Darwin’s ideas were rarely orignal. He had to accept that Patrick Matthew came up with idea of natural before him and all of the ideas (as opposed to examples)given in “On the Origin of Species” were published before 1857 by various naturalists(Search Google for “wainwrightscience” for details). The warm little pond idea was mentioned by his grandfather Erasmus Darwin and given fuller explanation by Robert Chambers in his “Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation” which again predates the “Origins”.
Dr Milton Wainwright,Dept Molecular Biology and Biotechnology,University of Sheffield,UK.

Come, come Carl, you clearly have not read the entire corpus of Darwin’s published books nor all six editions of the Origin!

From the third edition (1861) onwards, Darwin also says:
“I have now recapitulated the chief facts and considerations which have thoroughly convinced me that species have been modified, during a long course of descent, by the preservation or the natural selection of many successive slight favourable variations. I cannot believe that a false theory would explain, as it seems to me that the theory of natural selection does explain, the several large classes of facts above specified. It is no valid objection that science as yet throws no light on the far higher problem of the essence or origin of life. Who can explain what is the essence of the attraction of gravity? No one now objects to following out the results consequent on this unknown element of attraction; notwithstanding that Leibnitz formerly accused Newton of introducing “occult qualities and miracles into philosophy.”"

And in Variation Under Domestication he says:
“As the first origin of life on this earth, as well as the continued life of each individual, is at present quite beyond the scope of science, I do not wish to lay much stress on the greater simplicity of the view of a few forms, or of only one form, having been originally created, instead of innumerable miraculous creations having been necessary at innumerable periods; though this more simple view accords well with Maupertuis’s philosophical axiom “of least action.”"

And don’t forget the allusion to the origin of life in the glorious closing sentence, which even included “breathed by the Creator” in some later editions:

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

But only joking about reading them all, although I do have them all on the shelf. I cheated and used Darwin online!

Natural selection plays an important role in evolution. It prevents evolution.

” The struggle for existence and natural selection are not progresssive agencies, but being, on the contrary, conservative, maintain the standard.”
Leo Berg, Nomogenesis, page 406.

jadavison.wordpress.com

“Marx, Darwin and Freud are the three most crashing bores of the Western World.”
William Golding

“He who establishes his argument by noise and command, shows that he is weak.”
Montaigne

jadavison.wordpress.com

No one here is questioning a past evolution, certainly not I. The question has always been the same. What was the mechanism by which evolution took place in the past? St George Jackson Mivart asked the key question in Darwin’s own day, a question which still cannot be answered by the Darwinians. I paraphrase as I don’t have the original handy.

How can natural selection have been involved with a structure which had not yet appeared?

jadavison.wordpress.com

I don’t think his opinion are of any value.

Ah! But I am presenting evidence, Martin. All anyone has to do is follow the link I provided and read for themselves. They can then form their own opinion.

http://www.overwhelmingevidence.com/oe/node/594

I don’t think his opinion are of any value.

The first resource they have is a document called “15 Evolutionary Gems” that gives brief overviews of papers published in Nature over the last decade that illustrate the empirical validity and conceptual power of evolutionary biology. Complete citation information is given for each paper, as well as for additional resources that flesh out concepts or evidence discussed in each paper. If anyone out there doubts that there is any evidence for evolution, whether past or present, the papers listed among those 15 gems are a good starting place for discovering just how incorrect that view is.
http://www.nature.com/nature/newspdf/evolutiongems.pdf

Mel

http://www.natur.cuni.cz/~flegr/book_evbiol.php

But he mentioned you John. He mentioned your work about non-homology of germ cells in mammals on page 240 (in index: Davison: (1998) Evolution as a self limiting process. Riv, Biol – Biol.Forum 91, 199-202) and also your Manifesto (index, page 518).