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So, being an evil evolutionist and all, I figured it was time for me to finally read the entirety of On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man. I've read chunks of both and books about them and Darwin himself, but the actual combination of the two is a pretty hefty tome. My second biggest surprise is how totally readable Darwin is. For a book published in England in 1859, the language is very modern and not difficult at all, Darwin speaks intelligibly and provides great examples and descriptions, and he's even funny in some cases.
My biggest surprise so far (keeping in mind I'm only about 60 pages into Origin) is highlighted in this snippet below... until a while after Origin was published and evolution started to be accepted, even DOMESTICATED species were thought to have each come from an ancestor exactly or almost exactly like them. I wonder if that won't become the most telling thing I find here - that creationism was so rampant pre-Darwin that people didn't even believe that their cattle, rabbits, wheat, and corn came from an ancestor quite different from the current species, even though it existed in its current form only because of human-driven selective breeding.
That just tells you how far we've come. It gives me hope. The passage is below, or read the chapter here.| "I have discussed the probable origin of domestic pigeons at some, yet quite insufficient, length; because when I first kept pigeons and watched the several kinds, knowing well how true they bred, I felt fully as much difficulty in believing that they could ever have descended from a common parent, as any naturalist could in coming to a similar conclusion in regard to the many species of finches, or other large groups of birds, in nature. One circumstance has struck me much; namely, that all the breeders of the various domestic animals and the cultivators of plants, with whom I have ever conversed, or whose treatises I have read, are firmly convinced that the several breeds to which each has attended, are descended from so many aboriginally distinct species. Ask, as I have asked, a celebrated raiser of Hereford cattle, whether his cattle might not have descended from long horns, and he will laugh you to scorn. I have never met a pigeon, or poultry, or duck, or rabbit fancier, who was not fully convinced that each main breed was descended from a distinct species. Van Mons, in his treatise on pears and apples, shows how utterly he disbelieves that the several sorts, for instance a Ribston-pippin or Codlin-apple, could ever have proceeded from the seeds of the same tree. Innumerable other examples could be given. The explanation, I think, is simple: from long-continued study they are strongly impressed with the differences between the several races; and though they well know that each race varies slightly, for they win their prizes by selecting such slight differences, yet they ignore all general arguments, and refuse to sum up in their minds slight differences accumulated during many successive generations. May not those naturalists who, knowing far less of the laws of inheritance than does the breeder, and knowing no more than he does of the intermediate links in the long lines of descent, yet admit that many of our domestic races have descended from the same parents may they not learn a lesson of caution, when they deride the idea of species in a state of nature being lineal descendants of other species? |
Read the whole book online here.
Also useful: The Condensed Edition of Charles Darwin's On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life ...in 9,387 words
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