Editing Darwinism (section)

==Huxley==
[[File:Editorial cartoon depicting Charles Darwin as an ape (1871).jpg|thumb|upright=1.15|As [[evolution]] became widely accepted in the 1870s, [[Caricatures of Charles Darwin and his evolutionary theory in 19th-century England|caricatures of Charles Darwin]] with the body of an ape or monkey symbolised evolution.<ref>{{harvnb|Browne|2002|pp=376–379}}</ref>]]

Huxley, upon first reading Darwin's theory in 1858, responded, "How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!"<ref>{{Harvnb|Huxley|1893}} vol. 1, p.189.</ref>

While the term ''Darwinism'' had been used previously to refer to the work of [[Erasmus Darwin]] in the late 18th century, the term as understood today was introduced when Charles Darwin's 1859 book ''On the Origin of Species'' was reviewed by Thomas Henry Huxley in the April 1860 issue of ''[[The Westminster Review]]''.<ref name="urlThe Huxley File § 4 Darwins Bulldog">{{cite web |url=http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/guide4.html |title=Darwin's Bulldog |last1=Blinderman |first1=Charles |last2=Joyce |first2=David |website=The Huxley File |publisher=[[Clark University]] |location=Worcester, MA |access-date=2008-06-29}}</ref> Having hailed the book as "a veritable [[Whitworth rifle|Whitworth gun]] in the armoury of liberalism" promoting [[naturalism (philosophy)|scientific naturalism]] over [[theology]], and praising the usefulness of Darwin's ideas while expressing professional reservations about Darwin's [[gradualism]] and doubting if it could be proved that natural selection could form new species,<ref>{{harvnb|Browne|2002|pp=105–106}}</ref> Huxley compared Darwin's achievement to that of [[Nicolaus Copernicus]] in explaining planetary motion:
{{quotation|What if the orbit of Darwinism should be a little too circular? What if species should offer residual phenomena, here and there, not explicable by natural selection? Twenty years hence naturalists may be in a position to say whether this is, or is not, the case; but in either event they will owe the author of "The Origin of Species" an immense debt of gratitude.... And viewed as a whole, we do not believe that, since the publication of Von Baer's "Researches on Development," thirty years ago, any work has appeared calculated to exert so large an influence, not only on the future of Biology, but in extending the domination of Science over regions of thought into which she has, as yet, hardly penetrated.<ref name="westminster" />}}

These are the basic tenets of evolution by natural selection as defined by Darwin:

# More individuals are produced each generation than can survive.
# Phenotypic variation exists among individuals and the variation is heritable.
# Those individuals with heritable traits better suited to the environment will survive.
# When reproductive isolation occurs new species will form.