Charles Darwin's 1859 masterwork arguing for evolution by natural selection — the most consequential scientific book ever published — demonstrating through accumulated evidence that all species share common ancestors and that adaptation arises through differential reproductive success without design.
Removed purpose from biology — and by extension from human nature — arguing that what looks like design is the result of blind variation and selection, transforming the biological sciences and making Darwinian evolution the lens through which all subsequent biology was conducted.
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