The Origin of Species

If you had an idea, perhaps one of the most important ideas of all time, but one that contradicted the established doctrine of a millennia old institution, how would you convince people your idea was right? And let's make no bones about the importance of Darwin's theory of evolution. As (the Russian Orthodox Christian) Theodosius Dobzhansky would famously put it over a century after Darwin's masterpiece was published: "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."

Looking at the modern online "debate" (and by using that word I stretch its definition well beyond its elastic limit) between the pro- and anti-evolution camps, it's a rather depressing scene. The anti- camp tends to get hung up on the meaning of the word show more "theory". I'm currently striving to make a career out of studying number theory. Given that the theory of numbers requires an abstraction of thought far more chimerical than any theory in the physical sciences, perhaps these masters of debate would suggest that numbers don't exist either and thus the Thomas More Legal Centre will start giving out millions of dollars to the needy — after all what is a million? No, seriously, what is a million? (Or in a more earthy example courtesy of Tim Minchin, maybe those who dismiss evolution as being "just a theory" feel the same away about the theory of gravity, and maybe they'll just float the fuck away.)

The pro-evolution camp fares little better to be honest; and by the pro- camp I'm not talking about the scientific community. Scientists know evolution is the basis of how life works, most of them are about as willing to have serious debates on it as I would be to debate the true value of pi. No, by the pro- camp I mean the youtube commenters and the such like whose responses to Creationists tend to invoke the promiscuity of the latter's mother.

Based on modern sentiments, then, to convince Victorian England that his theory of evolution was correct Darwin presumably launched a scathing attack on the Church and highlighted the fact that we must descend from smelly, hairy apes because he'd seen yo' momma. Zing.

So is that how he kicks off his treatise, with a rousing assault on the enemy? Not exactly. He talks about dogs. And chickens and goats. And Mr Blyth, who knows more about domesticated fowl than you or I ever will. Oh, and pigeons. There's a great deal about pigeons. The first chapter is in fact distinctly unrousing. "We know all this, Charles!" you feel like yelling, "Shut up about the God-forsaken pigeons already." Chapter two rolls around and the talk of pigeons ends. Praise be. What begins is Darwin's definition of "species". Given the work's title it seems fair enough that we should know what a species is, so Darwin defines one as being a collection of animals that can interbreed. He notes some empirical facts about the geographical distribution of genera and varieties and again the whole chapter is entirely unobjectionable.

Chapter three follows up by pointing out that exactly how one wishes to divide up living beings into groups is immaterial and will always be slightly artificial. What we can agree on is that within each grouping of alike animals or plants there is individual variation, as discussed in Chapter 2, and we know from domesticated animals and plants that living things tend to pass on certain characteristics to their offspring; and if we didn't know that when we started the book we do after the extensive discussion in Chapter 1. Finally, again from domesticated stock, we know that offspring inherit much from their parents, but will sometimes have quirks of their own. Spend enough time gardening or with an isolated group of animals and you won't be able to refute this. Thus, Darwin points out in Chapter 3, what happens if one of these distinct quirks the offspring develops is actually advantageous? Slightly better camouflage, say, or the ability to survive with less water, or seeds that are slightly more palatable to birds, or flowers that are more attractive to bees? By the definition of the word advantage this offspring would have a slightly better chance of surviving and producing offspring of its own. Only slightly better, yes, and still open to the whimsy of the environment, but better nonetheless. And if humans can turn wolves into Basset Hounds in a few hundred years, presumably over a few hundred thousand years these small statistical gains can add up to result in a living thing that is so far removed from its descendant that breeding would be impossible between the two of them. Thus we have: the origin of species.

Darwin, it should be pointed out, has nothing to say about your or anyone else's mother in The Origin of Species.

It's hard not to smile during the first few chapters of the book. Darwin lays out truths so self-evident that no one could refute them without losing all credibility. It's slow paced, sure, but only because Darwin is making sure that there can only be one inevitable conclusion. Even if you think your faith is irreconcilable with the conclusions he draws I think you'd be hard pressed to fault his logic. Indeed, most doubters of evolution seem to be Young Earth Creationists, those who believe that the Universe was created on Saturday 22nd October, 4004 BC, a remarkably specific date determined by the Irish Primate James Usher (not to be confused with rhythm and blues singer Usher Raymond IV who, to the best of my knowledge, hasn't made any attempt to calculate the exact age of the Earth). It's no coincidence that the Venn diagram of Christians and non-believers in evolution tends to intersect on this particular group: Darwin's theory requires hundreds of thousands of years for undirected evolution to work. A cat with laser eyes might have a massive advantage over its brethren but that advantage comes to naught if it gets ran over before it can make laser-kittens. Over many years, though, the chances of every laser cat that randomly appears being ran over tend to zero. Fortunately for Darwin, Victorian geologists aged the Earth at many millions of years old, ample time for laser-kittens.

As important as what is in the book is what isn't in the book. I smiled as I saw where Darwin was going with his argument. But oh how I cringed every time he tried to explain the mechanics of inheritance but couldn't because Mendel's theory of genetics wouldn't be widely publicised for another forty years. He also, wisely, doesn't apply his theory to humans, merely suggesting near the end of the final chapter that via evolution, "Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history." By the 1870s and his publication of [b:The Descent of Man|185407|The Descent of Man|Charles Darwin|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1311644193s/185407.jpg|728232] England had almost unanimously accepted evolution and was thus more willing to accept that man too had evolved from "lesser" lifeforms. Indeed, one of the more controversial aspects of Darwin's later work wasn't that we might have evolved from the same creature as did chimpanzees and orang-utans, but that the civilized English gentleman sipping his tea in the club was of the same species as the dark skinned, spear-carrying savages one heard of in fantastical books. That even this revelation was accepted by the majority of readers hopefully conveys the power of Darwin's arguments. And one more thing that doesn't appear in The Origin of Species is the woeful line that "we evolved from chimps". Few statements show a more feeble understanding of evolutionary theory than the notion that most extant species have been the same for hundreds of thousands of years while new species branch off. After all:

(Image by Matthew Bonnan as part of the Second annual Stick Science Cartoon Contest.)

Whatever your personal beliefs, it's hard to claim that The Origin of Species is anything short of a masterful argument. If, as Young Earth Creationists claim, God made the Earth look four and a half billion years old, hid fossils in the ground, and constantly tweaks species to better suit their environment but makes it all look like it's occurring naturally, then Darwin simply brought us all one step closer to understanding God. If on the other hand God either isn't there or doesn't care, then Darwin brought us one step closer to understanding the Universe itself, and I can think of no goal more sacred than that. show less

If you had an idea, perhaps one of the most important ideas of all time, but one that contradicted the established doctrine of a millennia old institution, how would you convince people your idea was right? And let's make no bones about the importance of Darwin's theory of evolution. As (the Russian Orthodox Christian) Theodosius Dobzhansky would famously put it over a century after Darwin's masterpiece was published: "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."

Looking at the modern online "debate" (and by using that word I stretch its definition well beyond its elastic limit) between the pro- and anti-evolution camps, it's a rather depressing scene. The anti- camp tends to get hung up on the meaning of the word show more "theory". I'm currently striving to make a career out of studying number theory. Given that the theory of numbers requires an abstraction of thought far more chimerical than any theory in the physical sciences, perhaps these masters of debate would suggest that numbers don't exist either and thus the Thomas More Legal Centre will start giving out millions of dollars to the needy — after all what is a million? No, seriously, what is a million? (Or in a more earthy example courtesy of Tim Minchin, maybe those who dismiss evolution as being "just a theory" feel the same away about the theory of gravity, and maybe they'll just float the fuck away.)

The pro-evolution camp fares little better to be honest; and by the pro- camp I'm not talking about the scientific community. Scientists know evolution is the basis of how life works, most of them are about as willing to have serious debates on it as I would be to debate the true value of pi. No, by the pro- camp I mean the youtube commenters and the such like whose responses to Creationists tend to invoke the promiscuity of the latter's mother.

Based on modern sentiments, then, to convince Victorian England that his theory of evolution was correct Darwin presumably launched a scathing attack on the Church and highlighted the fact that we must descend from smelly, hairy apes because he'd seen yo' momma. Zing.

So is that how he kicks off his treatise, with a rousing assault on the enemy? Not exactly. He talks about dogs. And chickens and goats. And Mr Blyth, who knows more about domesticated fowl than you or I ever will. Oh, and pigeons. There's a great deal about pigeons. The first chapter is in fact distinctly unrousing. "We know all this, Charles!" you feel like yelling, "Shut up about the God-forsaken pigeons already." Chapter two rolls around and the talk of pigeons ends. Praise be. What begins is Darwin's definition of "species". Given the work's title it seems fair enough that we should know what a species is, so Darwin defines one as being a collection of animals that can interbreed. He notes some empirical facts about the geographical distribution of genera and varieties and again the whole chapter is entirely unobjectionable.

Chapter three follows up by pointing out that exactly how one wishes to divide up living beings into groups is immaterial and will always be slightly artificial. What we can agree on is that within each grouping of alike animals or plants there is individual variation, as discussed in Chapter 2, and we know from domesticated animals and plants that living things tend to pass on certain characteristics to their offspring; and if we didn't know that when we started the book we do after the extensive discussion in Chapter 1. Finally, again from domesticated stock, we know that offspring inherit much from their parents, but will sometimes have quirks of their own. Spend enough time gardening or with an isolated group of animals and you won't be able to refute this. Thus, Darwin points out in Chapter 3, what happens if one of these distinct quirks the offspring develops is actually advantageous? Slightly better camouflage, say, or the ability to survive with less water, or seeds that are slightly more palatable to birds, or flowers that are more attractive to bees? By the definition of the word advantage this offspring would have a slightly better chance of surviving and producing offspring of its own. Only slightly better, yes, and still open to the whimsy of the environment, but better nonetheless. And if humans can turn wolves into Basset Hounds in a few hundred years, presumably over a few hundred thousand years these small statistical gains can add up to result in a living thing that is so far removed from its descendant that breeding would be impossible between the two of them. Thus we have: the origin of species.

Darwin, it should be pointed out, has nothing to say about your or anyone else's mother in The Origin of Species.

It's hard not to smile during the first few chapters of the book. Darwin lays out truths so self-evident that no one could refute them without losing all credibility. It's slow paced, sure, but only because Darwin is making sure that there can only be one inevitable conclusion. Even if you think your faith is irreconcilable with the conclusions he draws I think you'd be hard pressed to fault his logic. Indeed, most doubters of evolution seem to be Young Earth Creationists, those who believe that the Universe was created on Saturday 22nd October, 4004 BC, a remarkably specific date determined by the Irish Primate James Usher (not to be confused with rhythm and blues singer Usher Raymond IV who, to the best of my knowledge, hasn't made any attempt to calculate the exact age of the Earth). It's no coincidence that the Venn diagram of Christians and non-believers in evolution tends to intersect on this particular group: Darwin's theory requires hundreds of thousands of years for undirected evolution to work. A cat with laser eyes might have a massive advantage over its brethren but that advantage comes to naught if it gets ran over before it can make laser-kittens. Over many years, though, the chances of every laser cat that randomly appears being ran over tend to zero. Fortunately for Darwin, Victorian geologists aged the Earth at many millions of years old, ample time for laser-kittens.

As important as what is in the book is what isn't in the book. I smiled as I saw where Darwin was going with his argument. But oh how I cringed every time he tried to explain the mechanics of inheritance but couldn't because Mendel's theory of genetics wouldn't be widely publicised for another forty years. He also, wisely, doesn't apply his theory to humans, merely suggesting near the end of the final chapter that via evolution, "Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history." By the 1870s and his publication of [b:The Descent of Man|185407|The Descent of Man|Charles Darwin|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1311644193s/185407.jpg|728232] England had almost unanimously accepted evolution and was thus more willing to accept that man too had evolved from "lesser" lifeforms. Indeed, one of the more controversial aspects of Darwin's later work wasn't that we might have evolved from the same creature as did chimpanzees and orang-utans, but that the civilized English gentleman sipping his tea in the club was of the same species as the dark skinned, spear-carrying savages one heard of in fantastical books. That even this revelation was accepted by the majority of readers hopefully conveys the power of Darwin's arguments. And one more thing that doesn't appear in The Origin of Species is the woeful line that "we evolved from chimps". Few statements show a more feeble understanding of evolutionary theory than the notion that most extant species have been the same for hundreds of thousands of years while new species branch off. After all:

(Image by Matthew Bonnan as part of the Second annual Stick Science Cartoon Contest.)

Whatever your personal beliefs, it's hard to claim that The Origin of Species is anything short of a masterful argument. If, as Young Earth Creationists claim, God made the Earth look four and a half billion years old, hid fossils in the ground, and constantly tweaks species to better suit their environment but makes it all look like it's occurring naturally, then Darwin simply brought us all one step closer to understanding God. If on the other hand God either isn't there or doesn't care, then Darwin brought us one step closer to understanding the Universe itself, and I can think of no goal more sacred than that. show less

In terms of how much I enjoyed reading this book, I give it 4 stars. However, obviously, if I were to rate it based on its importance and profoundness, it would easily be 5 stars. It is a rather dense book, and while interesting, it can take a while to get through.

I think one of the most fascinating things about this book is just how much Darwin was able to deduce in a time before people knew about DNA or even understood genetics. There were many points in the book where he began on a path, and I would think, "Oh, we know the answer to this now thanks to DNA," and then I read on and see that he managed to come to the correct conclusion! Albeit accompanied by some uncertainty since he knew at the time he could not prove a lot of what he show more was saying. It is quite amazing what people are able to figure out if they are extremely dedicated to understanding something and are very scientifically minded.

Darwin is a scientist through and through, and you can see that not just in his dedication to experimentation, research, and excellent deductions, but in his humility and his openness to potentially being wrong. He does not proclaim himself any sort of "genius," and he does not ignore arguments against his theory; rather, he takes those arguments as a challenge to see if his theory can stand up to them; he makes it clear that if his theory were to fail, he would openly accept this (incidentally, his theory has been going strong for close to 200 years now!) All good scientists should take a page out of Darwin's book (figuratively) and adopt this spirit. Even if you develop one of the most influential and groundbreaking theories ever devised, it is important to always stay humble and always look for ways in which you may be wrong, even if you hope with all of your heart that you are right! show less

Meticulously evidenced, carefully argued, and both cautious and revelatory, but consequently a little bit boring as a read.

I became vexed by the title, On the Origin of Species, right from the start. Just what, precisely, is a species? What’s more, no matter how we state our modern definition, what did the word mean to Charles Darwin and his contemporaries?

Darwin, past 40 pages into the 1859 first edition, has this to say:
“Nor shall I here discuss the various definitions which have been given of the term species. No one definition has as yet satisfied all naturalists; yet every naturalist knows vaguely what he means when he speaks of a species.”

Uh, not good enough, Charles. The meaning of “species” must be specified. Else what are we discussing?

Visiting Wikipedia, I learned that “the difficulty of defining species is known as the ‘species show more problem’” and that this difficulty has led biologists to something they call the “species concept,” of which “there are at least 26.”

26? At least? There’s even a name for the study of species concepts: “Microtaxonomy,” a discipline “fraught with philosophical questions.”

Not feeling fit to be fraught with philosophical fiddle-faddle, I was tempted to return the Darwinian colossus to the library. But fortune smiled: “For Darwin, the species problem was the question of how new species arose: speciation.” That is to say, whatever a species is, the point is to think about how it might become a different expression of that concept. Darwin’s revolutionary ideas, as a best result, ought to apply to any of the species concepts bouncing about among biologists. I could live with that.

As for the rest, this is a book that earns the praise it has received. It is fascinating, philosophical, and surprisingly readable. Terminology is occasionally specialized so it helps, for example, to review the names of flower parts (sepal, stamen, pistil, etc.). Later, when Darwin discusses the fossil record, you might like to have at hand a table illustrating the scale of geologic time, with all those “oics” and “ocenes” and what all, though Darwin’s terminology here differs a bit from modern usage.

A thought bound to occur after getting far in the text is that perhaps the title should have been On the Origin of Newer Species. I think, up to page 484 (of 490), I had seen nothing about the origin of the first species, the original origin. On that page Darwin addresses this issue in what is, to my mind, a startling passage for 1859:
“I believe that animals have descended from at most only four or five progenitors and plants from an equal or lesser number.
“Analogy would lead me one step further, namely, to the belief that all animals and plants have descended from some one prototype…all living things have much in common, in their chemical composition, their germinal vesicles, their cellular structure, and their laws of growth and reproduction…Therefore I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed.”

Respect that inference. It’s just the conclusion modern studies have led most biologists to accept.

I like the candor with which Darwin faces criticisms. One difficulty was the fossil record, a point of contention for advocates of the biblical version of life’s origin. The issue is finding the intermediates the Origin posits once existed between known species. Darwin hoped the fossil record would remove doubt about his theory. For reasons he details at some length, he thought it unlikely evidence to do this could be preserved and found, and concedes the importance of the problem:
“Geological research…has done scarcely anything in breaking down the distinction between species, by connecting them together by numerous, fine, intermediate varieties; and this not having been effected, is probably the gravest and most obvious of all the many objections which may be urged against my views.”

The editor of this volume, James T. Costa, adds: “Paleontologists…in the intervening century and a half since the Origin, [have found] a bounty of intermediate forms…in many groups. Nothing approaches the detailed chain of transition that Darwin lamented not having.”

Advocates of the Creationist position must like that. But if the fossil record eventually were to demonstrate these “fine, intermediate” varieties despite Darwin’s argument that this is unlikely, how would Creationists react? By accepting his theory? Be that as it may, Darwin had a bundle of other evidence for his theory, which is why a book conceived as an “abstract” is 490 pages long.

And here’s something surprising: “evolution” is used nowhere in the first edition. “Evolve” occurs just once, and that as the very final word (“evolved”).

Lastly, let’s attend to Darwin’s final words in the first edition on the concern raised above about the concept and meaning of species. He writes:
“In short, we shall have to treat species in the same manner as those naturalists treat genera, who admit that genera are merely artificial combinations made for convenience. This may not be a cheering prospect; but we shall at least be freed from the vain search for the undiscovered and undiscoverable essence of the term species.”

Sometimes words are surpassed by the better authority of nature. show less

It's very discursive. You can almost hear Darwin pulling up a chair to the fireplace to discuss this idea he's had. And he's thought about it a lot.

It's also very cleverly written, starting with something the reader knows about (the human breeding of pigeons) then expanding slowly from that to the new stuff, but returning to that base whenever Darwin needs a clear, easy-to-understand example.

It's a complete refutation of the 'one great man makes a giant leap for human understanding' way of looking at scientific progress, with Darwin being very careful to say where and who he has got information from and whose ideas he's building on (even if he's retested as much of the info as he can and tested his theories as best as he can). He's also show more a lot nicer about his fellow scientists than a look of books today are.

I like that Darwin states the parts where his theory might not explain everything, and that he uses observation to try to plug those gaps.

He might have been able to cover more detail in the book if he stopped apologising for the amount of stuff he couldn't put in.

Looking backwards from what we know now, it's amazing how close Darwin gets to being right about most of it, and a lot of his uncertainties could only have been cleared up once genes and sequencing were discovered.

There's a couple of points where he wanders down paths that turned out to be dead ends (recapitulation theory is bunk) and we've still not got a 'how' of instincts, but given the information Darwin had to work with, he's right more than he's wrong.

It's pretty much a must read for scientists, and it's reasonably accessible to non-scientists, and a fairly straight-forward read once you've got used to certain Victorian writing quirks.

Definitely worth reading. show less

Okay, not the world's most exciting read, but an important one, and let's be honest: someone with much worse prose than Charles Darwin could have ended up writing this one; indeed, there are a couple nice turns of phrase here and there. I like how he claims that science makes the world more beautiful in his closing lines: "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved" (398).

Though Darwin is very cognizant of the limitations of his scientific sight, pointing out show more how little we actually see: "I look at the natural geological record, as a history of the world imperfectly kept, and written in a changing dialect; of this history we possess the last volume alone, relating only to two or three countries. Of this volume, only here and there a short chapter has been preserved; and of each page, only here and there a few lines" (288). An animal disappearing from our fossil record does not necessarily mean the animal disappeared from the Earth (277-78). In fact, he turns the sparse nature of the paleontological record into a virtue of his theory, because he comes to view the fossil record entirely differently because of his theory. A sneaky, adept move, I think.

My edition was the Broadview one, which is great because it reprints the first edition of the Origin before it got watered down and bloated, but with the second edition's necessary corrections, though not its substantial revisions.  Less great is Joseph Carroll's introduction, which spends a weird amount of space arguing against Thomas Kuhn for some reason. I must admit I'm kinda biased against the guy, though, because he's an advocate of evolutionary literary theory, which I've yet to see produce interesting results. show less