Science
1809 to 1882, England
Natural selection and the deep history of life.
Start learning Charles →The simple, ruthless mechanism by which life designs itself - variation, inheritance and the struggle to survive - with no designer at all.
Darwin’s claim that every living thing - bacterium, beetle, whale and human - descends from a common ancestor, branch by branch from a single root.
Where Darwin found his mechanism - in a grim economist’s arithmetic of population - and the dangerous misuse the idea invited.
Why nature builds dazzling, dangerous ornaments that survival alone cannot explain - and Darwin’s second great force, the choice of mates.
Darwin’s most explosive claim - that human beings, mind and morals included, are part of the animal kingdom and the product of the same blind process.
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