ABSTRACT
The Origin of Species was published toward the end of the year 1859. The preceding years since 1846 had been one of the most productive seasons-or if extended so as to cover the great book we are considering, the most productive period of equal length in the entire history of science from its beginnings until now. [For] the idea that chance begets order. . . was at that time put into its clearest light. (Peirce 1893, p. 183)
Since the tum of the century, however, and especially since the thirties, evolutionists have further appealed to chance in ways that Darwin himself might contemptuously have regarded as higgledy-piggledy views of nature. Indeed, proponents of one such appeal have coined the term "nonDarwinian evolution" to distance their views from his. Actually, the new appeals to chance have been matters of considerable dispute. And today those disputes are among the liveliest in the already lively field of evolutionary biology.
