charles_darwin

92
CHARLES DARWIN AND THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
As scientists in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth century
found, there were several ways to explain the origin of species. Darwin’s
name is intimately associated with the theory of evolution, but he was
one of many scientists working on the problem. Darwin had brilliant
insights about the relationship between organic life in the natural world,
but he could not have formulated his theory of descent by modification
through natural selection without the pioneering work of scientists such
as Charles Lyell, Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, and Joseph K€olreuter.
No matter the brilliance of the theory, Darwin’s ideas would not have
spread without the aid of scientists such as Thomas Huxley, Asa Gray,
and Ernst Haeckel. Darwin was not a ‘‘lone wolf.’’ Neither were he and
Alfred Russel Wallace ‘‘lone wolves.’’ The scientific community of the
nineteenth century deserves credit for the theory of evolution, too. 7
Furthermore, the ordinariness of Darwin is a reminder not to
‘‘overpraise’’ his accomplishment. ‘‘A novel, according to my taste,
does not come into the first class unless it contains some person
whom one can thoroughly love, and if a pretty woman all the better,’’
Darwin wrote. 8 These are not the sentiments of person removed
from the humdrum activity of human existence. Darwin was human:
a great scientist but human nonetheless. Above all, science is a
human activity. Scientists make mistakes because they are human;
the weaknesses of Darwin’s theory, his inability to explain how
exactly natural selection operated, for example, occurred because he
was human. One person cannot know everything.
What then is the most accurate assessment of Darwin’s work? Is
it fair to call The Origin of Species ‘‘an intellectual time bomb’’? 9 It is
fair to say that ‘‘more than any other thinker—even Freud or Marx—
this affable old-world naturalist from the minor Shropshire gentry
has transformed the way we see ourselves on the planet’’? 10 Someone
in the nineteenth century, perhaps Alfred Russel Wallace, would have
found a way to write a convincing scientific explanation of the
theory of evolution had there been no Charles Darwin. To make this
point only emphasizes the significance of the theory of evolution.
But it was not Lamarck, or Buffon, or Chambers, or Wallace, who
formulated the theory: it was Darwin.
Notes
1. X2: X-Men United, directed by Bryan Singer (Twentieth-Century
Fox, 2003); The Matrix, directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski (Warner
Bros., 1999); and Men in Black, directed by Barry Sonnenfeld (Columbia
TriStar, 1997).