Endless Forms Most Beautiful
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (1859)
Darwin returned from the Beagle voyage in 1836 and then spent more than twenty years gathering evidence before publishing. Pigeon breeding, barnacles, island finches: he wanted the idea of natural selection to stand on a mountain of observations, not on a hunch.
Great ideas often look sudden from the outside and slow from the inside.
Individuals differ, some differences are inherited, and not every individual survives to reproduce. Over many generations, the traits that help survival become more common. No designer is needed: small differences, kept or lost, add up to new forms of life.
Repeat a simple rule long enough and it can build astonishing complexity.
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