The Complex Legacy of Charles Darwin: Revolution, Reckoning, and Revision
The Complex Legacy of Charles Darwin: Revolution, Reckoning, and Revision Introduction Few individuals in human history have reshaped the fundamental story we tell about ourselves as thoroughly as Charles Darwin. In 1859, a reserved, chronically ill English naturalist published a single book—*On the Origin of Species*—that quietly detonated underneath the foundations of Western thought. It did not merely add a new fact to the catalogue of human knowledge; it changed the *kind* of story humanity could tell about its own origins, its relationship to other living things, and its place in an indifferent, ever-changing universe. Darwin's legacy is not simple, and it should not be treated as simple. He gave the world one of the most powerful and well-evidenced explanatory frameworks in the history of science, a tool that has since illuminated everything from the origin of antibiotic resistance to the deep kinship between a human being and a mushroom. At the same time, his i...