Charles Darwin: Origins and Arguments

One of the characteristics of humanity throughout our
history has been an almost insatiable need to question
ourselves in an attempt to find answers to the unknowable
aspects of our lives.We appear to require meaning, to
know where we are from and what we are doing here.The
religions of the world have dealt with these traits of
human nature by providing systems of understanding
which are based on faith and belief. Since the beginnings
of modern science during the Renaissance, when the
knowledge of the Greeks was rediscovered, this has led to
a conflict of ideas between theology and rationality.This is
nowhere more apparent than in the continuing debate
over what is now generally called Darwinian evolution,
after the man who has become the figurehead of a revolutionary
change in human thought.

Charles Darwin and The Origin of Species

In 1985, the Italian scientist Antonella La Vergata remarked that the

‘‘Darwin’s-place-in-history approach’’ dominated writing about Darwin
and the development of the theory of evolution before 1960. Darwin
was the colossus who stood above every other scientist in the nineteenth
century when it came to developing a theory about the origin
of life. La Vergata’s argument was that historians and scientists who
used this approach ignored the important contributions made by Darwin’s
contemporaries as well as other scientists who preceded and followed
him. Even worse, this approach ignored the large number of
people to whom Darwin wrote letters either to discuss the research he
was doing or to obtain the answers to questions he had. Darwin should
be viewed as part of a community even if he was the central figure in
this community.1 While acknowledging La Vergata’s criticism, this book