One hundred and forty-four years ago this day, the world was revolutionized by a book.
On Nov. 24, 1859, it was published in England: Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life."
Darwin's book is on the Mt. Rushmore of influential book jackets, right alongside Homer's "The Odyssey," Marx and Engel's "The Communist Manifesto," the Bible, "The Bhagavad-Gita," "Dante's Inferno" and "Hamlet."
In it, Darwin puts forth his most famous theory - evolution by natural selection. He describes how all organisms change over generations and how nature selects for the best adaptations "whenever and wherever opportunity offers." In this way, he hypothesizes, species are created, evolve or become extinct over time.
Though Darwinian evolution has been one of the most famously contested theories in history, it is also one of the most misunderstood. In fact, the word "evolution" doesn't appear on a single page of "Origin." And with new technologies, evolutionary biologists and micro-evolutionists are discovering stronger and stronger evidence to support Darwin's theory every year.
But besides being a cornerstone of modern science, "Origin" is philosophically paramount to our understanding of ourselves and the "progress" we purport to make in the headlines each day: new drugs to beat back virulent bacteria, more luxurious rides to work and more microchips produced per minute in factories around the world.
In the face of all this so-called "progress," "Origin" reads as a crucial warning: Darwin argues that evolution doesn't point us toward any grand finale or betterment of species - in other words, we are not necessarily "progressing" toward anything at all.
And natural selection is pushing back hard against our "progress." For every new and powerful antibiotic produced, the few strongest bacteria that survive get selected for creating tougher and more resistant diseases. To deal with this and other problems, it is imperative we look back to this day in history and to Darwin's theory of evolution.
In fact, there is hardly a department on this or any college campus that has not been affected by Darwin's writings: history, economics, philosophy, biochemical engineering, you name it - each field has in some way been informed by or reacted to "Origin."
We write not to promote evolution but to promote awareness of history - history that has changed the way we as humans think about ourselves in the world.
You should know what it's about and why human life has changed since 1859 because of it.
