Wikipedia:Today's featured article/November 24, 2009

Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, published on 24 November 1859, is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology. Darwin's book presented evidence that the diversity of life arose through a branching pattern of evolution with common descent caused by the mechanism of natural selection. Prior to its publication various evolutionary ideas had been proposed to explain new findings in biology, but the English scientific establishment, closely tied to the Church of England, believed that species were unchanging parts of a designed hierarchy and had rejected ideas of transmutation of species and of humans being related to animals. The book attracted widespread interest, and generated scientific, philosophical, and religious discussion. This debate contributed to establishing secular science based on scientific naturalism. Within two decades there was widespread scientific agreement that evolution had occurred, but until the modern evolutionary synthesis in the 20th century there was much less agreement on the significance of natural selection. (more...)

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