Only required to read through chapter 5.

I honestly didn't think I was going to enjoy this book, but it was a big part of the final chapters in the book 'In The Signature of All Things' by Elizabeth Gilbert. So I added it to my holds list and decided to give it a try. I admit to tuning the book out sometimes, but I would refocus and really listen to each chapter, learning a lot as I listening. Another classic that I'm so glad I read.

It’s hard to know where to begin this review, so I think I will start with how amazed I am by how complete a theory this was. I don’t know what edition I read, but he had a whole section of ‘problems with the theory’ in which he systematically explained how objections to his theory were either down to ignorance of the theory or due to incomplete knowledge of the time. At one point he speculates that the land masses were connected to each other decades before continental drift was proposed. At another point he speculates that we likely will find better fossils that add to this theory, which happened. That alone would have been amazing, but the fact that this theory is so complete before the theory of genes was developed or DNA. This theory was also proposed well before ‘deep time’ was considered, which of course led even more evidence to the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. Going outside of the text and into history books. Many naturalists at the time, or soon after, accepted the theory of evolution but ‘by means of natural selection’ was not the most popular mechanism. Yet as time went on more and more scientific evidence accumulated that now evolution by means of natural selection is the bed rock of all life science. Darwin’s personality comes out in a few places where he clearly has no time for individuals who have not put thought into their objections to the theory. In several cases he essentially names people and calls them morons, but in a gentlemanly sort of way. He also has no time for people who clung to creationism as a means to refute his theory. Often pointing out that God is capable of many things, and to say he created life forms in the way ‘you’ think just means you think you know how God works, which is egotistical.

Amazing

Finally made it through this classic after many years of good intentions on my part. Darwin was very careful and methodical, and astonishingly well-versed in the development and anatomy of many different forms of animal and vegetable life. He lays out his argument very carefully, and devotes a surprising amount of space to address alternative and apparently conflicting points of view. This makes the majority of the book interesting as much as a view into that point in scientific history, as for the logic and cogency of the arguments themselves. One could read the first four chapters, plus the conclusion, and leave with a pretty full understanding of his theory. But the nuance and detail in the rest of the chapters is what really made this book interesting to me. Perhaps most surprising to me, he is very careful never to extend his argument far into the higher mammals, and only really (obliquely) alludes to the possibility that man is part of this selection process in a single sentence. So, haters gonna hate, I guess, but they should probably read the book and consider what the guy actually said. Very glad I finally put my head down and powered through this one.

Charles Darwin’s work has fanned out to round about every corner of the world, his work entrenched in every naturalist, scientist and biologist of our time, with his writings and findings written in almost every curriculum taught to undergraduate and postgraduate students studying life sciences. Which was my first encounter in Charles Darwin and all he and his work was about - Darwin’s finches, natural selection, evolution over time and his revolutionary voyage on the HMS Beagle was in just about every genetics module and evolution base modules I was taught.

I’ve been encountering snippets of his work all throughout my studies, a quote here, an excerpt there and thought it was about time I go straight to the source and read On the Origin of Species. It’s such an original, a legend in its own right in its revolutionary reports and observations. I find it quite frankly amazing how much this amazing man deduced and discovered considering it was during a time when many of the scientific discoveries we have come to know now as common knowledge (like DNA) were unheard of back then.

I’m glad I finally got round the reading the writings of the man who shaped our world in so many ways with the science he produced in this book. I feel like I can call myself a scientist and a science lover now that I’ve read these writings that’s at the heart of our genetics and evolutionary knowledge, providing the foundations to springboard into our current age of scientific enlightenment and discovery!