5620 AM · 1860 CE · world history
Darwin and the Origin of Species
Natural selection explains the diversity of life without appeal to design.
After five years aboard the Beagle and twenty years of cautious work, Charles Darwin publishes his account of how small inherited variations plus the struggle for existence produce the diversity of species. The first printing sold out in a day. The argument spread far beyond biology and continues still.
Sources
Documents of the period
- documents and chronicles of the period — On the Origin of Species itself (1859)
Scholarship
- general histories of the region — natural selection and the great argument of the century
Basis: documents and evidence.