Popp's Concordance to Darwin's On the Origin of Species

 Contact Us

This book will help anyone who is interested in understanding the work of Charles Darwin. Students and scholars of Darwinism will be pleased with the convenient access it provides to concepts in Darwin’s most important publication. This concordance offers assistance not only to those who accept Darwin’s ideas as scientific fact, but also to those who have legitimate questions about what he actually wrote in On the Origin of Species. The quick reference to key words that this concordance provides will prove to be a real time-saver for everyone — including those who know On the Origin of Species well, and those who are reading it for the first time.

Every library, public or personal, that has a copy of On the Origin of Species should also have a copy of this new concordance. This important reference book is written for anyone who reads or quotes Charles Darwin’s famous book. Stephen Jay Gould wrote in his book The Structure of Evolutionary Theory in 2002 that:

This concordance was designed precisely with the above purpose in mind. It reveals through the study of Darwin’s writing some surprising facts. For example, Darwin never used the descriptive word "evolution" and used the word "evolved" only once — as the last word in the text!

A few years ago I asked Ernst Mayr, one of the founding fathers of modern evolutionary biology, for his recollection of the first usage of the word "law" in reference to natural selection. He replied that it might have been in the first edition of On the Origin of Species, but that he was not certain. That response indicated to me that even a specialist who had spent a lifetime studying Darwin might benefit from this new, easy to use, concordance of Darwin’s most important work. For those less familiar with Darwin’s publication, this concordance may be of even greater assistance.

In 1859, Darwin’s book divided time on Earth into two periods: pre-Darwinian and post-Darwinian. All human pursuits are split by that singular publishing event. Before 1859, the existence of, ultimate causation of, and function of all life on Earth, including the entire human concern, was inexplicable. When that book was published, philosophy and science gained potential access to the ultimate meaning of life, as discussed in my previous book: Popular Evolution: Life-Lessons from Anthropology (Joseph L. Popp, 2000), where I argued that evolution also has extraordinary relevance to the daily lives of modern Americans. A century after Darwin, the eminent population biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky wrote in the American Biology Teacher (1973):

Indeed! Furthermore, not only is Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection indispensable in explaining biology and the existence of all life on Earth, including humans, it is as certainly true as the fact that the Earth revolves around the Sun.

The magnitude of the Darwinian revolution would be hard to overestimate. It came as a tidal wave to laypersons and scientists alike in Darwin’s own time. The swells of that tidal wave are still felt today wherever evolutionary science tosses knowledge over the rocks of ignorance.

 The revolution, fought with such vigor and intelligence by Darwin and his colleagues during the Victorian era, is still being fought. Religious zealots of our own time would put evolutionary biology on the same level as "creation science" or religious decrees, and have them taught side by side in public schools. Fortunately, great men of this era such as Stephen Jay Gould, who testified before the U.S. Congress, have effectively deterred such an outrageous proposition.

For those who do not yet have a copy of Darwin’s publication of 1859, a facsimile is available from Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Ernst Mayr (1991, pp. 93-96) wrote in his book, One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought, that Darwin intended primarily to discredit the idea of special creation by God. But Darwin did not fail to use the words "God," "Divine power," "God’s word," and "God’s works" in On the Origin of Species. Why not read Darwin’s book with this concordance at hand and form your own opinion?

I find Darwin’s prose to be delightful — clear and to the point. Descriptions such as the celebrated one below illuminate and add sparkle to his text:

Elsewhere in the text, when a commonly misunderstood metaphor (in his day and in ours), the "struggle for existence" is used, Darwin makes his intentions clear:

Much misunderstanding of Darwin’s concepts such as "struggle for existence" stems from a failure to read about his ideas in his own words. I personally do not know anyone who has taken the time to study On the Origin of Species who is not convinced of the truth of its contents. Skeptics, take this point as a challenge — read it and make an evolutionary step upward.

Janet Browne wrote in Charles Darwin (2002):

That statement is true today as it was in the nineteenth century — in fact, the trend toward relying on derivative literature, some of which distorts, misquotes or overlooks Darwin’s primary messages, may be even greater now.

The full title of Darwin’s book is: ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION, OR THE PRESERVATION OF FAVOURED RACES IN THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. In the text he used the word "race" only fourteen times and the word "races" forty-five times in the same sense that he used the word in the title. Group selectionists, nota bene: For the most part he wrote about selection at the level of the individual rather than at the level of race. He uses the word "individual" ninety-two times and the word "individuals" one hundred forty-four times. It is also clear that, though he did not use that term, Darwin had a 19th century inkling of inclusive fitness — which was to become a profound innovation and expansion of theory on that subject in the 20th century by William D. Hamilton (1972) and social evolution in general by Edward O. Wilson (1975) and by Robert L. Trivers (1985). Hamilton wrote in "Altruism and Related Phenomena, Mainly in Social Insects" that the inclusive fitness of an individual is a key determinant for observed patterns of altruism and other social behaviors. His mathematical concept took into account kinship effects beyond those of parent-offspring genetics. Wilson wrote in Sociobiology about the biological foundations of social organization in animals, including humans. Trivers wrote in Social Evolution about the theoretical foundations for reciprocal altruism, sex ratios, parental investment, parent-offspring conflict and self-deception. Darwin’s own intuition regarding the evolution of neuter castes in social insects is shown in his paragraph:

Modern evolutionists take the unification of Darwinism with Mendelism (Gregor Mendel, 1865), the synthetic theory, for granted. But that was a 20th century development which completed our understanding of the mechanisms of evolution. The combining of the study of natural selection and the study of genetics was eloquently discussed by Ronald A. Fisher (1930), by Ernst Mayr (1963), by George C. Williams (1966) and by Richard Dawkins (1976). Evolution by natural selection is now defined as descent with modification due to the change of gene frequency in a population over time. Fisher wrote in The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection about some of the basic concepts in natural selection and gene interaction: the evolution of dominance, runaway selection, and the relationship between genes and human social status. Mayr wrote in Animal Species and Evolution about fundamental evolutionary mechanisms as they apply to animal populations. Williams wrote in Adaptation and Natural Selection about the evolutionary success of individuals trying to maximize their reproductive success and subsequent adaptations. Dawkins presented in The Selfish Gene a revolutionary concept: that evolution is best understood from the perspective of genes as selfish replicators. Organisms exist as phenotypes for the benefit of genes that are trying to make copies of themselves. In other words, an organism is merely a gene’s way of making another gene.

This concordance is organized in a straightforward fashion. Key words used in On the Origin of Species appear alphabetically in boldface type in the columns. Below them are phrases from Darwin’s book in order of page number. The numbers in braces following the phrases indicate the pages on which they appear. For example, under the key word ADAPTATIONS on page 7 of this concordance, one will find the phrase "in short, we see beautiful adaptations everywhere" followed by the page number: {61}, which is the page on which this phrase appears in On the Origin of Species. With the key words, key phrases and their page numbers at hand, finding the locations in his book of a topic for which you are searching is straightforward, and comparing the key phrases will allow you to find a particular passage. For example, in the 1859 edition Darwin did not use the expression "survival of the fittest," which he later borrowed from Spencer. But as this concordance shows, he did use the term "fitness" in a sense similar to its current usage in evolutionary nomenclature.

I hope that this concordance will promote an increased understanding of Darwin’s great, original work.

Joseph L. Popp
New York
March 2004

"This is a splendid idea, indispensable for anyone analyzing the Origin...."

-- Ernst Mayr, Harvard University

"Evolution by natural selection may be the most powerful idea ever to occur to a human mind. Think how much it explains compared with how little it needs to assume in order to do so. Yet, in spite of being so simple and so powerful, nobody thought of it until the nineteenth century. It didn’t trickle into our culture, half-baked and unsatisfying, but sprang to our collective attention in a single great book, fully armed with evidence: one long, lucid, irrefutable argument. Open Darwin’s pages and you enter a mental cathedral: you are ushered into the echoing presence of one of the world’s great intellects. The three most influential books ever written, in any language, are the Bible, the Koran, and On the Origin of Species. Eventually only one of these will remain: the one supported by the evidence."

-- Richard Dawkins, Oxford University

"All science has one aim, namely, to find a theory of nature. We have theories of races and of functions, but scarcely yet a remote approach to an idea of creation. We are now so far from the road to truth, that religious teachers dispute and hate each other, and speculative men are esteemed unsound and frivolous. But to a sound judgment, the most abstract truth is the most practical. Whenever a true theory appears, it will be its own evidence. Its test is, that it will explain all phenomena. Now many are thought not only unexplained but inexplicable, as language, sleep, madness, dreams, beasts, sex." (p. 36)

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1836. Nature. In Selected Essays. pp. 35-82. Penguin Classics, 1987 edition. Penguin Books: New York. 415 pp.

Emerson wrote the above paragraph twenty-three years before the publication of On the Origin of Species. How prescient were his words!

Joseph L. Popp was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1950. He earned a Bachelor of Science Degree with Distinction in Zoology from Ohio State University in 1972 (Phi Beta Kappa) and went on to earn a Doctor of Philosophy Degree in Anthropology from Harvard University in 1979. He lived, conducted anthropological field research, and published in eastern Africa for 15 years. He is the author of Popular Evolution: Life-Lessons from Anthropology. He currently lives in the U.S.A. He has spent a lifetime writing, editing and publishing books that are friendly to the reader. Upon seeing this volume, Christine A. Ryan, an editor at Man and Nature Press, commented: "At last, a concordance that we can use!" Not only is this book highly usable, it employs new technologies in information management and in design that make it affordable, too.

Browne, J., 2002. Charles Darwin: the power of place. Volume II of a biography. Alfred A. Knopf: New York. 591 pp.

Darwin, C. R., 1859. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. John Murray: London. 502 pp.

Dawkins, R., 1976. The selfish gene. Oxford University Press: Oxford. 224 pp.

Dobzhansky, T., 1973. Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. American Biology Teacher 35:125-129.

Fisher, R. A., 1930. The genetical theory of natural selection. 1958 revised and enlarged edition. Dover Publications, Inc.: New York. 291 pp.

Gould, S. J., 2002. The structure of evolutionary theory. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press: Cambridge. 1433 pp.

Hamilton, W. D., 1972. Altruism and related phenomena, mainly in social insects. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 3:193-232.

Mayr, E., 1963. Animal species and evolution. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press: Cambridge. 797 pp.

Mayr, E., 1991. One long argument: Charles Darwin and the genesis of modern evolutionary thought. Harvard University Press: Cambridge. 195 pp.

Mendel, G., 1865. Experiments in plant-hybridisation. 1965 translated edition. Harvard University Press: Cambridge. 41 pp.

Popp, J. L., 2000. Popular evolution: life-lessons from anthropology. Man and Nature Press: Lake Jackson. 300 pp.

Trivers, R. L., 1985. Social evolution. Benjamin/Cummings Publishing Company: Menlo Park. 462 pp.

Williams, G. C., 1966. Adaptation and natural selection: a critique of some current evolutionary thought. Princeton University Press: Princeton. 307 pp.

Wilson, E. O., 1975. Sociobiology: the new synthesis. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press: Cambridge. 697 pp.

 Order Form: Popp’s Concordance to Darwin’s On the Origin of Species

Name: ______________________________________________________

Address: ____________________________________________________

City: _________________________ State: __________ Zip: _______

Please enclose purchase order or check or money order for $79.95

plus $8.00 shipping (8% sales tax when shipped to an address in

NY). Mail to: Man and Nature Press, 5802 State Hwy 7 Oneonta NY 13820