When Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published in 1859, it was by no means the first scientific attempt to explain species change in evolutionary terms. It was, however, the first to propose a workable mechanism for this change, which he termed 'natural selection' in an analogy with domestic breeding techniques. The arbitrary and circumstance-dependent nature of the world his theory envisaged were discomforting for early readers, along with the fact that 'evolution' did not necessarily imply 'improvement'. Moreover, although Darwin deliberately refrained from discussing the implications of this theory of evolution for homo sapiens, and only mentioned 'man' once in the entire book, the most controversial implication w…
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Citation: Editors, Litencyc. "Darwin's theory of evolution creates controversy". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 August 2013 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=5029, accessed 23 November 2024.]
