In 1859, Charles Darwin published one of the most famous—and most controversial—works of science the world has ever known: The Origin of Species.
Darwin was not the first to posit a theory of evolution, nor a theory of natural selection. But neither idea was accepted when he wrote his book, much less when he was doing the research that led to it, which took place in the 1830s. But On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, to use the book’s very pithy official title, sparked decades of debate that changed our understanding of our world.
To have such an impact, Darwin first had to change the way he approached science. As Marsha Richmond wrote for the National Science Foundation:
Darwin’s methodology revolutionized the life sciences, setting the stage for major advances in twentieth-century biology. Prior to Origin, natural historians primarily engaged in describing and naming organisms, along with studying their anatomy and physiology. To establish his claim that organisms evolved over time by means of natural selection, Darwin had to lay out a vast array of empirical evidence drawn from many different areas of natural history and then formulate “one long argument” to explain these observations (Origin, p. 459). […] Darwin argued that any theory that was able to explain so many different classes of facts was not likely to be false. After 1859, Darwin’s hypothesis-driven research program, now called the “hypothetico-deductive” method, in addition to his particular theory of evolution, became the foundation for future work in biology.
It’s rare for a single work to have such an impact, especially one that’s still being debated 150 years later. That’s what makes Darwin’s book worth revisiting.
Leave a Reply