In previous posts we have discussed both Darwin himself and the voyage of the Beagle.  It will be handy to cross reference these posts to gain a decent background of the material.  Today’s post will discuss how the second edition was revised.

The simple fact is that extensive revisions occurred in this edition.  These are ostensibly based on interpretation of the field collections and the accompanying development of ideas pertinent to evolution.   But, there is another pressing development that is shunted aside in this discussion.  Speculations about the differences between the Galapagos wildlife and South American wildlife broke further and further from any sort of creative power and more and more into the camp of calling for successive gradations of change that occurred without any such creative power’s involvement.

Oddly, if I am reading this correctly, this is the same time period in which he temporarily lived with his free -thinking brother Erasmus and was regularly consulting with atheistic scientists working on the same sorts of inquiry.   It would seem to me there is a possibility that we not only see evidence of development of theory but of a transformation into the formative ideas that Darwin was relying on in that time period.

Charles Darwin’s The Voyage of the Beagle, Chapter 5, may read here:

http://www.bartleby.com/29/5.html#30

Alternatively, you may listen to this in an audiobook format here: