[Revised entry by James Lennox and Charles H. Pence on May 6, 2024.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, notes.html]
Darwinism designates a distinctive form of evolutionary explanation for the history and diversity of life on earth. Its original formulation is provided in the first edition of On the Origin of Species in 1859. This entry first formulates ‘Darwin’s Darwinism’ in terms of six philosophically distinctive themes: (i) probability and chance, (ii) the nature, power and scope of selection, (iii) adaptation and teleology, (iv) the interpretation of the concept of ‘species’, (v) the tempo…

Originally appeared on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Read More