17. Charles Darwin and The Origin of Species

At almost the same time that Mendel was working out his laws of inheritance, Charles Darwin was completing his masterwork On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, the book in which he proposed a radical new theory—natural selection—as a mechanism to account for the change of species over time. This lecture begins with an overview of 19 th -century views on geological history, natural theology, and evolution. It then describes the long journey—both physical and intellectual—that led Darwin to the final articulation of his theory. The lecture ends with a summary of Darwin’s argument for how natural selection acts on populations and leads to evolutionary change.