Darwin's critical synthesis of facts

Do apparent patterns among natural phenomena obscure or reveal the hidden commonality of the world?

	Five Kingdom system monera protoctista fungi plants animals chordates vertebrates primates hominids homonidea homo sapiens
The five kingdoms portrayed as a hand of life after a diagram by Dr. Lynn Margulis, Symbiotic Planet.	What are the hidden likenesses of this image of life ?

Lynn Margulis and others argued on the basis of genetic similarities, functional considerations and common descent that the previously described plant and animal kingdoms could be better understood as two of five kingdoms, including fungi and protoctistan bacteria that were all descended from Moneran microbes over the course of four billion years.

Tree of Life
"As buds give rise by growth by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications." Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, Chapter 4. p. 130.
Joshua tree, a variety of Yucca brevifolia, that branches

human hand

In 1858, Darwin received in the mail a manuscript written by Wallace and sent to him from Indonesia, where Wallace had been collecting specimens for the museums and collectors in England. In 1859 Darwin published On the Origin of Species: or the Survival of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, in which he proposed five theories to account for change, variation and chance in nature.
 

Alfred Russel Wallace	Charles Robert Darwin

Darwin contributed concepts that have emerged as lasting contributions in biology because of these discoveries:

explanations

domestication -- The means by which a wide variety is readily observed.

biogeography -- The means by which isolation causes divergence among related descendents.

taxonomy -- The classification of varieties into species in relation to a sort of Tree of Life.

behavior -- The means by which acquired traits (soft inheritance) are passed on to offspring.

deep time -- Lyell's and Hutton's idea of uniformitarianism creates great geological ages pointing to an enormous duration of life on Earth.

orderly universe -- The belief in a harmony of natural changes and the adaptive potential of life to sustain itself ecologically, despite gradual changes or abrupt upheavals.

genetic evidence -- The discovery of the phenotype (form, shape or appearances) and genotype (underlying organization of proteins and DNA base pairs) as fitting into and not refuting the concepts associated with natural and sexual selection advanced by Darwin.
 

Darwin's contributions

Most people confuse our cousins the apes with our ancestors as depicted in this 1870s cartoon.

contribution meaning consequence	New Synthesis
1. domestication, variation, natural selection	sexual selection
2. biogeography, adaptive radiation, horizontal speciation	continental drift
3. taxonomy, common descent, embryological sameness	genetic drift
4. behavior, ethology, instinct	soft inheritance
5. deep time, geological formations, extinctions	6 mass extinctions
6. orderly universe, gradualism, adapting to change	punctuated equilibrium
7. Chance Evolution, random (stochastic) variation	biodiversity

Popular misconceptions

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