On the Origin of Species....Introduction

Darwin uses an introduction to briefly trace the evolution of his thinking on the origin of species and to sum up his main conclusions. The orthodox thinking of Darwin’s time was that species were independently created and immutable, that is, unchanged, since their creation. Darwin challenged this view, which he himself had held until amassing countless observations to the contrary through his travels on the Beagle and experiments he conducted in the years following the voyage. Darwin saw patterns in living things that pointed to common descent and that indicated change or what was then called transmutation of species through time. And he suggested a mechanism for this change, which he called Natural Selection.