ABSTRACT
Charles Darwin like Isaac Newton was a great synthesizer of materials already available. However, his work was controversial from the beginning and remains so today. Darwin was the first scientist to reach major conclusions that were incompatible with the religious orthodoxy of his time and to publish them. Darwin's dangerous idea was built on a foundation of rock: the science of geology. Natural history contradicted the account of creation in the Bible and the Koran. One could not believe in evolution and at the same time believe that God literally created everything in a week. By 1831 scientists recognized the reality of the evolution of life forms. They knew that some species alive in the past had gone extinct. They knew that new species came into being. In 1838 Darwin thought out the core of his theory of evolution. In 1858, twenty years after reading Malthus's essay on population, Darwin received a manuscript from a young naturalist, Alfred Wallace.
