What is Darwinism?
n One Long Argument, Ernst Mayr (evolutionary biologist, and originator of the Biological Species Concept) summarizes Darwin’s theories, and traces the history of their acceptance by the world scientific community. In the Preface , he begins: A modern evolutionist turns to Darwin’s work again and again. This is not surprising, since the roots of all our evolutionary thinking go back to Darwin. Our current controversies very often have as their starting point some vagueness in Darwin’s writings or a question Darwin was unable to answer owing to the insufficient biological knowledge available in his time. But one returns to Darwin’s original writings for more than historical reasons. Darwin frequently understood things far more clearly than both his supporters and his opponents, including those of the present day. In Chapter Four, “Ideological Opposition to Darwin’s Five Theories”, Mayr summarizes “Darwin’s Theory”, or “Darwinism”, thus: In both scholarly and popular literature one frequ
