“But I am aiming for a bigger audience than students of life sciences. Reading the Origin can teach anyone at any level important lessons about the structure of science and the meaning of the word theory. […] Reading the Origin can also highlight the role that that evolutionary theory played in shaping the future development of science.”
Just what exactly is it about Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species that caused – and indeed, continues to cause – so many Americans to lose their minds at the very thought of people reading it? (We’ll put aside the question of whether such people actually read it themselves, as experience has taught me that they generally haven’t.) But what of those Americans who didn’t recoil from it and who read it for themselves?
While On the Origin of Species is generally said to be Darwin’s most influential work, his The Voyage of the Beagle is likely his most approachable work for the general reader. And why wouldn’t it be? After all, first-person travelogues make for exciting reading, combining both the narrative of the adventure with the author’s running commentary upon it.
It was on this date in 1859 that Charles Darwin entered the words “all copies ie 1250 sold first day” in his journal. He was writing, of course, about his then just published book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection – the book that would become the most famous of all his many works, would spark debates that still rage to this very day, and would end up being far more talked about than actually read.