These were the circumstances in which Charles Darwin found himself in the late 1830’s and early 1840’s, when he developed the principle of natural selection and its revolutionary implication: all the Earth’s life forms could have evolved from a single common ancestor. His was one of the most brilliant insights in the history of science: a mechanism that enabled the principle of evolution to unify and inform all of biology.
&#160;&#160;&#160; 这就是十九世纪三十年代末和四十年代初达尔文所面临的境况。当时他研究确立了物竞天择的原理及其巨大无比的影响，也就是说，地球上所有的生命形式都有可能从某个共同祖先演变而来。他提出了科学史上最为杰出的洞察观点，那也就是让演化原理统一并且解释所有生物的机制。