Evolutionary ideas were in circulation before Charles Darwin began his work and were widely disseminated, arousing much controversy. In addition to the writings of Erasmus Darwin (Charles’ grandfather), French ideas gained some currency in the English-speaking world, especially the views of J. B. Lamarck. These ideas were taken up by radical thinkers who rejected divine creation, to the horror of conservatives. Early discoveries of fossils played a significant role in arousing public interest in the history of life and were often seen as evidence that life had ascended a scale of development (the chain of being) toward humanity. The first-known dinosaurs were fitted into the chain as gigantic lizards, not as evidence of creatures totally unlike anything now alive. This model was adapted to middle-class values in Robert Chambers’ Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation in 1844, again arousing controversy but gradually gaining some credibility beyond the scientific community.

The Origin has a three-part structure: analogy of artificial selection; struggle for existence leading to natural selection and hence explaining the tree of life; consilience of inductions confirming evolution. Relevance of “paradigms” from Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

The British tended to deny that Darwinism had anything to say to philosophy, epistemology, or ethics. The Americans were far more appreciative of Darwinism, which supported strongly their approach to epistemology – Pragmatism. Today, on both sides of the Atlantic, there are enthusiasts for a Darwin-influenced philosophy, for instance one promoting a naturalistic Kantianism in epistemology and ethical nonrealism in moral discourse.

Several versions of ‘social Darwinism’ flourished in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, along with ideologies derived from non-Darwinian evolution theories. They exploited discoveries of fossil hominids including Neanderthals and the Piltdown fraud to construct rival explanations of the emergence of human characteristics that might shape social development. The linear hierarchy of races erected in the nineteenth century remained the basis of many popular accounts, even though professional anthropologists began to turn their backs on it. Ideologies based on national or racial competition were advocated even by writers who did not accept the Darwinian theory of competition within populations. Fear of racial degeneration fuelled the eugenics movement’s calls for the elimination of ‘harmful’ characters, although the input from genetics encouraged an analogy with artificial rather than natural selection.

The work of Gregor Mendel was rediscovered and fused with natural selection to make for adequate evolutionary understanding. The key figure in England, working as a mechanist, was R. A. Fisher. In America, the key figure was Sewall Wright, working as an organicist. In England, E. B. Ford provided empirical evidence. In America, the Russian-born Theodosius Dobzhansky did likewise.

Newspapers expanded around 1900 to reach a wider readership, often reporting sensationalized stories about science. Attacks on the Darwinian theory of natural selection intensified, leading to claims that the theory was on its deathbed. Lamarckism remained active along with the theory of directed variation (orthogenesis), both presented as less materialistic than Darwinism. New alternatives appeared, including the ‘mutation theory’ (evolution by jumps) and genetics, which was at first presented as a threat to Darwinism rather than a supporting factor. In the 1920s a new surge of creationism in the United States intensified the attack on Darwinian materialism, culminating in the widely reported trial of J. T. Scopes. The same critiques appeared in a less muted form in Britain. The Darwinian ‘struggle for existence’ remained a source of anxiety for those who feared a potential threat to moral values and social stability.

The triumph of Darwinian evolutionary biology in the second half of the twentieth century brought social behavior into the picture, although – labeled “sociobiology” – not without controversy. The mechanism–organicism split continued to divide evolutionists, with “Standard Evolutionary Thinkers” firmly mechanist, and challengers “Extended Evolutionary Synthesists” – often appealing to evolutionary development (“evo-devo”) – firmly organicist.

A brief introduction to the life of Charles Darwin and his discovery of the causal role of natural selection in explaining evolutionary change. The effect of the publication of Robert Chambers’s Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, the long delay and the publication in 1859 of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.

In the late twentieth century, television provided more immediate ways of representing the processes of evolution, while the press increasingly seized on debates arising from their human implications. Progress remained an important theme, although the image of a linear ascent to humanity was usually qualified by recognition of diversity. The air of unity promoted in the synthesis era evaporated as biologists explored new and disturbing implications of the selection mechanism, including sociobiology and the notion of the ‘selfish gene.’ Studies of primates were used to throw light on human behaviour. Along with new challenges to the plausibility of the Darwinian theory, the resulting controversies were played out in a blaze of publicity. Darwinism also had to be modified to take account of growing evidence for discontinuities in the ascent of life, including mass extinctions. Creationists presented these ‘Darwin wars’ as evidence that evolutionism was losing its credibility even within science.

In the 1920s and 1930s the Darwinian selection theory was linked to genetics, providing it with a secure foundation, although wider dissemination of this initiative was limited until the 1940s. Historians note that the ‘evolutionary synthesis’ was a rhetorical device to create an impression of unity, leaving the various disciplines involved still functioning independently. Radio now became an important means of disseminating science news, as in the 1959 celebrations of the centenary of the Origin of Species. The new version of Darwinism eroded the plausibility of eugenics and race theory, although these ideologies remained active in less visible forms. Popular accounts of evolutionism now stressed its open-endedness and played down the old assumption that humanity must be the inevitable outcome of progress. Julian Huxley tried to give the synthesis a moral dimension by linking it to his philosophy of humanism, but creationists saw the new initiative in science as a continuation of Darwinian materialism and renewed their attacks.

This chapter outlines the development of the theory of natural selection and the events surrounding the publication and reviewing of Darwin’s Origin of Species, especially in non-specialist publications. The different responses in Britain and the United States are noted. The role of supporters such as T. H. Huxley in reaching a popular audience is explored, although their reservations about the adequacy of the theory are also taken into account. Conservative efforts to present evolution as the unfolding of a divine plan provided a very different way of understanding the general idea of evolution. Many popular accounts failed to understand the difference between Darwin’s ‘tree of life’ model and older ideas of a linear ascent toward humanity, especially when dealing with the issue of human origins. In this area, popular interest in the gorilla as a potential ancestral form distracted attention from some aspects of Darwin’s model, as shown in more detail in Chapter 3. The early evolutionism of Herbert Spencer is introduced and his relationship to Darwinism explained.

This chapter describes international maize-breeding research at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) across its first fifty years. Initially, breeders used landraces to create varieties whose seed, freely distributed through an international testing network, could be saved by farmers. A second phase in which CIMMYT forged partnerships with local and regional seed companies reflected the shift toward “market-led development.” This moderated free access to seed and fostered a gradual switch to hybrid technology. A trend among donors towards increased accountability and shorter funding cycles concurrently restricted CIMMYT’s investment in long-run research goals and accelerated a change of focus to Africa. Nonetheless, the development of germplasm tolerating drought and low soil fertility continued for decades, with eventual payoffs. Meanwhile, a long-running program to improve protein nutrition through high lysine maize varieties stalled due to lack of demand. In the twenty-first century, partnerships with global private seed companies allowed access to new technologies such as advanced screening methods, genomic selection, doubled haploids and gene editing.