Origin of Species by Charles Darwin

Origin Of Species by Charles Darwin

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Evolution by natural selection seems such a simple, logical and common sense idea, I'd never actually got around to reading the book that first proposed the idea until now. I'm certainly glad that I made the effort - even though some parts are hard going for somebody who is not a biologist or naturalist, most of the book is a meticulous and well written examination of a simple thesis, accessible to everyone. It's a very good example of popular science writing.

It opens with the observation that domesticated animals, using pigeons as a prime example, can be bred to enhance or eliminate certain physical characteristics or behavioural traits. An experienced breeder will note subtle differences from one generation to the next and select particular birds to produce the end result that he is looking for. Darwin's revelation was to realise that the same process occurs naturally, with populations controlled by limited resources, geography or other factors, and those creatures with characteristics best suited in the struggle for existence would be the ones to pass on their traits to their off spring.

Darwin spends many chapters looking for possible flaws and objections to his thesis, and answers just about every objection that modern creationists still like to cite. The scarcity of transitional forms, the gaps in the fossil records and the complexity of structures like the eye are all addressed in great detail, backed up by painstaking research carried out over many years. Darwin even went so far as putting seeds into the gullets of dead birds, floating them in water for several months and then germinating them to show how plants could spread to geographically isolated islands - one can only wonder at the reaction of his wife to finding bird corpses floating in tanks of water! He also followed ants around the English countryside to examine their various behaviours, picked up bird excrement, and most famously went on an arduous voyage on The Beagle to collect specimens and examine geology. The book also contains many examples of correspondences with naturalists from around the world providing evidence to back up his theory.

Looking at the 'Origin' now, with the benefit of 150 years of hind sight reveals a few gaps in Darwin's knowledge. He knew nothing of continental drift, for example, which would have explained how certain populations of animals diverged at some points in the distant past. He also had no idea of the existence of DNA, which has now provided the most compelling and direct proof for the links between the various branches of the tree of life. The fossil record is also now much more comprehensive and better dated than in Darwin's day.

I can do no better as an example of his writing style than to quote the concluding paragraph of the book:

It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. 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.

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