Darwin saw natural selection as an overarching explanatory hypothesis that gave a causal explanation of evolutionary change, was consistent with the experience of plant and animal breeders, and made sense of a host of facts, such as he had uncovered in his research on barnacles, orchids, climbing plants, and many others. The evidence for natural selection, he asserts in a letter is “(i) On its being a vera causa, from the struggle for existence; and the certain geological fact that species do somehow change.
Darwin saw natural selection as an overarching explanatory hypothesis that gave a causal explanation of evolutionary change, was consistent with the experience of plant and animal breeders, and made sense of a host of facts, such as he had uncovered in his research on barnacles, orchids, climbing plants, and many more things.
