Introduction
Darwin is considered the father of evolution. In truth, Darwin arrived at his
theory of evolution at the same time another scientist, Alfred Russell Wallace,
came to the same conclusion. However, Darwin was a respected scientist even
before he wrote On the Origin of Species, while Wallace was relatively
unknown, so people were more inclined to listen to Darwin.
Origin enjoyed immediate success: its first printing sold
out immediately and a second printing
following a month later. Darwin's ideas found their way out of the scientific
world and into the business world and even society itself. In many senses,
Darwin's theories created a societal transformation.
Darwin's theory consisted of two main points; 1) diverse groups of animals
evolve from one or a few common ancestors; 2) the mechanism by which this
evolution takes place is natural selection. This SparkNote will
first take a look at Origin of the Species,
and then more closely examine Darwin's theories.
Darwin's theory of evolution, also called Darwinism, can be
further divided into 5 parts: "evolution as such", common descent,
gradualism, population speciation, and natural selection.
Types of natural selection are discussed in the
Natural Selection SparkNote, and
types of speciation are discussed in the
Speciation SparkNote.
The modern understanding of the process of natural selection is
discussed in further detail in Synthesis of
Darwin and Genetics.
