Contrary to prevailing contemporary perceptions of Charles Darwin and his work, this book reveals a more nuanced picture, presenting him as a man of his time who struggled to reconcile the received wisdom of an unchanging natural world with his new ideas of evolution.

Widely seen as evolution’s founding figure, Charles Darwin is taken by many evolutionists to be the first to propose a truly modern theory of evolution. Darwin’s greatness, however, has obscured the man and his work, at times even to the point of distortion. Accessibly written, this book presents a more nuanced picture and invites us to discover some neglected ambiguities and contradictions in Darwin’s masterwork. Delisle and Tierney show Darwin to be a man who struggled to reconcile the received wisdom of an unchanging natural world with his new ideas about evolution. Arguing that Darwin was unable to break free entirely from his contemporaries’ more traditional outlook, they show his theory to be a fascinating compromise between old and new. Rediscovering this other Darwin – and this other side of On the Origin of Species – helps shed new light on the immensity of the task that lay before 19th century scholars, as well as their ultimate achievements.

"The book shows that biology, especially evolutionary biology, is a dynamic and extremely exciting field and that there is much left to be discovered by the next generations of biologists. It delves deeply into Darwin’s Origin of Species as well as into the paradigm prevailing during his time." - Alexander Czaja, Evolution: International Journal of Organic Evolution

"Delisle and Tierney have immersed themselves in the text of On the Origin of Species like few, if any, before. This is a highly original, critical, yet sympathetic deconstruction of the Darwin idolatry that has dominated biological evolution theory for decades." - Nicolaas Rupke, Professor of the History of Science, University of Göttingen, Germany and Washington and Lee University, USA

"A much-needed deconstruction of the ‘Darwin Legend’, that is, the seemingly irresistible temptation of many modern readers to read their own ideas back into On the Origin of Species, and to make Darwin an ahistorical icon, or the father figure of an even more ahistorical ‘Darwinism’." - Antonello La Vergata, Professor of the History of Philosophy, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy