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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2013
In his Autobiography, written toward the end of his life, Darwin (1958a, 140) wrote that the Origin consists of “one long argument.” Let us start there. The argument came in three main parts. In a letter written a year or two after the Origin was first published, Darwin outlined his strategy (Fig. 9.1).
In fact the belief in natural selection must at present be grounded entirely on general considerations. (1) on its being a vera causa, from the struggle for existence; & the certain geological fact that species do somehow change (2) from the analogy of change under domestication by man’s selection. (3) & chiefly from this view connecting under an intelligible point of view a host of facts.
(Darwin 1985–, 11:433, letter to George Bentham, 22 May 1863)Note Darwin’s use of the term “vera causa.” Verae causae, or “true causes,” were things insisted upon by Isaac Newton, a demand endorsed by those writing on science in Britain in the 1830s. This was just the time when Darwin was thinking creatively about evolution, and it is clear that the young scientist took the exhortation to heart. He wanted to produce an evolutionary theory that would live up to the standards of the best science, meaning the best Newtonian science.
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