Chapter 9 - Darwin’s cyclopean architect

Summary

The main point of the architect analogy was to emphasize the importance of natural selection relative to the production of variation. Some of Darwin's otherwise staunchest supporters felt he had, in the Origin, given short shrift to variation as a factor in evolutionary change. This chapter concerned with the development of the architect analogy, and with the alternative conceptions of evolution suggested by the different versions. Michael Ruse has long insisted that Darwinian evolutionary theory is a design theory through and through. Following the publication of the Origin, Charles Darwin took the opportunity to clear up some issues left unclear in the book, including his position on the importance of selection relative to the production of variation. Darwin himself had focused on the ways in which particular outcomes of evolution can be due to particular, happenstance courses of variation in his book on orchid evolution, published immediately after the Origin.