The world after Charles R. Darwin: continuity, unity in diversity, contingency

The core of the Darwinian cultural challenge is connected to three basic ideas, with experimental evidences and philosophical wide consequences: (1) the natural continuity between all living beings and their properties and behaviors, humans included; (2) the mix of historical unity and the production of diversity at level of both individuals and species; (3) the historical contingency and unpredictability of evolutionary paths. Darwin was aware of these consequences when writing, not yet 30 years old, his first Notebooks on transmutation of species (1836-1844). Though not involved in public debates after 1859, he understood that his ideas were going to challenge a whole set of beliefs deeply rooted in Western traditional thought and probably, according to recent experimental studies in cognitive psychology and ethology, settled in the evolution of our mind itself. Two centuries after his birth, not only does Darwin's heritage concern the content of his scientific research program, widely corroborated and usefully updated today, but also his innovative method of inquiry, and the emancipated "grandeur" of "this view of life" where from a simple beginning "endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved". © 2009 Springer-Verlag.