5 - Darwinism in transition

Summary

When one discusses Darwinism, to what does one refer? Is it a theoretical Darwinism, … what Neo-Darwinism retained or adapted from Darwin? Or is it the historical Darwinism, with its doubts, its retractions, its concessions to critics, from the first edition of the Origin of Species to the ‘Essay on Instinct’? … [Would it not be] simpler to start with Darwin himself and what he wrote than with an imaginary Darwinism whose existence in the realm of ideas creates unnecessary difficulties?

Jacques Roger

The works of Charles Darwin (1809–1882) have been cited more frequently than read, and read far more often than understood. Religious reactionaries and the sycophants of scientism have alike forced Darwin to serve their dubious ends, while even persons of moderation have represented as Darwinism either more or less than the primary texts allow. Under these circumstances, which have only lately begun to change, a just understanding of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection must be founded on Darwin's statement of it. Fortunately, there is at least one passage in the Origin of Species that remained substantially unaltered throughout the book's six editions (1859–72), which distils the essence of Darwinism into less than five hundred words.