The Coming of Evolution: The Story of a Great Revolution in ScienceJudd, John W. (John Wesley)
History
The Coming of Evolution: The Story of a Great Revolution in Science
Judd, John W. (John Wesley)
Evolution (Biology) -- History
The utmost that Darwin could be persuaded to do, however, was to enlarge
his sketch of 1842 into one of 230 pages. This he did in the summer of
1844. His manner of procedure seems to have been that, keeping to the
same general arrangement of the matter as he had adopted in his original
sketch, he elaborated the arguments and added illustrations. Each of the
35 pages of the pencilled sketch, as it was dealt with, had a vertical
line drawn across it and was thrown aside. While the 'pencilled sketch'
of 1842 was little better than a collection of memoranda, which, though
intelligible to the writer at the time, are sometimes difficult either
to decipher or to understand the meaning of, the expanded work of 1844
was a much more connected and readable document, which Darwin caused to
be carefully copied out. The work was done in the summer months, while
he was absent from home, and unable therefore to refer to his abundant
notes--Darwin speaks of it, therefore, as 'done from memory.'
The two sketches, as Mr Francis Darwin points out, were each divided
into two distinct parts, though this arrangement is not adopted in the
_Origin of Species_, as finally published. Charles Darwin on many
occasions spoke of having adopted the _Principles of Geology_ as his
model. That work as we have seen consisted of a first portion
(eventually expanded from one to two volumes), in which the general
principles were enunciated and illustrated, and a second portion
(forming the third volume), in which those principles were applied to
deciphering the history of the globe in the past. I think that Darwin's
original intention was to follow a similar plan; the first part of his
work dealing with the evidences derived from the study of variation,
crossing, the struggle for existence, etc., and the second to the proofs
that natural selection had really operated as illustrated by the
geological record, by the facts of geographical distribution, and by
many curious phenomena exhibited by plants and animals. Although this
plan was eventually abandoned--no doubt wisely--when the _Origin_ came
to be written, we cannot but recognise in it another illustration of the
great influence exercised by Lyell and his works on Darwin--an influence
the latter was always so ready to acknowledge.
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