ABSTRACT
The Darwin Bicentennial in 2009 prompted a number of useful reassessments of how far we have come since 1809 in the study of evolution; but it also prompted insightful new work on the topics of where and how Darwin's evolutionary thinking began – that is, on the origin of The Origin. What exactly was it during the Beagle voyage and its aftermath that stirred the young Darwin to challenge the fixity of species? The question is particularly interesting in Darwin's case because, in Kuhnian terms, the build-up of scientific challenges (“anomalies”) to the prevailing paradigm of special creation – that is, that fixed and immutable species were supernaturally created at some time in the past – were neither numerous nor widely recognized among scholars. It was not a case of growing general discontent with the old paradigm. How then did Darwin assemble enough convincing challenges to the old paradigm – a paradigm he was actually well-trained to sustain – to eventually provoke the paradigm shift of the Darwinian Revolution?
