ABSTRACT
The great achievement of Darwin in the Origin of Species was to establish on a firm and generally accepted basis the interpretation of differences among species as arising gradually through processes of change from other species rather than once and for all by an original creative act. Of the factors of change by which new species might develop, the most prominent in Darwin’s theory, but by no means the only one, was the perpetuation through natural selection of those variations best suited for survival in the struggle for existence. As has often been noted, the theory that species evolve in the course of time was not invented by Darwin. It was, indeed, a familiar notion to the biologists of the preceding half-century but it was not until the careful and impressive marshalling of evidence in its behalf by Darwin in his classic work, and, in particular, the advancement of natural selection by him as an explanatory principle that it became plausible to more than a minority of biological scientists.
From Betty Meggers (Ed.), Evolution and Culture: A Centennial Appraisal. Copyright © 1959 by the Anthropological Society of Washington. Reprinted by permission of the publisher and the author. Joseph H. Greenberg is Professor of Anthropology, Stanford University.
