The Origin of Species
From RationalWiki
The Origin of Species is a "book" written by naturalist Charles Darwin, published in 1859 about 20 years after his trip on the H.M.S Beagle.
The title of this article is how the book is usually referred to, however the full title is "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life".
In a nutshell, the book states "There are variations in creatures that are passed on to their descendants. Some of these variations are beneficial, and aid in the species' survival, and some are detrimental. The beneficial variations live on, and the detrimental ones die out."
The book spends several chapters countering concerns and criticisms offered by the many people Darwin discussed his theories with prior to publication.
Many fundamentalist religious people are highly offended by the concepts presented in the book, and the science of evolution that has developed since its publication. This is because it is obvious to them that it is easier to make people from dirt than from other living things.
| “ | To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. Nonetheless reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, ... then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable to our imagination, should not be considered subversive of the theory. | ” |
[edit] See also
- Origin of Species (2009) - reprint by a creationist trying to cash in.
