Did Darwin read Mendel?

Darwin, Mendel, and Galton.

THIS paper was never meant to be a centenary address, in fact until I started to prepare it I did not realize that the original Darwin-Wallace communication to the Linnean Society was read in I858. An interest in human genetics led me to seek more knowledge of the lives of the three men who seemed to me to have been the founders of our present understanding of heredity. Darwin's evidence in fav...

Did Mendel cheat?

Did Darwin dither?

" That's one of the things that really surprised us, " said Williams. " The tropics have very little variability from year to year in temperature; they are a very stable climatic zone. So species that live in these climates expect a limited degree of variability. " Other studies have suggested that the Amazon basin, an extremely biologically rich region, may be at increased risk of forest fires...

Q&A: What did Charles Darwin prove?

It is often said that Darwin’s theory of natural selection is unproven True? I don’t think that is a very useful question because Darwin’s strength comes not so much from what he proved, but from the near-inescapable conclusions that he led us to. He used every means of informing himself about questions that interested him. He is known for his massive and continuous correspondence, always askin...

Did Darwin write the Origin backwards?

After clarifying how Darwin understood natural selection and common ancestry, I consider how the two concepts are related in his theory. I argue that common ancestry has evidential priority. Arguments about natural selection often make use of the assumption of common ancestry, whereas arguments for common ancestry do not require the assumption that natural selection has been at work. In fact, D...