, biotechnology, and cosmology continue to provoke similar tensions between empirical evidence and inherited belief systems. Taylor does not draw heavy-handed parallels, but the implications are unmistakable. The past becomes a mirror in which our own uncertainties flicker.

There is also a compelling undercurrent in the way Taylor explores myth-making. Once dinosaurs entered public imagination, they quickly transcended scientific discourse. They became cultural symbols — modern dragons, embodiments of lost worlds, secular monsters that satisfied ancient narrative appetites. In this sense, the book’s title is beautifully paradoxical. These creatures were once literally unimaginable, then suddenly ubiquitous.

They were “impossible” not because they were unreal, but because they exceeded conceptual limits. They shattered the boundaries of what people thought the world could contain.

Personally, the most affecting dimension of the book lies in its portrayal of intellectual vulnerability. Taylor’s Victorians are not abstractions; they are people confronting cognitive vertigo. To discover that humanity occupies a fleeting instant in an immense geological continuum is to experience a kind of existential dislocation.

The book captures this dislocation with quiet empathy. It neither mocks belief nor romanticizes doubt. Instead, it dwells in the space between them — a space where most real intellectual life unfolds.

If the book has a limitation, it may lie in its geographical concentration. The focus on British intellectual culture, while coherent and richly detailed, leaves other contexts somewhat less explored. American developments, including the dramatic fossil rivalries that later shaped paleontology, appear more as peripheral echoes than central threads. Yet this narrowing is also a structural choice, allowing Taylor to maintain narrative cohesion rather than dispersing his attention across too many terrains.

Another potential critique concerns the relative lightness of technical paleontological detail. Readers expecting dense anatomical discussions or cutting-edge evolutionary biology may find the scientific content less granular than anticipated. But this is ultimately a matter of expectation. Taylor’s interest lies not in reconstructing dinosaurs as organisms but in reconstructing them as ideas. His subject is not prehistoric biology but modern consciousness.

By the time one reaches the end of ‘Impossible Monsters’, it becomes clear that the book is less about dinosaurs themselves than about what their discovery did to human self-understanding. Fossils become catalysts.

They force humanity to renegotiate its place in the cosmos. They expand time, complicate faith, and destabilize anthropocentrism. In this sense, the real drama unfolds not in prehistoric swamps but in Victorian minds.

The book leaves behind a lingering sense of intellectual gratitude. It reminds us that certainty is historically fragile, that even our most stable assumptions are contingent. The Victorians who grappled with deep time were not merely participants in a scientific transition; they were pioneers of a new mental landscape.

They learned to inhabit a universe larger and older than any previously imagined. We are heirs to that enlargement, often without recognizing its cost.

Ultimately, Taylor’s achievement lies in his refusal to flatten history into polemic. He neither weaponizes science against religion nor romanticizes faith against empiricism. Instead, he offers a meditation on coexistence — on the messy, ongoing negotiation between evidence and meaning. Dinosaurs, in his telling, are not blunt instruments in an ideological war. They are invitations to rethink.

There is something quietly profound about that invitation. It suggests that intellectual maturity does not consist in choosing sides but in sustaining complexity. The nineteenth century, as Taylor renders it, becomes a rehearsal space for modern consciousness — a place where humanity learned, painfully and gradually, to live with uncertainty.

Closing the book, one is left with a sense that the true “monsters” of the title are not the prehistoric creatures themselves but the ideas they unleashed. Ideas that stretched time beyond comfort, displaced humanity from the center, and forced belief systems to evolve. These monsters were not slain; they were assimilated. And in assimilating them, we became modern.

That, perhaps, is the enduring achievement of ‘Impossible Monsters’. It reminds us that intellectual revolutions are not merely about discovering new facts. They are about learning how to live with them.

Popular science seldom gets as good. A most enjoyable and recommended tome.

[Foggygirl · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fascinating read.

[Marianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

An especially fun read for someone who was still raised to believe the earth is 6000 years old 👍

[Erin Gallacher · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVED 🦖🦕🦖🦕🦖🦕🦖🦕🦖🦕🦖

Justice for Mary Anning!!

Need to visit the natural history museum again soon 🧠🧠🧠

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lost some steam in the last third or so.

[Ebirdy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book, but it won't appeal to probably a majority of people.

I liked the way the book was organized: he focused on a specific period of time, and a relatively small number of people, which kept the book pretty concise. He segued between the people and the time periods very well. I also liked the way he wove in cultural / societal events to give a more complete picture of what was happening in Britain while these culture wars between science and religion were happening. Finally, although focusing mostly on Britain, he recognizes and acknowledges the work being done in other parts of the world, and that the United States ended up contributing the most fossils.

While only 334 pages in length, there is a lot of information packed in and some of it is a little dry and/or quite detailed. So, the reader must enjoy this type of writing and be patient working through parts of it. It's a book that takes time to read, but it is very enjoyable and I learned so much. Taylor did a great job of making the "characters" come alive. I also really appreciated that, where possible, he included women and the contributions they made to the fields of geology and paleontology. This ranged from actively discovering fossils (Anning) to the wives of several of the men whose contributions might "only" have been transcribing their husband's works or supervising their physical health. It was refreshing that Taylor saw and acknowledged these contributions.

[Scott Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is not so much about the history of the actual creatures discussed (mainly dinosaurs), but more about the history of paleontology and how the fascination about old fossils spurred some seriously intense debates about science, history and religion. Starting from a family living near the English seashore in the early 19th century, the book goes in chronological order as different figures saw different things about the bones in question. Some saw a new vision of the past, one that threw previously held assumptions out the window. Yet, others saw these bones as a major threat to the religious order that held sway over much of humanity. The book brings in the works of Darwin, evolution and ends with the “Bone Wars” in the American West to close out the 19th century/start of the 20th.

Overall, an engaging read about the story of those who tried to tell the story of the past. The twists and turns of the debates of religion vs science would not seem so out of place in the 21st century. Overall, a very readable book that will be well worth the time invested in it (be it audiobook or hard/e-copy).

[Ian Schultz · Rating 2 out of 5]

My rule of thumb is 100 pages, if a book doesn't grip me by page 101 I go to the next one.
This, was one of those times.
The premise is strong; the events in the 1820s to 1860s that led to discoveries of fossils standing in the face of the established historical narrative based on biblical understanding.
What I found was that the book is littered with mini biographies of the individuals who partook in said discoveries.

It wasn't engaging to me but amatuer paleontologists, geologists and historians will be thrilled.

[Michael Reilly · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is hard for us to appreciate how much courage, stubbornness and contrariness it took to argue in favor of Darwin's theories in 19th century England. This is a history of that battle of ideas from 1810, when the first recognized dinosaur bones were discovered in England, to Darwin's death in 1882.

Taylor starts with a prologue about Archbishop Ussher who discovered in 1650, by biblical and historical analysis, that the world was created on the night on October 22-23, 4004 BC. His date was adopted by the Church of England. It appeared as the definitive date in most bibles.

In most modern books, Archbishop Ussher is a figure of fun, particularly because of the definiteness of his dating. Taylor argues that he was a respected and learned authority. He used techniques that were widely accepted. He was considered a reliable and sensible expert. He is typical of the weight of authority that scientist had to battle with when they changed the story of the history of the world.

Taylor traces two interconnected stories. A collection of amateurs and scientist began in the early 1800s to discover large unknown bones from animals that were extinct. The Church did not believe that God made mistakes, and therefore there should be no extinct animals. The evidence began to pile up from around the world that these unknown animals existed.

Taylor makes the story exciting. He is good at character sketches of the strong personalities, and he tells a good story. For example, he describes a meeting of the Royal Geological Society in 1824. "On that late winter's evening in February 1824, Buckland achieved a first in human history; he had described a dinosaur."

The second story is the development of the theory of evolution. He traces Darwin's very slow development of the theory and the push he gets from the simultaneous discovery by Wallace. The religious opposition is fierce. God created the species perfectly. They did not change or evolve.

Taylor shows that throughout this period, there was real risk to challenging Christianity. In the early part of the century publishers were being jailed for publishing blasphemy which challenged the teaching of the Church. When Darwin began publishing his ideas, men were losing prestigious jobs because they were challenging accepted religious dogma.

By the 1880s the stories merge. The robust dinosaur evidence provided strong evidence of evolution of species. The Church was also rapidly losing its power in England. The dinosaur hunters were now battling each other about dinosaur theories and for credit for new discoveries

This is a deeply researched book, but Taylor is a pleasure to read. He seems to be enjoying himself. I chuckled at this turn of phrase, "James Parkinson, the doctor who described the eponymous palsy...". I laughed when he did it again 250 pages later when discussing, "Charles Bell, who had described the eponymous palsy..."

Besides a fascinating story, the book is filled with interesting stuff.

There was a group of "scriptural geologist" who fought the new ideas.

William Buckland, one of the first scientist to study dinosaurs, "set himself the mission of tasting every animal on Earth." A guest complained about a crocodile dish he was served but he enjoyed the "delicate toast of mice."

The child's rhyme about "She sell seashells by the seashore." is about Mary Anning of Lyme Regis, England. She was one of the first dinosaur bone hunters. She made some important discoveries, and she sold the shells and bones she discovered at the seashore to scientists and museums.

Here is a good line. Gideon Mantell, "with no sense of irony, dined with Edward Bulwer-Lytton on a "wet and stormy " night." (Look up "dark and stormy night")

Samuel Wilberforce, the Bishop of Oxford was a virulent enemy of Darwin and his ideas. He was known as "Soapy Sam" because Benjamin Disraeli had described him as "unctuous, oleaginous and saponaceous". "Saponaceous" means soapy.

English Vocabulary. Richard Owen, a Darwin opponent, "resigned in a strop". "Strop" in English slang is a bad mood or temper tantrum.

This is my favorite type of nonfiction. An important story is well told. The author has wit and style. I learned something and enjoyed myself.

[Prof. Purple · Rating 4 out of 5]

he Ambitions of the Monstrous: A Review of Impossible Monsters by Michael Taylor

There is an old adage, passed down from history’s more cynical observers, that power corrupts. This truism, which has launched a thousand freshman philosophy essays, is generally accepted with the same lazy assent that people offer to platitudes about the weather. What is rarer, and far more valuable, is a book that does not merely recite this observation but interrogates it with the precision of a scalpel and the curiosity of an archaeologist unearthing an uncomfortable truth.

Michael Taylor’s Impossible Monsters is such a book. It is an inquiry into the psychology of ambition, the elasticity of moral compromise, and the ways in which civilization, with its pretensions to order, often acts as an incubator for those it professes to abhor. This is a book that does not ask whether monsters are real but instead suggests that monstrosity may be an inevitable byproduct of the systems we have built.
A Study of Power and the Psychology of the Monstrous

Taylor’s thesis—or at least the thread that winds its way through this searching, elegantly constructed book—is that the monsters of history, of politics, and of the boardroom do not emerge fully formed from the abyss. Instead, they are sculpted by circumstances, nudged along by incentives, and, most unsettlingly, often celebrated before they are condemned.

Taylor does not settle for easy answers. He does not moralize, nor does he stoop to the sort of overheated denunciations that fill the airwaves of our time. Instead, he examines the phenomenon of the “monstrous” with a calm, forensic patience. In this, he recalls the tradition of writers who understand that history’s villains were often, at least for a time, seen as its visionaries.

It is to Taylor’s credit that his prose is not merely insightful but wickedly precise. He writes with the sort of disciplined elegance that suggests a mind allergic to cliché. His sentences unfurl with the kind of crisp authority that demands the reader’s full attention—no skimming allowed.
A Catalog of the Monstrous, or an Indictment of Us All?

The book is at its most compelling when Taylor turns his gaze toward the uncomfortable reality that societies, in their pursuit of greatness, often cultivate their own destruction. He does not offer a parade of easy villains, nor does he traffic in the sort of overwrought historical analogies that are the refuge of lazier commentators. Instead, he shows how the incentives of power tend to reward traits that, in hindsight, we prefer to denounce rather than acknowledge.

One is reminded, reading Taylor’s case studies, of the old Chestertonian observation that “there are no uninteresting subjects, only uninterested people.” In Taylor’s hands, even well-worn themes—ambition, corruption, the moral hazard of unchecked influence—become newly illuminating. He forces the reader to reconsider not just the nature of those we call “monsters” but the conditions that made them possible in the first place.
A Book to Ponder, and Perhaps to Fear

It is difficult to read Impossible Monsters without an uneasy sense that its lessons are as relevant to our time as they are to the past. If history’s greatest transgressors were not always seen as villains in their own time, then what does that say about our own era? Are the celebrated figures of today merely the cautionary tales of tomorrow?

Taylor does not answer this question outright. He does something more valuable: he forces the reader to ask it for themselves.

In an age where the term “monstrous” is applied with reckless abandon, often as a substitute for deeper thought, Impossible Monsters demands a more precise reckoning. It is not an easy book, nor is it a comforting one. But it is, unmistakably, an important one.

And in the end, that may be the most unsettling revelation of all.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher W. W. Norton & Company for an advance copy on the rise of the science of paleontology, and how the bones of dinosaurs raised doubts, fears and quite a bit of consternation among people who were sure about the origins of the world, and God's role in it.

Like most children, even a pre-Jurassic Park child, I loved dinosaurs. I loved to play with dinosaur toys, loved dinosaur pop-up books. Watched Godzilla, a close to dinosaur movie, and Journey to the Center of the Earth to see dinosaurs fight. We all had favorites, and would argue about them. After Jurassic Park, the movie, everyone seemed to be a dinosaur expert. I was working in bookstores at the time, and even we were stunned by the amount of titles that came in, and how little kids were looking at books that were bigger than they were, but the kids were enthralled nonetheless. I knew that paleontology was well not a relatively new science, but I did not know the impact that fossils and dinosaur bones had on the thinking of people. People who were sure about the origins of the Earth. For if this was wrong, what else could be wrong, and that could send a theology reeling. Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin, and the Battle Between Science and Religion by Michael Taylor is a look at what happens when beliefs meet science, the reactions from people to the growth of new sciences, to the covering of ears and eyes, and praying nothing changes.

There was a time when there was a consensus about when the world began. Through careful study, math, a little bit of creative imagining, James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh came to the careful conclusion that the world began at 6 pm, October 22, 4004 BC. Something that a few holdouts still use, no matter what science or even common sense might say. Religion is hard to argue with, especially when the power of the state, and a more than willing populous is in favor of it. But little things through the ages, began to poke holes in theories. This all culminated in the 19th century, when a young woman, looking to feed her family, something that had led to the death of her father, began to find a lot of bones in some rocks on the coast of England. The bones were of an ichthyosaur, and from this bones, a science was born, and over almost one hundred years, much would change for Victorian society, in belief, what is known, and even more what is unknown.

A very well written book that balances a lot of people, with different backgrounds and ideas, yet never bogs down in either religion, dinosaurs, or even what life was like for so many people. Taylor has done a lot of research, and writes in a way that is not overwhelming to people either new to the times, the people or even paleontology. Taylor was a Jurassic Park child, who came to his love of dinosaurs through the film. Also we both share an agreement that the movies have gone consistently downhill. Taylor writes of religious matters, and of the era with a lot of familarity, more conversational than lecturing. Also Taylor is funny, which helps quite a bit. There is a lot going but again, Taylor holds is all together, and gives a balanced and intriguing account of all the backroom shenanigans, cover-ups, and lies to keep power and their control. I different sort of dinosaur book.

Recommended for dinosaur fans, fans of history, and people who enjoy reading books about science, and the growth of different scientific fields. A lot of fun, and very well told.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Truth is better than disingenuous comfort.”

The 1800s were a fascinating and exciting time to be alive, assuming you were a gentleman scientist. Britain proved to be a place “where dissenting religion and industrial innovation forged a crucible of curiosity.” What happened in the 1800s would forever change our relationship with Christianity and science.

Taylor guides us through the late 1700s into the early 1900s when Britain was riddled with controversy. Gentlemen scientists were emerging and with them the discovery of fossils that inevitably challenged long-held, established beliefs. Early British geologists attempted to fit their developing theories into the creationist account of Earth as the government and religious organizations attempted to respond with severe consequences for anyone who published controversial theories. It was a nerve-wracking time. More and more pieces of evidence were unearthed leading to revolutionary publications from a variety of gentlemen scientists that culminated in the final form known as Darwinism. But how well do you know the man, or more accurately the men, behind the theory?

Pros
Enlightening, insightful, thought-provoking
Taylor’s account of Darwin and others was enlightening. The personal struggles and concerns regarding their own religious beliefs alongside the fear of severe consequences for sharing these theories led to a tumultuous time of science versus religion. “This was not … a knock-out blow to religion; rather, … it had been a work of relentless attrition.”

Immediately captures your attention
I was hooked from the very beginning of the book. The Preface and Prologue beautifully set the scene and presented curious details that made me want to learn more. That interest was sustained throughout all five parts of the book.

Detailed and significant
Impossible Monsters does not scrimp on the details. Taylor provides a meticulous level of insight into the inner thoughts of these gentlemen scientists who shaped our understanding of the natural world. The author dives into personal journals and letters to give us a fair and honest representation of each critical person involved. My appreciation and understanding of Charles Darwin was especially impacted because of this book.

Cons
Chapter organization
Given the amount of detail and connections that Taylor wanted to express, the chapters often felt like they jumped around and it could be difficult to follow along the timeline.

Dramatis Personae
Related to my first con, the book would have benefitted from a detailed Dramatis Personae at the start of the book that could be referenced as needed.

Overall…
I highly recommend Impossible Monsters. It heavily changed my perspective on and understanding of that highly influential period of time. Not only was this an educational book, it was also an engrossing experience.

[Jun Wen · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin, and the Battle Between Science and Religion , author Michael Taylor tells the intriguing story of how humanity’s vanguards in the 19th century rode the wave of discoveries in natural history and paleontology to first gather the evidence, and then the courage to conduct an unbiased assessment of man’s place in the world. This was by no means a linear or smooth process, as the protagonists starring Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley were met with fierce resistance at every step from equally eminent thinkers who were less ready to adjust their thinking to the evidence, and more inclined to adjust the evidence to their thinking.

On the surface, this is a history book about the development and triumph of rational thought over biblical literalism, and on this score the book is exceptional. However, the value of the book goes way beyond the accurate tracing of an epochal development in history. The fierce resistance encountered by the protagonists as they sought to uncover the natural truth of mankind’s origins is a crystallization of the contradiction between the desire to know and the fear of knowing that typifies human existence.

As I read the book, I could not help but feel that I was witnessing an transpersonal parallel to the individual’s struggle towards psychological maturation, in which there are few developments as paramount as gaining the ability to accurately locate oneself within the cosmic order of the universe. This is, on a much grander scale, the same inexplicable sense of connectedness and fulfilment that one feels upon viewing his own apartment block from the point of view of a satellite using Google Earth. This ability is hard earned, as it takes a tremendous amount of courage to conduct a realistic assessment of one’s place in the world. Until that courage is somehow mustered, adolescents are stuck in a state of narcissism. The preservation of oversimplistic delusions serve the dual purpose of protecting fragile egos while also providing a shield from complex and inconvenient reality. Just as an adolescent has to struggle to build his mastery over his external environment before being able to overcome his narcissism to achieve a state of psychological maturity, the human race has had to struggle to overcome deep-seated aversion towards realizing the truth about his origins and his place in the world.

Viewed through this lens, humanity appears to have taken a giant leap towards the truth and survived thanks to the efforts of Darwin, Huxley and their cohorts. And yet, despite apparently having achieved this more than a century ago, mankind remains mired in simplistic delusions. It thus appears that it is not enough for the leap made by a few vanguards, or even a community of scientific elites. In order for mankind to truly claim this achievement, each individual needs gather first the evidence, and then the courage to make the leap for themselves. To this end, this book is an excellent manual and resource.

[Simon Dobson · Rating 5 out of 5]

How dinosaurs drove the development of the theory of evolution – and a lot more.

It's hard to credit that the first dinosaurs were only discovered at the end of the 18th century. They emerged into a world that had little doubt about the literal truth of biblical creation. They helped to shatter that certainty, although not alone and not at once.

This is a book that itself shatters several myths. It shows how Victorian scientists were as religious as their fellow citizens – and often more so – and how their faith coloured their interpretations of the evidence they themselves were discovering. It describes a Darwin too afraid of the possible social consequences ot publish his theories of natural selection as they are formed, and indeed he doesn't publish them until he's slowly built up his reputation as a naturalist through more traditional means: a level of patience that would be unthinkable today. And it shows that his interactions with Alfred Russel Wallace – often described as his rival – were marked by kindness and high regard on both sides, with Wallace modestly content in taking a supporting role (and later being a pallbearer at Darwin's interrment in Westminster Abbey).

Over the source of the 19th century the religious certainties are challenged successfully, but there was nothing inevitable about the triumph and the opponents absolutely did not go quietly. Atheism remained the last taboo: long after Catholics and non-confirmist Protestants had their civil and political rights restored, atheists still had to fight to be allowed to take seats in Parliament. Taylor presents this as part of the conflict driven by the dinosaurs and the scientific changes their discovery drove, and it's hard to argue with him.

There are some fascinating vignettes. My favourite is when Alfred Russel Wallace takes a bet to show the earth is not flat, and devises an ingenious method that of course doesn't rely on any modern technology or arguments, but which is self-evidently correct. That there are still many flat-earthers even today is testament to the abiding need to keep pressing for science and evidence in public life.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

My apologies to anyone who has not retained their toddler love of dinosaurs. I loved this book. Although it is more like a textbook than an easy read, as it is chock full of names, places and scientific information, it is fascinating.
To think that dinosaurs were first (maybe others saw them, but did not recognize them for the extraordinary find they were) found on the shores of England, not by a scientist, but by members of a local poor family. Soon everyone got into the game, and this story of treasure hunt in the 1800s is replete with names of the famous-Darwin of course, Huxley, Alfred Russell Wallace, Lyell, and on the American side, Cope and Marsh. German finds are noted, but not elaborated on, and later, American finds and South American finds added to a list of Apex predators.
The problem created by these finds in England was a dilemma with Church of England doctrine--the world was created, fully formed, in 7 days, and then there was a great flood, wiping out species. How did these monsters fit into the Biblical picture--and if they did not, how to explain them? For the clergy and scientists in the mid 1800s, these was a serious and thorny dilemma.
One of the last chapters of the book describes England's fascination with the "monsters" resulting in fictional works with dinosaurs. I remember reading The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle when I was 12-so thrilling-and thrilling also to Michael Crichton, who stated that the idea for Jurassic park stemmed from his reading of the earlier work when he was a child.

I recommend it for the nerdy among us who still hope for undiscovered marvels!!