Introduction
The Origin of Species:
A Scientific Work of Constant Relevance
The Origin of Species is arguably the most important biological work ever written. It was the first in which a theory of biological evolution was fully developed, along with an explanation of its principal means and motivating forces. Charles Darwin had a broad grasp of many scientific disciplines that is almost impossible to imagine in today''s age of specialization, and he developed an inclusive theory of biological evolution that today runs like a thread through all areas of biology, including anatomy, physiology, genetics, taxonomy, and ecology. The general idea of evolution is also central to other fields of science, including paleontology, geology, and cosmology. The practical outgrowths of biological evolution theory range from transplanting organs to combating harmful viruses. And the theory of evolution has continued to develop, in part because of important advances in our understanding of genetics, techniques for estimating the age of Earth, the biochemistry of the origin of life, electron microscopy, population studies, and other disciplines.
While Darwin''s work had an immense and electrifying impact, first on mid-nineteenth-century Britain and then spreading around the world, it is all too true that its dissemination has hardly been one of uninterrupted advance. In the United States, it continues to meet religious opposition. In the mid-1920s, the trial of John Scopes made headlines around the country. Scopes, a Tennessee schoolteacher, was brought up on criminal charges for teaching evolutionary theory. Although the decision was later reversed (on a technicality) by the Tennessee Supreme Court, Scopes was convicted and fined one hundred dollars, and in the wake of the case there was overall backward motion in terms of evolution''s place in the nation''s curricula. Toward the end of the 1950s there was a spurt of interest in, and backing for, research and teaching in evolution as a result of concerns about an "education gap" following Russia''s launching of Sputnik in 1957. The centennial of Origin''s publication in 1959 also provided an impetus. The popularization of evolution theory and training students in at least its elements as part of the general promotion of careers in science continued through the 1960s until the mid-1980s. In the last couple of decades, however, there has been renewed resistance to Darwin''s theories, most notably with the rise in popularity of the idea of intelligent design.
Yet Darwinian theory remains a subject of vigorous scientific work, and the core of Darwinian theory has been upheld again and again, albeit with some modifications. Evolution theory is founded on an enormous body of facts. While a theoretical understanding of the evolutionary process continues to develop, there is no scientific doubt about the fact that evolution has occurred. Some 150 years after Darwin wrote his classic, it has proven to be central to our understanding of nature.
The Life and Work of Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin was born into a wealthy family in Shrewsbury, England, on February 12, 1809. His paternal grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, was a medical doctor whose writings extended beyond health and human physiology to natural history. Erasmus was also one of the early proponents of evolution. Charles''s mother was the daughter of Josiah Wedgwood, owner of a famous pottery-making concern. The home that Charles grew up in was filled with lively conversation, dedicated to scientific inquiry, and active in the movement to abolish slavery.
As a boy Charles demonstrated a great interest in science, collecting beetles and other animals and plants, conducting chemistry experiments, and reading whatever he could find about nature. But in school, he was an indifferent student. His father, displeased by his lack of progress in his studies, once told him, "You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family." When Charles was fifteen, his father sent him to medical school. But, partly under the influence of one of his professors, Robert Grant, Charles once again let his interests in studying life in the outdoors divert him from the assigned curriculum. Before long his father took him out of medical school and sent him to be trained as a clergyman at Cambridge. There were very few professional scientists at that time, but a number of clergymen were involved in scientific endeavors. One of his professors, J. S. Henslow, guided Darwin in a number of botanical projects. Adam Sedgwick inspired and instructed him in geology. Throughout the rest of his life Darwin was to consider himself first and foremost a geologist, and the work of others in this field, especially Charles Lyell, had a profound effect on Darwin''s own thinking about evolution.
After he graduated, at the age of twenty-two, Darwin was offered a position as a naturalist on a planned worldwide tour of the HMS Beagle. Although his father thought it would be a foolhardy adventure from a number of standpoints, Charles''s uncle, Josiah Wedgwood, persuaded the elder Darwin to let him go.
The expedition went on for nearly five years, traveling from England to the Canary and Cape Verde islands and across the Atlantic to Brazil. From there it headed south to Argentina and the Falkland Islands, around Cape Horn to Chile, and northward to Peru and Ecuador. The ship then set sail about 600 miles westward to the Galápagos Islands. From there it crossed the Pacific to New Zealand and Australia, and made its way through the Indian Ocean to the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa. Just as Darwin and the exhausted crew expected to head home, the captain insisted on diverting the ship back across the Atlantic to Brazil before returning to England. It was during the course of his travels that Darwin first encountered slavery -- the slave trade had been abolished by the British parliament in 1807, though it persisted in the colonies -- and strengthened his antislavery convictions.
Darwin, working in cramped quarters aboard the Beagle and often seasick, collected geological specimens as well as a wide variety of flora and fauna everywhere the Beagle stopped ashore. His marine research was also extensive, including some of the first scientific studies of coral reefs. He sent many items to England so that they could be studied by specialists; thus began the enormous scientific correspondence that he would maintain for the next fifty years.
After his return to England, he became active in scientific circles and lived in London for several years, where he married Emma Wedgwood, his cousin. But Darwin craved the quiet of the countryside, where he hoped to find an environment more conducive to his scientific researches. In 1842 the couple and their first two children moved to Kent, where they were eventually to have a family of ten children.
It was in London where Darwin began to formulate his theory of evolution by natural selection. Drawing on his own findings aboard the Beagle and recent advances in biology and geology, he compiled a series of notebooks. After moving to Down House in Kent, he continued his work and began to systematize his research in longer written works, including the extended Essay of 1844. This book contained essentially all the major ideas to be found fifteen years later in Origin of Species. Yet Darwin hesitated to publish it, or just about anything else, and spent eight years studying barnacles. So his theory of evolution, along with its socially and culturally radical implications for human evolution, remained unknown outside a very small circle of family members and close friends and associates.
Numerous factors were involved in this long gestation. These included Darwin''s ties among England''s wealthy and influential circles, people he did not wish to upset with his views about the evolutionary links between humans and all other animals; the opposition he anticipated from the church as well as many scientists; his wish to put together as rigorous as possible a defense of his views; and his general dislike of controversy and preference for stability. But finally, he found it necessary to publish when he learned of the work of Alfred Russel Wallace, a young naturalist who had independently discovered the principle of natural selection and had sent his manuscript to Darwin. Within a period of about eighteen months, Darwin pulled together nearly thirty years of detailed findings, honed his arguments, and produced The Origin of Species. The book sold out on the day of its publication. Eventually it went through six editions during Darwin''s lifetime. An intense controversy began in the 1860s, and with each new edition Darwin answered the main arguments of his critics. His supporters included the geologist Charles Lyell (who, despite encouraging Darwin to publish, did not accept his evolutionary conclusions), the botanist Joseph Hooker, and the anatomist and paleontologist Thomas Henry Huxley, who became Darwin''s principal defender and advocate both against other scientists who opposed Darwin''s theory and his opponents in the Anglican Church.
Darwin wrote a few more books after that, most notably The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex in 1871. In it he made his views on human evolution explicit, although Descent did not have the impact of The Origin of Species, with its clear subtext about human evolution that likely was not lost on many of its readers.
Literary and Historical Context
A Theoretical Cataclysm in a "Century of Peace"
Darwin''s life spanned many major developments in society. Formal slavery was abolished in several countries, and the slave trade, too, became a relative rarity. Following the Congress of Vienna in 1815, there were several decades of peace among the major European powers. The Industrial Revolution, centered in England, brought with it an unprecedented unleashing of productive forces in the context of an unbridled, competitive economy. It also brought with it a glaring class polarization that could be seen in the "dark satanic mills" and ghettos of cities like Manchester, and in the Irish potato famine and European revolutions of midcentury.
These events had their influence not only in the economic and political spheres but also on culture and science itself. In Darwin''s case, his notion of an ever-progressive process of natural selection reflected the optimism of the bourgeoise as it expanded a young and vital capitalism. The dominant nineteenth-century scientific belief that genetic changes in species happen gradually was woven into Darwin''s conception of a natural selection that proceeded without major, sudden shifts. The social emphasis on the individual and on competition was central to Darwin''s conception of the "survival of the fittest." (Darwin, who stated late in life that he understood little about political economy, uncritically adopted the views of ideologues like Thomas Malthus.)
In other words, Darwin was a product of his time. Yet regardless of the various cultural and philosophical views to which he subscribed, and some of the resulting forms that his scientific work took, there was a core to his evolution theory that had a very broad basis in scientific experiment, observation, and an informed reconstruction of the previous history of Earth and its life-forms. Over the past century and a half, the development of biological science has called into question certain tenets of his theory and some of its specific formulations. But these modifications have strengthened the vitality of his theory rather than leading to its demise, as opponents of science continue to demand. Darwin would have expected nothing different of any living thing.Supplementary materials copyright © 2008 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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Excerpted from The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin Copyright © 2008 by Charles Darwin. Excerpted by permission.
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