The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Selection or partial work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~230,000 words · 1,071 passages
Cite this work
- APACharles Darwin. (n.d.). The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/charles-darwin/the-origin-of-species-by-means-of-natural-selection
- MLACharles Darwin. "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/charles-darwin/the-origin-of-species-by-means-of-natural-selection.
- ChicagoCharles Darwin. The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/charles-darwin/the-origin-of-species-by-means-of-natural-selection.
What it is about
How species arise with no one to design them: natural selection — more offspring than survive, small heritable variations, vast time — as the mechanism of all living diversity.
Context and history
Published in November 1859 and sold out on the first day. Darwin had nursed the idea for twenty years, alarmed by its consequences, and only resolved to publish when Alfred Russel Wallace sent him the same theory from Malaysia. He deliberately avoided the human being — 'light will be thrown on the origin of man' is all he wrote — but everyone understood. No book of science has changed so profoundly the way the human species sees itself within nature, and the debate it opened is not yet closed.
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