ABSTRACT
Charles Darwin is often presented not only as a most eminent naturalist, but also as a prototypical empirical scientist, inductively deriving his theory of evolution based on empirical evidence rather than on theoretical, or even metaphysical or religious grounds. It is generally accepted today that Darwin did not adopt his theory of natural selection on the Galapagos Islands or while traveling on the HMS Beagle, but rather when ordering his observations in the light of then available theories. Furthermore, Darwin's gradualism was influenced by Charles Lyell's geological uniformitarianism; and his early optimism regarding individual competition followed the British tradition of Adam Smith and Milne-Edwards. The advocacy of Darwinian processes in different domains has often been implicitly or explicitly accompanied by a commitment to the general research-program of process-Darwinism. Blind variation, the first step of such a Darwinian process albeit has always been essential to neo-Darwinism, delineating it from more directed accounts of evolution.
