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From Histories of Life: Searching for Order
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Darwin, The Origin: Creator
Darwin found the order of nature in a process: natural selection. As for the origin of life, he did not address that question in Origin of Species. Beginning with the second British edition, however, he inserted the word “Creator” into the book’s last paragraph (seen here) and elsewhere. Later regretting some of these changes, he said they were was done as a concession to public opinion and that “Creator” referred to the unknown. Acknowledging the limits of human knowledge, he wrote that life appeared “by some wholly unknown process—it is mere rubbish thinking, at present, of origin of life; one might as well think of origin of matter.”
Charles Darwin (1809–1882). On the Origin of Species. 2nd ed. London: John Murray, 1860.
