# Is it true that Darwin only added the words "Creator" and "evolution" in his final 6th edition of th **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 2, 2014, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-true-that-darwin-only-added-the-words-creator-and-evolution-in-his-final-6th-edition-of-th/689824 "2014-06-02T08:07:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![davidmich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e56c9b/32.png) [@davidmich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidmich)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2014, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-true-that-darwin-only-added-the-words-creator-and-evolution-in-his-final-6th-edition-of-th/689824/1 "2014-06-02T08:07:11Z")
Hi Is it true that Darwin only added the words “Creator” and “evolution” in his final 6th edition of the Origin of the Species"? I look forward to your feedback davidmich ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2014, 9:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-true-that-darwin-only-added-the-words-creator-and-evolution-in-his-final-6th-edition-of-th/689824/2 "2014-06-02T09:07:50Z")
The word “evolution” does not occur in _Origin of Species_, 1st edition, but that edition has five paragraphs which mention “Creator”: [QUOTE=Charles Darwin] He who believes in separate and innumerable acts of creation will say, that in these cases it has pleased the Creator to cause a being of one type to take the place of one of another type; but this seems to me only restating the fact in dignified language. He who believes in the struggle for existence and in the principle of natural selection, will acknowledge that every organic being is constantly endeavouring to increase in numbers; and that if any one being vary ever so little, either in habits or structure, and thus gain an advantage over some other inhabitant of the country, it will seize on the place of that inhabitant, however different it may be from its own place. Hence it will cause him no surprise that there should be geese and frigate-birds with webbed feet, either living on the dry land or most rarely alighting on the water;… It is scarcely possible to avoid comparing the eye to a telescope. We know that this instrument has been perfected by the long-continued efforts of the highest human intellects; and we naturally infer that the eye has been formed by a somewhat analogous process. But may not this inference be presumptuous? Have we any right to assume that the Creator works by intellectual powers like those of man? … Let this process go on for millions on millions of years; and during each year on millions of individuals of many kinds; and may we not believe that a living optical instrument might thus be formed as superior to one of glass, as the works of the Creator are to those of man? … But many naturalists think that something more is meant by the Natural System; they believe that it reveals the plan of the Creator; but unless it be specified whether order in time or space, or what else is meant by the plan of the Creator, it seems to me that nothing is thus added to our knowledge. … Nothing can be more hopeless than to attempt to explain this similarity of pattern in members of the same class, by utility or by the doctrine of final causes. The hopelessness of the attempt has been expressly admitted by Owen in his most interesting work on the ‘Nature of Limbs.’ On the ordinary view of the independent creation of each being, we can only say that so it is;–that it has so pleased the Creator to construct each animal and plant. Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied with the view that each species has been independently created. To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual… [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![davidmich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e56c9b/32.png) [@davidmich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidmich)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2014, 10:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-true-that-darwin-only-added-the-words-creator-and-evolution-in-his-final-6th-edition-of-th/689824/3 "2014-06-02T10:02:47Z")
I was referring to the final edition. I want to check if the below information is correct. davidmich > **[What Darwin Said About God](https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2011/09/what_darwin_said_about_god.html)** > > No figure in modern history has received as much religiously based criticism as Charles Darwin.  He is seen as worse than an atheist; his work has been attacked as a threat to the belief that the universe and mankind are God's... “Toward the end of his life Darwin’s reluctance to discuss God diminished. It is in the sixth edition of the Origin where this shift is most noticeable. The sixth edition was the last edition edited by Darwin. It was released in 1872 – some thirteen years after the first edition was published. The word “evolution” appears for the first time in the last edition.” "Darwin used the word “Creator” nine times, and the word “God” twice in the sixth edition [iii]. Of greater importance is what he said about life and the Creator’s role in it. Darwin never said that evolution was Godless or directionless. In fact, a reading of the sixth edition of Origin proves that both of these assertions are factually incorrect. The second page of the Origin prominently displays this quote: To conclude, therefore, let no man out of a weak conceit of sobriety, or an ill-applied moderation, think or maintain, that a man can search too far or be too well studied in the book of God’s word, or in the book of God’s works; divinity or philosophy; but rather let men endeavour an endless progress or proficience in both. - Bacon: “Advancement of Learning”[iv] ---
**Author:** ![davidmich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e56c9b/32.png) [@davidmich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidmich)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2014, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-true-that-darwin-only-added-the-words-creator-and-evolution-in-his-final-6th-edition-of-th/689824/4 "2014-06-02T11:31:01Z")
> **[Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos](https://www.yahoo.com/)** > > Latest news coverage, email, free stock quotes, live scores and video are just the beginning. Discover more every day at Yahoo! "He first used the word ‘evolution’ in the sixth edition (1872) of Origin of Species. It occurs twice on page 201 and three times on page 424. " [http://www.darwinthenandnow.com/2012/01/the-origin-of-species-evolution/](http://www.darwinthenandnow.com/2012/01/the-origin-of-species-evolution/) “While The Origin of Species started with fourteen chapters, Darwin expanded the number of chapters to fifteen chapters with the addition of “Objections to the Theory of Natural Selection”. It was not until the last edition, the Sixth Edition, Darwin that used the term “evolution” for the first time.” ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2014, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-true-that-darwin-only-added-the-words-creator-and-evolution-in-his-final-6th-edition-of-th/689824/5 "2014-06-02T12:47:24Z")
> [@davidmich](#): > > I was referring to the final edition. I want to check if the below information is correct. > davidmich > > [http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/09/what\_darwin\_said\_about\_god.html](http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/09/what_darwin_said_about_god.html) As mentioned, Darwin included references to the Creator starting in the very first edition. And the last sentence of that first edition ends with: “_endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, **evolved**._” The \*use \*of the \*word \*“evolution” in the sense we use it _today_ did not originate with Darwin himself but it was increasingly so during his lifetime, so latter editions adopted it (similarly, the phrase “survival of the fittest” is NOT Darwin’s own coinage). ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2014, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-true-that-darwin-only-added-the-words-creator-and-evolution-in-his-final-6th-edition-of-th/689824/6 "2014-06-02T12:57:44Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > similarly, the phrase “survival of the fittest” is NOT Darwin’s own coinage Right, it belongs to Alfred Russel Wallace - pretty much the co-inventor of the modern theory of evolution. Interestingly, he was the one to coin the word “Darwinism.” ---
**Author:** ![davidmich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e56c9b/32.png) [@davidmich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidmich)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2014, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-true-that-darwin-only-added-the-words-creator-and-evolution-in-his-final-6th-edition-of-th/689824/7 "2014-06-02T13:03:15Z")
I thought it was Herbert Spencer who coined “survival of the fittest”. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2014, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-true-that-darwin-only-added-the-words-creator-and-evolution-in-his-final-6th-edition-of-th/689824/8 "2014-06-02T15:40:19Z")
BTW, as both Darwin and Wallace acknowledged, most of the essential features of Darwin’s theory had already been given in 1831 in [a little-read book with the improbable title _On naval timber and arboriculture_](http://books.google.co.th/books?id=DmYDAAAAYAAJ): [QUOTE=Patrick Matthew] There is a law universal in nature, tending to render every reproductive being the best possible suited to its condition that its kind, or organized matter, is susceptible of… As nature, in all her modifications of life, has a power of increase far beyond what is needed to supply the place of what falls by Time’s decay, those individuals who possess not the requisite strength, swiftness, hardihood, or cunning, fall prematurely without reproducing—either a prey to their natural devourers, or sinking under disease, generally induced by want of nourishment, their place being occupied by the more perfect of their own kind, who are pressing on the means of subsistence… There is more beauty and unity of design in this continual balancing of life to circumstance, and greater conformity to those dispositions of nature which are manifest to us, than in total destruction and new creation … … the progeny of the same parents, under great differences of circumstance, might, in several generations, even become distinct species, incapable of co-reproduction. [/QUOTE] Thus Darwin’s genius was not in presenting a theory whose time had come, but in the brilliance of his thorough and convincing argumentation. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2014, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-true-that-darwin-only-added-the-words-creator-and-evolution-in-his-final-6th-edition-of-th/689824/9 "2014-06-02T16:49:10Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > BTW, as both Darwin and Wallace acknowledged, most of the essential features of Darwin’s theory had already been given in 1831 in [a little-read book with the improbable title _On naval timber and arboriculture_](http://books.google.co.th/books?id=DmYDAAAAYAAJ): > > Thus Darwin’s genius was not in presenting a theory whose time had come, but in the brilliance of his thorough and convincing argumentation. :rolleyes: You can find “anticipations” like that for virtually any scientific theory you can name. For the most part, they were scientifically worthless and historically irrelevant. Indeed, you can find such “anticipations” of evolution and natural selection (which are not the same thing) in the Greek presocratic philosophers. Of course, to see it, you have to read the texts with post-Darwinain eyes, a you do with Matthew. Darwin’s (and Wallace’s) actual theory is certainly more than can be summed up by a handful of sentences such as those you quote (which, I believe, are pretty much all that Matthew has to say on the subject). The fact that Matthew’s remarks align pretty well with the nutshell versions of Darwinian theory that we begin present day students on really does not mean much. Darwin was culturally Christian, and almost certainly still a conventional believer when he first wrote the _Origin_; by the end of his life he seems to have become more disillusioned with religion, but I do not know of any good reason to think that he had consciously become an atheist or agnostic. ¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬ As to the OP, what is the underlying issue here? Is someone trying to show that Darwin became more religious, or more conciliatory towards religion, in later life than he was when the _Origin_ was first published? The opposite is almost certainly the case (although it is doubtful that he ever became a thoroughgoing nonbeliever), and the evidence showing that is certainly far more robust than any you might derive from word counts. ---
**Author:** ![Raygun99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Raygun99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raygun99)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2014, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-true-that-darwin-only-added-the-words-creator-and-evolution-in-his-final-6th-edition-of-th/689824/10 "2014-06-02T17:17:45Z")
Moreover, I’m not sure what relevance Darwin’s religiousity or lack thereof would have on the scientific fact of evolution. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2014, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-true-that-darwin-only-added-the-words-creator-and-evolution-in-his-final-6th-edition-of-th/689824/11 "2014-06-02T18:54:02Z")
Without claiming to be judging the OP’s motives, I will say that this is a popular topic of creationist chatter. Many of them like to claim that Darwin had a deathbed conversion, which therefore means, I guess, that evolution is wrong. This is typical creationist “logic”. They don’t seem to realize that even if every word Darwin wrote, thought, and said was eliminated from history, evolutionary theory would be unaffected. Just because _they_ depend on the word of someone long-dead being infallibly accurate doesn’t mean that the same is true of science. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2014, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-true-that-darwin-only-added-the-words-creator-and-evolution-in-his-final-6th-edition-of-th/689824/12 "2014-06-02T19:19:11Z")
> [@Raygun99](#): > > Moreover, I’m not sure what relevance Darwin’s religiousity or lack thereof would have on the scientific fact of evolution. It has none. But that does not mean that the question is not of interest. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2014, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-true-that-darwin-only-added-the-words-creator-and-evolution-in-his-final-6th-edition-of-th/689824/13 "2014-06-02T20:44:57Z")
> [@davidmich](#): > > I thought it was Herbert Spencer who coined “survival of the fittest”. I think you are right. I have a book that attributes this to Wallace, but Googling seems to strongly suggest it originates with Spencer. ---
**Author:** ![davidmich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e56c9b/32.png) [@davidmich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidmich)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2014, 9:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-true-that-darwin-only-added-the-words-creator-and-evolution-in-his-final-6th-edition-of-th/689824/14 "2014-06-03T09:55:58Z")
Thank you all. davidmich ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2014, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-true-that-darwin-only-added-the-words-creator-and-evolution-in-his-final-6th-edition-of-th/689824/15 "2014-06-03T18:47:13Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > As to the OP, what is the underlying issue here? Is someone trying to show that Darwin became more religious, or more conciliatory towards religion, in later life than he was when the _Origin_ was first published? The opposite is almost certainly the case (although it is doubtful that he ever became a thoroughgoing nonbeliever), and the evidence showing that is certainly far more robust than any you might derive from word counts. If you read the article he linked in post #3, it seems to be aimed at a Christian audience who are presumed to be hostile to Darwin, and it’s trying to get them to not be hostile towards him or his work. ---
**Author:** ![davidmich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e56c9b/32.png) [@davidmich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidmich)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2014, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-true-that-darwin-only-added-the-words-creator-and-evolution-in-his-final-6th-edition-of-th/689824/16 "2014-06-04T11:58:43Z")
Thank you all. davidmich