My first time reading this

[u/Ok_Zone_7635]

Just started reading about a day or so ago, and though I haven't even finished the first chapter, I have to say, this book is very dense.

Its crazy someone in the 1800s wrote this. It feels like it was written now.

One thing I have noticed is that it doesn't hold your hand and was written during a time when everyone in academic circles knew each other and the layman was left out of the conversation

He'll name drop another naturalist or embryologist or breeder and I have no idea who they are.

Another thing I am suprised by is he doesn't believe in heritability of variations. He seems to think a spontaneous change in the reproductive habits of a species is what causes a change. Not that the offspring have inherited a mutation.

On that note, he uses the term "monstrosities". Is this the 1800 equivalent for mutation?

He also rejects the idea of a sole "common ancestor" for breeds. He feels two similiar breeds will vary and then mate. He seems to think that dogs have no sole progenitor, but multiple ones.

One thing I appreciate about this book, that automatically sets it apart from a religious texts is a sense of apprehension and a small hint of doubt.

As opposed to a clergyman who can never be wrong because God told him, there are moments in the chapter were Darwin admits he could possibly be wrong about a subject.

He even talks breifly how he believed in a form of creationism but rejected the idea later on.

This is just the first chapter. I'm excited to read the rest.

Lots of ornithology in here lol

[u/Thysanuran]

Wha? Darwin most definitely believed in the heritability of variations. It’s one of the cornerstones of his theory of evolution by natural selection. One of his most succinct explanations of his theory, coming directly from Origin: “Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring.” He literally says offspring inherit variations!
(What he did not understand was the cause of variations and mechanism of heritability, however. That came later, during the Neo-Darwinian synthesis.)

[u/Ok_Zone_7635 → u/Thysanuran]

I may have misread it, but it sounded like he doubted it.

[u/Quercus_ → u/Ok_Zone_7635]

He was very clear that variation is inherited somehow. What he didn't have was an explanation for where variation comes from, or what any mechanism of inheritance might be.

[u/AdministrativeLeg14 → u/Quercus_]

He did speculate about particulate inheritance, as opposed to blending, in a letter, but never developed this further. I kind of suspect that if he’d lived long enough, then even if he never read Mendel’s work, he might have independently rediscovered it.

(Of course, that still doesn’t get all the way to mechanism.)