The Origin of Species

So here’s another thing we’re going to do here. When I’m not writing, and not busy with real life, I’m reading. Almost everything I read is nonfiction, mostly research for one story or another. And maybe some of these books would be interesting to you. We won’t talk about every book I read, just the big ones. Such as…

Charles Darwin. The Illustrated Origin of Species. Abridged by Richard Leakey. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1979).

I once gave a friend a book of front pages from the New York Times from the 20th century. Flipping through it before wrapping it, I was struck for the first time that there was a time when people didn’t know how WWII was going to end. Evidence of youth and fecklessness, sure, but still: what now seems almost inevitable once teetered on the knife-edge.

I had a similar experience reading this abridged version of Origin, but from the other direction: I was struck by how close to complete natural selection was, how its essence boils down so simply to the principle that far more organisms are (re)produced than could possibly fit in an environment, how thoroughly those organisms’ numbers are tamped down by mortality (starvation, predation, disease, exposure), and what incredible pressure that puts on the slightest variations between similar organisms. It rivals Newton’s equation for gravity in elegance.

Much of what Darwin worries about in this book had to wait for the 20th century for its solution, which came in the forms of genetics and plate tectonics. But I was astonished by how perfectly those two sciences fit into natural selection, requiring no essential modification to the principle. Like a key and a lock waiting for each other.

I won’t lie: it took me two tries to read through this edition, even abridged as it is. The beauty of Victorian prose is the beauty of small details, closely observed, and I find it hard to read too much without my eyes crossing. But I endeavored to persevere.

This volume includes much updating from Richard Leakey, a reliable guide, but only as of 1979. Advances like epigenetics and neo-Lamarckian evolution lay in the future. Just as the answer to how a few easily generated amino acids can become organized into a strand of RNA lies in ours.