The origin of species after 150 years

Abstract

A happy accident enabled the young Charles Darwin to go on a voyage of exploration a round the world. Among the outcomes of that voyage was a book, The Origin of Species, which was published in 1859. In it Darwin developed aperspective of the living world that, as we have come to realise, encapsulates its essence. By viewing plants and animals as dynamical entities that were subject to external forces, he was able to show convincingly that they had evolved, on the whole by a process known as natural selection. In doing so he made the point that the living world was explainable on the basis of natural laws and, at the same time, that biology can lay claim to an autonomous status among the natural sciences. Paradoxically, he a ccomplished all this with out knowing how heredity worked or variations occurred. This article attempts to look at The Origin of Species from the vantage point of the present. Anaccount of the events that led to the writing of the book will be followed by a quick run through its contents. The essay ends with a mention of some issues that continue to engage evolutionary biologists today.