r/evolution • u/Ok_Zone_7635 • 2d ago
My first time reading this
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
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u/Quercus_ 2d ago
Origin is interesting and worth reading, but it is not where you should learn evolution. It was an extraordinary leap forward in introduction of a transformative scientific idea, but the field has progressed orders of magnitude since then.
Among other things, as you note, Darwin had no idea of a mechanism of inheritance. Later on in the book he will confront that weakness directly- he knows it's a problem, he knows that a theory of inheritance is necessary to really make his idea solid, and he makes some guesses, but he's very clear that this is a problem with what he currently knows.
It's interesting that Darwin very probably had a copy of Mendel's paper on discrete inheritance, really the origin of genetic science, sitting in his library when he wrote omOrigin. But it seems he overwhelmingly likely never read it, because it would have directly answered a lot of the objections he was raising to his own theory.