

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

Photo by J. Cameron, 1869

On this day, 148 years ago, Charles Darwin first published The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (wikipedia). Although the book and specifics of Darwin’s orginal theory have been improved upon, as the evolving body of scientific knowledge perpetually works out the myriad details of the proccess, natural selection, the mechanism or algorithm Darwin proposed as the driving force behind the fossil record’s clear-cut revelation of life’s increasing complexity, remains the dominant explanation for human origins and the origins for all life on Earth.

You can read the complete text and all of Darwins other works at the Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online website…

…or you can download the complete 6th edition of the text in a variety of formats you can read on your cellphone at Project Gutenberg.

…or you can download the complete text in audiobook format from Librivox

For a more advanced schooling in evolutionary theory, I highly recommend Richard Dawkins’ “The Selfish Gene,” where he explains why Nice Guys Finish First in survival of the fittest.

: This is not to be confused with the flaky, New Age evolutionday.com , which comes up first in Google Searches on this subject. (Some friends and I are cleansing some crystals and enlisting some psychics for an Astral Projection karmageddon assault on the website’s owners to make them relinquish the domain name.)Cross-posted at GO