Paideia Text and Issues Lecture

“The Origin of Species: How Charles Darwin’s Correspondence Challenges the Status of an Iconic Text” In his voluminous correspondence, Charles Darwin challenges the common view that the Origin of Species represented his magnum opus by calling it a hastily-written abstract of a much larger work he referred to as his “Big Book” on species. He promised to follow the Origin with this larger work and built anticipation for it but in the end reneged on this promise, instead following the Origin with a new work on orchids that he characterized as “a flank movement on the enemy.” In this lecture Professor Robert Shedinger will argue that Darwin had little confidence that he had solved the mystery of the the origin of species and that the status of this iconic text should therefore be re-evaluated given its continuing influence on fields both within and outside biology.