"On the Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin

I'm currently attempting to read this, and am finding it very interesting, if a bit tedious. Has anyone else read it, and if so what do you think about it?

NB: I do not think it would be a good idea to turn this into an "Evolution vs Creationism" debate, so please discuss this as a book in itself and the quality of Darwin's work. :)

It's an awfully long time since I read it as part of my A level botany course - as background reading. Yup, it was hard going, but we did have the opportunity to visit Downe House in Kent where he lived. It's a stunning house in gorgeous gardens, and everything was (well it was then - I'm going back 43 years!) - laid out exactly as when he lived there.

Did you see the recent tv programmes about him, and the writing of the book? Fascinating stuff, and it's amazing to think of how his ideas were worked out with such simple experiments (one with earthworms on his front lawn).

oh, and CONGRATULATIONS!!!! :)

I was recently on a road trip and Radio National's bookshow read The Voyage of the Beagle. Made it very easy going.

Did you see the recent tv programmes about him, and the writing of the book? Fascinating stuff, and it's amazing to think of how his ideas were worked out with such simple experiments (one with earthworms on his front lawn).

oh, and CONGRATULATIONS!!!! :)

Yes, I saw some of the programmes about him and I went to the Darwin exhibition in the Natural History museum, London - it's fascinating learning about him. He really was incredible. I could never devote my whole life to research, without any guarantee that I'd ever get anywhere with it. I mean he wasn't even planning on having it published while he was alive, so he wasn't looking to gain any recognition for it - he just wanted to find out the truth. Which is incredible.

And...um...congrats for what? :hmm: :lol:

It's 150 years ago that On the Origin of Species was published and 200 years ago that Darwin was born :)

One of the important things to keep in mind about The Origin of Species is that Darwin was keenly aware of how much was missing. He knew that the fossil record available at the time was very spotty, although it was suggestive and entirely consistent with his thesis. He himself said that if all that could be relied on was the fossil record, there would not be sufficient evidence. He went to pains to demonstrate all the other observations and tests that he could muster - the affinities among species fairly close geographically, the structural similarities of various body parts, the observations of change over generations and even the occasional 'sport' (chance mutation producing a unique noticeable feature), the power of accumulated changes, etc.

Second he was completely aware that he did not really have a mechanism for the heritability of features. He did not have the sceinces of genetics, DNA, or biochemistry available. He talked about 'blended characteristics' because the more quantum-like changes available through genes was not a concept considered at the time. In fact, in a lot of ways evolution did not become fully scientific until the early twentieth century when the combination of Darwin's thoughts with genetics and biochemistry allowed a fully explanatory and testable paradigm for biological diversity. In this regard, Darwin's work should be compared to Newton's laws of gravity. Newton was keenly aware that his description required what he called 'spooky action at a distance', that is, objects acting on each other distantly without any 'thing' to cause the interaction (there was no concept of the field of force at that time, and even 200 years later when Faraday suggested it for electricity and magnetism, he was considered an untutored buffon - well, he was unschooled, anyway, but no buffoon). YetNewton set down descriptions of gravity that served and still serve very well except in quite extreme circumstances. it took until the concepts of the field and of relativity for Einstein to turn a close description into a remarkably precise theory, complete with explanation for what caused it to work. In the same way, Darwin knew he lacked an explanation for what made 'descent with change' work, so he documented in great detail that it happened, and he showed that the best explanation for how the change gets selected is survival of the fittest (fittest to reproduce for the particular circumstances in each generation)

In this regard, Darwin's work should be compared to Newton's laws of gravity. Newton was keenly aware that his description required what he called 'spooky action at a distance', that is, objects acting on each other distantly without any 'thing' to cause the interaction (there was no concept of the field of force at that time, and even 200 years later when Faraday suggested it for electricity and magnetism, he was considered an untutored buffon - well, he was unschooled, anyway, but no buffoon).

Just FYI: It was Einstein, not Newton, who coined the term, "Spooky action at a distance", in reference to the instantaneously shared properties of two entangled but non-local quantum particles (photons, electrons, etc..)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement