Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species: A Graphic Adaptation Darwin Shu no Kigen o Manga de Yomu (Reading Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Manga)

One of the greatest discoveries in the history of science – the theory of evolution. The fact that humans have evolved from other life forms in one unbroken line fundamentally denies the Christian view of humans and life that humans are the children of God and are therefore different from other animals.
 
The central figure in the theory of evolution is Charles Darwin, who was active in Britain in the 19th century. On the Origin of Species, which advocated natural selection as the mechanism contributing most greatly to evolution, was a fantastically revolutionary book that completely and fundamentally overturned the way people saw the world. It is a must-read among must-reads.
 
However – this book is extremely hard to read. It is quite difficult to get into. Darwin did not like leaps of logic. Thus, the presentation moves forward step by step, or rather, half a step at a time, while very carefully creating a firm footing for the next step. Quite honestly, plodding through the book is a pain in the neck. Since it is, anyway, a book written more than 160 years ago, for us who are reading the book now much of the content is hardly surprising, and the language is old-fashioned.
 
Once you surmount these challenges and finish reading this thick tome, it is not as if everything in front of you is suddenly transformed into a new intellectual world that you never knew before. The book was not written in such a way that you could experience such a catharsis.
 
However, even so, not receiving the intellectual message of On the Origin of Species is far too much to miss. To live without knowing the essence of this book would be like losing half the value of your life.
 
Thus, it is the book in question here that has realized the wonderful project of maintaining the content of On the Origin of Species as it is, but has avoided the hard-to-read style and expressed it all as a manga. While faithfully tracing the structure of Darwin’s original work, the science journalist Michael Keller has adapted the text into easy-to-read but scientifically precise writing and speech, and the science illustrator Nicolle Rager Fuller has portrayed the content in wonderfully shaded pictures.
 
The content is very faithful to the original work and maintains the same arrangement of chapters. In addition, the background of the scientific history up to the point where Darwin published On the Origin of Species and the development of the theory of evolution since Darwin are both briefly summarized, and this gives plenty of value added that is not in the original. Furthermore, since I took charge of the supervision of the Japanese edition, I have written an afterword for the book, but whether this can also be said to be value added or not I will leave to the judgment of the reader.
 
As I also wrote in the afterword, the final sentence of On the Origin of Species beautifully celebrates the new worldview that was attained by Darwin’s theory of evolution.


There is a grandeur in this view of life [that every species evolved from the common ancestor] ... and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved (p. 425). (The part in square brackets was added by Sakura.)


The roots of the SDGs and the Anthropocene, which have currently become popular topics, are all in On the Origin of Species. I very much hope that reading this book will allow you to experience the quintessence of Darwin’s work with a light heart.

(Written by SAKURA Osamu, Professor, Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies / 2022)