The Origin of Species

by

Charles Darwin

Collaboration and Science Theme Analysis

Themes and Colors
Natural Selection and the Power of Nature Theme Icon
Reason, Argument, and the Scientific Method Theme Icon
Time and Progress Theme Icon
Collaboration and Science Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Origin of Species, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Collaboration and Science Theme Icon

Although today Charles Darwin is one of the most famous names in science, in The Origin of Species, Darwin presents a more limited view of his own influence, suggesting that many of his ideas were merely adapted from the work of other eminent scientists of his era. While it could be argued that this was a rhetorical strategy—a way for Darwin to minimize how potentially radical his ideas were—it is also clear that Darwin read widely to supplement the research he was doing on his own in the Galapagos and elsewhere. He drew inspiration from the research of other naturalists and in some cases, he even directly incorporated their ideas into his own, particularly on issues where he himself wasn’t necessarily an expert. For example, Charles Lyell’s discoveries about geology were critical to Darwin’s understanding of how time worked with natural selection, and Lyell is among the scientists cited most extensively in The Origin of Species. In later editions of the book, Darwin also addressed his critics, occasionally dismissing their views but much more often answering their questions and even sometimes acknowledging the shortcomings of his approach. Ultimately, Darwin believed that just as species could be improved through natural selection, ideas could be refined through collaboration, and his book is a testament to the communal nature of scientific research.

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Collaboration and Science Quotes in The Origin of Species

Below you will find the important quotes in The Origin of Species related to the theme of Collaboration and Science.
Introduction Quotes

This abstract, which I now publish, must necessarily be imperfect. I cannot here give references and authorities for my several statements; and I must trust to the reader reposing some confidence in my accuracy. No doubt errors may have crept in, though I hope I have always been cautious in trusting to good authorities alone.

Related Characters: Charles Darwin (speaker)
Page Number: 4
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Chapter 3 Quotes

A struggle for existence inevitably follows from the high rate at which all organic beings tend to increase.

Related Characters: Charles Darwin, Thomas Malthus
Page Number: 62
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Many cases are on record showing how complex and unexpected are the checks and relations between organic beings, which have to struggle together in the same country.

Related Characters: Charles Darwin, Thomas Malthus
Page Number: 69
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Chapter 6 Quotes

Long before the reader has arrived at this part of my work, a crowd of difficulties will have occurred to him. Some of them are so serious that to this day I can hardly reflect on them without being in some degree staggered; but, to the best of my judgment, the greater number are only apparent, and those that are real are not, I think, fatal to the theory.

Related Characters: Charles Darwin
Page Number: 160
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To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.

Related Characters: Charles Darwin
Related Symbols: Eyes
Page Number: 172
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Chapter 7 Quotes

All Mr. Mivart’s objections will be, or have been, considered in the present volume. The one new point which appears to have struck many readers is, “That natural selection is incompetent to account for the incipient stages of useful structures.” This subject is intimately connected with that of the gradation of the characters, often accompanied by a change of function, for instance, the conversion of a swim-bladder into lungs, points which were discussed in the last chapter under two headings. Nevertheless, I will here consider in some detail several of the cases advanced by Mr. Mivart, selecting those which are the most illustrative, as want of space prevents me from considering all.

Related Characters: Charles Darwin (speaker), St. George Jackson Mivart
Page Number: 211
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Chapter 9 Quotes

The view commonly entertained by naturalists is that species, when intercrossed, have been specially endowed with sterility, in order to prevent their confusion. This view certainly seems at first highly probable, for species living together could hardly have been kept distinct had they been capable of freely crossing. The subject is in many ways important for us, more especially as the sterility of species when first crossed, and that of their hybrid offspring, cannot have been acquired, as I shall show, by the preservation of successive profitable degrees of sterility. It is an incidental result of differences in the reproductive systems of the parent-species.

Related Characters: Charles Darwin
Page Number: 279
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Chapter 10 Quotes

Independently of our not finding fossil remains of such infinitely numerous connecting links, it may be objected that time cannot have sufficed for so great an amount of organic change, all changes having been effected slowly. It is hardly possible for me to recall to the reader who is not a practical geologist, the facts leading the mind feebly to comprehend the lapse of time. He who can read Sir Charles Lyell’s grand work on the Principles of Geology, which the future historian will recognise as having produced a revolution in natural science, and yet does not admit how vast have been the past periods of time, may at once close this volume.

Related Characters: Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell
Page Number: 316
Explanation and Analysis:

It has been asserted over and over again, by writers who believe in the immutability of species, that geology yields no linking forms. This assertion, as we shall see in the next chapter, is certainly erroneous.

Related Characters: Charles Darwin
Page Number: 333
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Chapter 12 Quotes

Undoubtedly there are many cases of extreme difficulty in understanding how the same species could possibly have migrated from some one point to the several distant and isolated points, where now found. Nevertheless the simplicity of the view that each species was first produced within a single region captivates the mind. He who rejects it, rejects the vera causa of ordinary generation with subsequent migration, and calls in the agency of a miracle.

Related Characters: Charles Darwin
Page Number: 380
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Chapter 14 Quotes

All the foregoing rules and aids and difficulties in classification may be explained, if I do not greatly deceive myself, on the view that the natural system is founded on descent with modification—that the characters which naturalists consider as showing true affinity between any two or more species, are those which have been inherited from a common parent, all true classification being genealogical—that community of descent is the hidden bond which naturalists have been unconsciously seeking, and not some unknown plan of creation, or the enunciation of general propositions, and the mere putting together and separating objects more or less alike.

Related Characters: Charles Darwin
Page Number: 437
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Chapter 15 Quotes

As this whole volume is one long argument, it may be convenient to the reader to have the leading facts and inferences briefly recapitulated.

Related Characters: Charles Darwin
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 478
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There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.

Related Characters: Charles Darwin
Page Number: 507
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