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      © 2014 by Daniel Duzdevich

      Foreword © 2014 Olivia Judson

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      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Duzdevich, Daniel, [date].

      Darwin’s On the origin of species : a modern rendition / by Daniel Duzdevich; with a foreword by Olivia Judson.

      pages cm

      Includes index.

      ISBN 978-0-253-01166-4 (cl : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-0-253-01170-1 (pb : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-0-253-01174-9 (eb) 1. Evolution (Biology) 2. Natural selection. I. Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882. On the origin of species. II. Title.

      QH366.2.D89 2014

      576.8'2 – dc23

      2013034380

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       FOREWORD

       Olivia Judson

      WHY READ ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY CHARLES DARWIN? After all, it was first published more than 150 years ago, and much of the science is out of date. When Darwin was writing, for example, the rules of genetic inheritance had not been figured out, the causes of genetic variation were unknown, and the discovery of the structure of DNA – the molecule that contains genetic information – was almost 100 years in the future. In Darwin’s time no one knew how old the earth was, nor that the continents move across its surface. Viruses had not been discovered. In short, the landscape of scientific knowledge was far less filled in.

      Nevertheless, there are excellent reasons to read it anyway.

      Here’s one: It is among the most important books ever written. Publication of the Origin transformed biology and transformed our understanding of ourselves. Before the Origin, biology was essentially descriptive, an accumulation of unconnected facts and details called “natural history.” The patterns in nature were inexplicable. After the Origin, the patterns made sense, and the facts and details became part of a vast and sweeping picture. Before the Origin, we humans considered ourselves the pet creations of a deity. After the Origin, we became part of nature, related to every other being on the planet, with an ancestry that stretches back, back, back, across the eons, to the dawn of life.

      It was a huge blow to human vanity. In showing that the earth orbits the sun, not the other way around, Copernicus had removed us from the center of the universe; then Darwin removed our special status as divine creations. Yet seen through the lens of evolution, our myriad imperfections – our capacities for violence and cruelty, our tendencies toward sexual infidelity, our irrationality – become comprehensible. Our finest attributes – our immense capacity for love, kindness, and self-sacrifice; our ability to cooperate; our consciousness; our languages; and our ability to articulate the world and study the universe – become more amazing. With the Origin we became one species among hundreds of millions – and the more astonishing for it.

      Here’s a second reason to read the Origin: Darwin was a genius. Thus, as well as being a transformative text, the Origin is a window into the mind of one of the world’s greatest thinkers. To spend time with such a mind is an inspiration. The Origin is a book that, in my experience, becomes more profound on each reading. It is a book you can have a conversation with over a lifetime.

      Yet Darwin was not a genius in the traditional mold. He was not obviously brilliant – at university he was an indifferent student – nor was he flamboyant. He did not write beautiful, elegant equations; nor did he wear peculiar costumes, gamble, cut off his ear, or engage in reckless love affairs. Indeed, having concluded that a wife would be “better than a dog,” he married his first cousin Emma Wedgwood shortly before his thirtieth birthday and remained with her until his death in 1882; they had ten children, of whom seven survived to adulthood. After his marriage, his life was outwardly dull, consisting of domestic stability, hard work, frequent illness, extensive correspondence, and regular walks. To be sure, there was drama, but it was mostly internal, as he began to realize that his discoveries would wrench human thought in new directions.

      Instead of flamboyance and brilliance, Darwin’s genius lay in a mix of curiosity and courage, persistence and passion; it lay in great powers of observation and an attention to tiny details. This, after all, was a man who spent eight years writing the definitive study of barnacles, who made important discoveries about orchids, carnivorous plants, and earthworms, and who, as a young man, published a theory of the formation of coral reefs that is still considered correct. More than that – and this is where he is so exceptional – he took this vast accumulation of knowledge and put it all together into a grand new vision of the world. A vision that, in outline and grandeur, remains intact to this day. His work, moreover, can be understood by anyone who cares to try.

      Charles Robert Darwin was born on 12 February 1809, the fifth child of a well-to-do family. At the age of sixteen he went to the University of Edinburgh to study medicine but did not stay the course, being horrified by the gory, screaming reality of surgery without anesthesia. When he quit, his father (himself a doctor) told him, “You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family.” Plan B was to become a clergyman, and so Darwin was dispatched to study at the University of Cambridge. There, by a peculiar coincidence, he lived for a time in rooms that, more than sixty years earlier, had been occupied by William Paley – the natural theologian and moral philosopher who argued that the appearance of design in nature is evidence of a designer (i.e., God), just as a watch is evidence of a watchmaker, and whose writings were part of the curriculum. At Cambridge, Darwin collected beetles, shot birds, read the adventures of the great explorer Alexander von Humboldt, feasted with friends, and otherwise enjoyed himself prodigiously, in an aimless sort of way.

      Then things changed. In 1831, when Darwin was twenty-two, he was invited to sail