- Start
- Nov 24, 185990% CONFIDENCEfrom the source
Darwin Publishes On the Origin of Species
- John Murray published the first edition of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection on 24 November 1859[1][2]
- The book "introduced the scientific theory that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection, although Lamarckism was also included as a mechanism of lesser importance"[2]
- It presented "a body of evidence that the diversity of life arose by common descent through a branching pattern of evolution", drawing on the Beagle voyage of the 1830s and two decades of later research, correspondence and experiment[2][3]
- Darwin had devised the theory in 1838 but held it back for research; "he was writing up his theory in 1858 when Wallace sent him an essay that described the same idea, prompting the immediate joint submission of both their theories to the Linnean Society of London"[3]
- The evidence chapters turn biogeography, taxonomy and morphology into arguments for descent with modification - oceanic islands with few but endemic species, and homologous bones in "the hand of a man, formed for grasping, that of a mole for digging, the leg of the horse, the paddle of the porpoise, and the wing of the bat"[2]
- Chapter I argues from domestic pigeons that great differences arise from one stock: their hybrids "are perfectly fertile", and "I can feel no doubt that all our domestic breeds have descended from" the rock-pigeon[1]
- Chapter IV introduces sexual selection, which "depends, not on a struggle for existence, but on a struggle between the males for possession of the females; the result is not death to the unsuccessful competitor, but few or no offspring"[1]
- Written for non-specialists, it "attracted widespread interest upon its publication"; within two decades evolution by common descent was accepted, but natural selection itself waited for the modern synthesis of the 1930s and 1940s to become "the unifying concept of the life sciences"[2]
- The Darwin Online transcription is scanned from the Balfour and Newton Libraries copy at Cambridge, with covers from the Charles Darwin Trust copy[1]
References 388% CONFIDENCE
The first entry is always the pin's source. Overall confidence is a weighted average of how firmly each reference supports the start and end times used above; a reference counts half as much for every 180 days older than the newest.
- [1]90%darwin-online.org.uk/converted/published/1859_Origin_F373/1859_Origin_F373.htmldarwin-online.org.uk· Posted Sep 22, 2026· Starts Nov 24, 1859 ✓· 33% of score
Wikipedia's[2][3] article gives the publication date without hedging - "It was published on 24 November 1859" - and Darwin Online serves the 1859 Murray first edition (F373) that appeared on that day. The date is one of the best-attested in the history of science and no source consulted disputes it.
- [2]90%On the Origin of Speciesen.wikipedia.org· Added Sep 22, 2026· 33% of score
Gives the publication date, the publisher, the argument of the book and the state of evolutionary thought it entered: "a work of scientific literature by the English naturalist Charles Darwin that is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology".[1]
- [3]85%Charles Darwinen.wikipedia.org· Added Sep 22, 2026· 33% of score
The author's own article, for the twenty years of work between the Beagle voyage and publication and for why he brought the book out when he did; the Royal Society's homepage, cited here before, states nothing about 1859 and was dropped.[1]
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