On the Origin of Species

Name: On the Origin of Species
Author: Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin

Descent with modification through natural selection accounts for the diversity and design of living things without a designer.

Read it

Where it is now wrong

The chapters on variation and inheritance predate Mendel entirely. Darwin had no mechanism, and the blending inheritance he assumed cannot actually sustain his own argument; genetics supplied the missing half fifty years later.

Before you start

Assumes: no biology, only stamina — the argument is cumulative and the evidence arrives slowly, on purpose
This edition: The first edition, of 1859. Darwin revised it through six, and the sixth of 1872 is a noticeably different book — more defensive, heavier with replies to critics, and the one that inserted "by the Creator" into the closing line.

Groundwork for

Works in the library that name this one as a prerequisite.

The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to SexCharles Darwin, 1871Proposes that traits costly or even harmful to survival can still spread if they increase an individual's success in securing mates, a second engine of evolution distinct from natural selection.

Filed under Evolutionary Biology in Biology.