What if Darwin Had Published His 1844 Essay?

There is a rigid backbone running through, and in effect pinning down, much of the standard discourse addressing the history of Darwin’s development of his Origin theory of evolution. The core assumption is of a relatively continuous and smooth process that began in his 1830s notebooks, traversed two drafts, and culminated (to a first approximation) in the 1859 publication of On the Origin of Species. To sustain this well-established modern viewpoint, a complex network of supportive evidence has been constructed. Historiographic labels like “Darwin’s delay”, which presses for a positive answer to the counterfactual title, and the “origins of the Origin” in his 1830s Notebooks emerge as legitimate puzzles within the standard discourse. But without this spine of continuity, the standard puzzles and consequent necessity for explanations disappear or change form, and alternatives materialize. Under the aegis of the “disenchantment-based” discourse, to be developed, the 1859 Origin, for example was not a delayed publication, quite the opposite. Under pressure, in just 8 months Darwin rushed out an unreferenced abstract of his latest evolution theorizing. Similarly, in the absence of the chordate belief in continuity, what significance can be attached to finding Origin ideas in the Notebooks, and so on. As will be demonstrated, there is a consensus of new evidence that emerges as significant when the standard discourse is deconstructed, partly by means of evidence miss-interpreted and partly through evidence completely overlooked. The titular counterfactual aimed directly at this rigid path through the standard discourse is the motivation to dig deeper under the too readily accepted explanatory surface. It is posed to stimulate thinking of what options were open at the time. It is definitely not a lead in to the transformation of “what if” to “if only”—the usual reading of the lament of “Darwin’s delay”.