150 years of On the Origin of Species

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 | History of Science

On the Origin of Species

This is my copy of Charles Darwin book On the Origin of Species published 150 years ago today. It is the ugliest-looking book I have in my collection. It doesn’t matter. It is the seventeenth printing of a facsimile of the 1859 original edition that Ernst Mayr, the prominent twentieth century evolutionary biologist, first produced in 1964 to provide mass access to a book that “ushered in a new era in our thinking about the nature of man” (p. vii).

It also happens to have Mayr’s clearest exposition of his population versus typological thinking thesis in the introductory essay written by him, which makes this edition more valuable if you are interested in the history and the philosophy of biological taxonomy.

But, what would have happen if On the Origin of Species had never been published? Would evolutionary theory had rather sprung prominently out of Germany, with a strong von Baerian flavor, as an early EvoDevo? Find out more at Evolving Thoughts and comments therein.