charles_darwin

48
CHARLES DARWIN AND THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
his classification of the animal kingdom. A version of Lamarck’s system
is still used today.
These classifiers discovered three important facts by the beginning
of the nineteenth century: there were an incredibly large number
of species and varieties in the world, the number was increasing,
and the number could be increased artificially. Furthermore, such
was the fecundity of species and varieties that it was difficult at times
to distinguish whether a plant or animal was a variety or a new species.
Commenting on the propensity of a fellow botanist Charles
Babington (1808–1895) to find new species, Hewett Cottrell Watson
(1804–1881) supposedly remarked that there were ‘‘species, subspecies,
and Bab-ies.’’ 6
Both breeders and naturalists began to speculate about the
meaning of the diversity of organic life. Why were there so many
species? Based on the scientific assumptions of the day, there was no
obvious answer to this question. But were all species created at the
same time? That question, however, did have an answer: ‘‘no.’’
According to the British veterinary surgeon William Youatt (1776–
1847) some breeders could ‘‘summon into life whatever form and
mould [they pleased].’’ 7 If that was possible, then someone needed
to propose a new theory about the origin of species. Humans, it
seemed, were just as capable of changing nature as Paley’s intelligent
creator. These facts became important elements of Darwin’s theory of
descent by modification.
The Uniqueness of The Origin of Species and Darwin’s
Debts to Other Thinkers
Given the debates in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
Darwin did not write The Origin of Species in a vacuum. It may have
been a ‘‘glorious book’’ with ‘‘a mass of close reasoning on curious
facts and fresh phenomena,’’ according to Joseph Hooker, but Darwin’s
theory of descent by modification was based solidly on the
knowledge of his day. 8 For example, Thomas Malthus’s theory about
the shortage of food affecting the growth of the population gave
Darwin the idea that different species had to compete for resources:
Darwin called this ‘‘the struggle for existence.’’ Charles Lyell’s theory
of uniformitarianism in geology—that the changes in the Earth take
place gradually over eons—gave Darwin the idea that the transmutation
of species must be a slow process that occurred over a long period
of time. Darwin acknowledged the importance of Malthus and
Lyell to his theory both in The Origin of Species and his other
writings. 9 But equally clear in The Origin of Species is the debt