Question: What are the three things John Herschel maintains need to be shown to allow for a mechanism be called a true cause?
Answer: its existence in nature, its ability to produce the effects of interest, and its ability to explain a wide range of observations

Question: What reason did David Quammen believe that On the Origin of Species was weakened in later editions?
Answer: Darwin making concessions and adding details to address his critics

Question: Why did James T. Costa think that On the Origin of Species was more likely to draw interest than a larger book that Darwin had been working on?
Answer: because the book was an abstract produced in haste in response to Wallace's essay

Question: What did On Origin of Species avoid in order to raise its chance of being taken seriously?
Answer: it avoided the narrative style of the historical novel and cosmological speculation

Question: What element of On the Origin of Species ensured that the book would be taken seriously by scientists?
Answer: its dryness ensured that it was seen as aimed at specialist scientists and could not be dismissed as mere journalism or imaginative fiction.

Question: Why did James T. Costa think the larger, abandoned book would not have been as successful?
Answer: would have been encumbered by scholarly footnotes and much more technical detail

Question: Why did On the Origin of Species likely raise so much interest and debate?
Answer: no sharp line between scientific issues and ideological, social and religious implications

Question: Why was the book taken seriously even though much of the response was hostile?
Answer: Darwin had to be taken seriously as a prominent and respected name in science

Question: What field of ideas latched onto On the Origin of Species when it became a widespread success?
Answer: social reform

Question: What did Darwin's book do for the field of scientific study of evolution?
Answer: Darwin's book legitimised scientific discussion of evolutionary mechanisms

Question: What was the term used to not only describe Darwin's theories, but the whole spectrum of evolution-ism after his book met with success?
Answer: Darwinism

Question: What was the general response from scientific readers to Lamarck's written work?
Answer: the transmutational ideas of Lamarck and the vague "law of development" of Vestiges had not found scientific favour

Question: What was the likely reason that Darwin's ideas were accepted more readily than Lamarck's?
Answer: natural selection as a scientifically testable mechanism while accepting that other mechanisms such as inheritance of acquired characters were possible.

Question: Which school did opponents to Darwin's method support?
Answer: the idealist school of William Whewell's Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences

Question: Where did early support for Darwin's findings come from?
Answer: the findings of field naturalists studying biogeography and ecology, including Joseph Dalton Hooker in 1860, and Asa Gray in 1862

Question: Who authored research supporting insect mimicry  using natural selection?
Answer: Henry Walter Bates

Question: Who supported Darwin's theories on evolution despite it having little impact on his own research?
Answer: Thomas Henry Huxley

Question: What did Huxley's 1860 article in the Westminster Review promote?
Answer: scientific naturalism over natural theology

Question: Why did Huxley coin the name "Darwinism?"
Answer: as part of his efforts to secularise and professionalise science

Question: What did the morphologist Ernst Haeckel convince Huxley of about comparative anatomy and paleontology?
Answer: that comparative anatomy and palaeontology could be used to reconstruct evolutionary genealogies

Question: Who was the leading naturalist in Britain?
Answer: Richard Owen,

Question: How did Owen respond to On the Origin of Species with his review?
Answer: bitterly attacked Huxley, Hooker and Darwin, but also signalled acceptance of a kind of evolution as a teleological plan in a continuous "ordained becoming"

Question: What was the debate between Huxley and Owen concerning humans and apes?
Answer: Huxley had emphasised anatomical similarities between apes and humans, contesting Owen's view that humans were a separate sub-class

Question: What was the primary debate at the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting of 1860?
Answer: legendary 1860 Oxford evolution debate

Question: When did Darwin publish his own explanation of the question of the evolution of man and ape?
Answer: Darwin published his own explanation in the Descent of Man (1871)

Question: While evolutionary ideas were accepted by German biologists, what was not?
Answer: natural selection

Question: What led to more misgivings of conservative scientists when Bronn's German translation of On the Origin of Species was published?
Answer: Bronn's alterations in his German translation added to the misgivings of conservatives

Question: Which group of people was excited by the German translation of On the Origin of Species?
Answer: political radicals

Question: Why were political radicals such as Ernst Haekel so interested in On the Origin of Species?
Answer: aiming to synthesise Darwin's ideas with those of Lamarck and Goethe while still reflecting the spirit of Naturphilosophie

Question: What was the general feeling toward Darwin's ideas in France?
Answer: Darwin's ideas had little impact in France, where any scientists supporting evolutionary ideas opted for a form of Lamarckism

Question: What people in what country had embraced the idea of evolution for many years before Darwin published his theory?
Answer: The intelligentsia in Russia

Question: Which aspects of evolution theory were thought to be unimportant by many who read Darwin's work?
Answer: the Malthusian aspects

Question: Which author voiced his displeasure of the morality of Darwin's views in a novel?
Answer: Leo Tolstoy

Question: What justification for his objections to the process of natural selection did Karl von Nägel give?
Answer: insistence that a trivial characteristic with no adaptive advantage could not be developed by selection

Question: What was Darwin's concession to Karl von Nägel's objections?
Answer: Darwin conceded that these could be linked to adaptive characteristics

Question: Who disputed Darwin's estimate that the age of the earth allowed gradual evolution of species?
Answer: William Thomson

Question: What were William Thomson's reasons for disputing Darwin's estimate?
Answer: calculated that it had cooled in less than 100 million years

Question: When were the problems of the earth and heredity resolved?
Answer: in the 20th century

Question: Why did most scientists accept the validity of evolution by the 1870s, but considered natural selection a minor part of it?
Answer: they believed evolution was purposeful and progressive.

Question: What was meant by the term saltationism?
Answer: new species were thought to arise through "jumps" rather than gradual adaptation

Question: What is the term for the belief that species have a tendency to change and adapt in a certain direction?
Answer: orthogenesis

Question: What was the minority view on evolution that was believed by August Weismann?
Answer: neo-Darwinism

Question: What rediscovered inheritance was thought to invalidate Darwin's views on evolution?
Answer: Mendelian inheritance

Question: Who believed that action needed to be taken to level out the social and economic playing field before natural selection could occur to improve humanity?
Answer: Alfred Russel Wallace

Question: Which political commentary attempted to widen the idea of natural selection to include competition between different races of people and countries?
Answer: Walter Bagehot's Physics and Politics (1872)