We may revere Newton and Lavoisier as men of equal impact, but do modern physicists and chemists actively engage the ideas of these founders, as they pursue their daily work? Darwin, on the other hand, continues to bestride our world like a colossus—so much so that I can only begin this book on the structure of evolutionary theory by laying out Darwin’s detailed vision as a modern starting point, a current orthodoxy only lightly modified by more than a century of work.
