To a certain extent it suffers from the Hamlet problem--it's full of clichés! Or what are now clichés, but which Darwin was the first to pen. Natural selection, variation, the struggle for existence, survival of the fittest: it's all in here.

Darwin's friend and "bulldog" T. H. Huxley said upon reading the Origin, "How extremely stupid of me not to have thought of that." Alfred Russel Wallace had thought of the same theory of evolution Darwin did, but it was Darwin who gathered the mass of supporting evidence--on domestic animals and plants, on variability, on sexual selection, on dispersal--that swept most scientists before it. It's hardly necessary to mention that the book is still controversial: Darwin's remark in his conclusion that "Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history" is surely the pinnacle of British understatement. --Mary Ellen Curtin, Amazon.com
For Favoured Races Only, 2010-05-15
The shockwaves from the publication of this book still resound today. The full title of the book is "On the Origin of Species By Means Of Natural Selection or Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life" by Charles Darwin and it was first published on November 24th of 1859. The importance of the work was not in the originality of the idea; the idea of evolution had been a theory long before as Darwin discusses in the text, nor was Darwin the only scientist at the time to arrive at the theory, as a paper by Alfred Wallace arrived the same year as Darwin's. What made "The Origin of Species" so significant was the way Darwin discusses the theory, and that it was not written just for scientists, but for everyone. This makes it a work of Literature as well as one of Science.

Another key aspect to "The Origin of Species" is that it has completely changed the focus of the subject from the point of its publication until now and undoubtedly will do so for some time to come. It is still the dominate point of reference in the argument between those who oppose the theory and those who support it. Those on both sides of the argument (and I use the term argument because the term discussion would lead one to believe that the discourse is much more civil than it actually is) would do well to emulate Darwin in the way he discusses his theory.

"The Origin of Species" in many ways sets the standard for scientific argument. Though again Darwin did not create the standard with this book, the significance of the work and the readability of the book make it stand out as an example of the correct way to present and defend a theory. Of course Darwin presents facts which support his theory, but it is his discussion of problems with the theory which is the strength of the book and his theory. Darwin admits he doesn't have answers to all of the issue, and he offers ways to prove his theory wrong or at least force a significant adjustment to the theory.

It is interesting that the issues with Darwin's theory and the methods of proving it wrong are in many ways unchanged. There will always be gaps in the fossil record, and there will probably always be questions of reducibility, but that doesn't mean that there isn't more evidence to support the theory than there ever has been, there is a lot more which has strengthened the theory, and the key point is that there hasn't been any evidence found to disprove the theory. And with regards to species being fixed, the scientific argument has long been over, though one can still find non-scientists who would argue the point.

"The Origin of Species" remains an important work of science and literature today. Understanding Darwin's theory is necessary to understanding the political discussions and ramifications that continue to take place. It also serves as a great guide to understanding what a scientific discussion is and how it works, and by contrast how it differs from a political, social, or theological discussion. It should go without saying that "The Origin of Species" gets five stars, and the introduction by John Burrow enhances the experience by putting it in the context of Darwin's life, and the times in which it was written and published. I was a little surprised that the Penguin Classics edition didn't include any notes on Darwin's text, but it does include a bibliography of Darwin's works. Also, while the text included is from the first edition of the book, it does include "An Historical Sketch" and a Glossary which were in later editions.