Raymond Beisinger
Evolution is the most revolutionary concept in the history of science. Nothing else has more radically changed our understanding of the natural world and ourselves.
The work of Charles Darwin showed, irrefutably, that humans are just another animal occupying a small branch on a vast tree of life. No divine spark is needed to explain our existence and traits.
But how exactly did Darwin devise his theory of evolution? What ideas did he build on? Where does the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who proposed a similar theory, fit in? And how shocking was the idea to the Christian society of the time?
The story of the uncovering of this great revelation has been retold countless times since the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859. In the process, the assumptions and guesses of one generation became accepted as fact by the next – with some spawning widespread myths. Perhaps the most fundamental of these is that thinkers had been striving for centuries to solve the mystery of the origin of species. They hadn’t, and indeed they couldn’t have – just as ancient Greek philosophers could not have been searching for dark matter.
Evolution in a nutshell
Darwin’s and Wallace’s theory of evolution maintains that new species are descended from earlier ones. This long-term process happens because all organisms vary. The tiny variations are naturally “selected” by virtue of whether or not they help an organism to survive the brutal struggle for existence in nature. Many are born, but few survive; fortuitous variations are preferentially passed on. This process of endless filtering works to adapt organisms to their environment.
Traditionally, …
