Page 17 - RD (English) - Sample

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Chapter 1

The Origin of Species

ven though Darwin’s ideas were considered revolutionary in
Victorian England, natural evolution was no novel concept when
Ein 1859 he published On the Origin of Species. Some philosophers
and scientists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had already
been toying with the idea that species were not stable – that is, that
they could change and, over time, become new species. Scientists like
the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829) and Charles
Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802), had been explor-
ing the idea for years. However, no one had been able to convincingly
suggest a natural mechanism that could be driving evolution, and so
natural evolution had remained a fringe idea.
Apparently, Darwin was not an adherent of evolution (or what it
implies) in his younger years. Rather, at least according to official biog-
raphies, he was a strong believer in the Bible, trained in Christian the-
ology. As he later described, “I did not then in the least doubt the strict
1
and literal truth of every word in the Bible.” And according to the Bible,
creation had taken place just a few thousands – and not millions – of
years earlier, when over a period of six days God had created each spe-
cies – each type of plant, animal, and human being – separately.