ASB: After the loss of his daughter, Darwin throws himself into his studies and, using what he has learned of selection, breeds an army of intelligent, fierce animals, including but not limited to Darwin's fighter finches, gorilla warriors, and suicide bombardier beetles. He then proceeds to gradually conquer the planet and shape it in his image.
Sounds like a fun, if completely bonkers scenario.
But let's focus on realistic PODs, please, and leave the ASB ones for the appropriate forum.
There's a book called Darwin Deleted that makes the argument that even if Darwin had never existed someone else would have come up with the theory of evolution.
Yeah. I mean, we have already made the case in this thread that, sooner or later, someone would latch onto the idea.
The real question is how the research and understanding of evolution would unfold without Darwin. Though we will eventually come to the same discoveries he and his successors made, at first, some of the hypotheses and research might go on routes that lead them into dead end directions, causing errors in the understanding of evolution for a prolonged period before they are eventually corrected.
Alfred Russell Wallace, and how his death would have prevented Darwin publishing Origin, has been mentioned already; I would just add that he was often ill and came close to dying many times, so he could easily have died before 1858, when he wrote the paper that would get Darwin's attention.
Thanks, I didn't realise that about Wallace.
On a sidenote: What about Wallace publishing Darwin's works a little later, in the event of Darwin dying or being indisposed sooner than in OTL. Would we see a TL where the popular historical misconceptions are that Wallace did all the research or that he stole Darwin's work, instead of just helping him publish it post-humously ?
