During ' the eclipse of Darwinism' from the 1880s to the 1930s, various other mechanisms of evolution were given more credit. Within two decades, there was widespread scientific agreement that evolution, with a branching pattern of common descent, had occurred, but scientists were slow to give natural selection the significance that Darwin thought appropriate. Huxley and his fellow members of the X Club to secularise science by promoting scientific naturalism. The debate over the book contributed to the campaign by T. Darwin was already highly regarded as a scientist, so his findings were taken seriously and the evidence he presented generated scientific, philosophical, and religious discussion. The book was written for non-specialist readers and attracted widespread interest upon its publication. The political and theological implications were intensely debated, but transmutation was not accepted by the scientific mainstream. Ideas about the transmutation of species were controversial as they conflicted with the beliefs that species were unchanging parts of a designed hierarchy and that humans were unique, unrelated to other animals. There was growing support for such ideas among dissident anatomists and the general public, but during the first half of the 19th century the English scientific establishment was closely tied to the Church of England, while science was part of natural theology. Various evolutionary ideas had already been proposed to explain new findings in biology. Reception Impact on the scientific community Impact outside Great Britain Challenges to natural selection Impact on economic and political debates Religious attitudes.Structure, style, and themes Nature and structure of Darwin's argument Literary style Human evolution.

Content Title pages and introduction Variation under domestication and under nature Struggle for existence, natural selection, and divergence Variation and heredity Difficulties for the theory Geological record Geographic distribution Classification, morphology, embryology, rudimentary organs Concluding remarks.

Publication Time taken to publish Events leading to publication: 'big book' manuscript Joint publication of papers by Wallace and Darwin Abstract of Species book Murray as publisher choice of title Publication and subsequent editions Publication outside Great Britain.

Background Developments before Darwin's theory Inception of Darwin's theory Further development.

On the origin of species was written by