The Origin of Species

The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, is the full title of the 6th edition (considered as the definite) by Charles Darwin, published in 1872, is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology. The first edition was published in 1852. The book introduced the scientific theory that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection. It presented a body of evidence that the diversity of life arose by common descent through a branching pattern of evolution. Darwin included evidence that he had gathered on the Beagle expedition in the 1830s and his subsequent findings from research, correspondence, and experimentation. Ideas about the transmutation of species were controversial as they conflicted with the beliefs that species were unchanging parts of a designed hierarchy and that humans were unique, unrelated to other animals.