En el centenario de Darwin

Resumen

Darwin’s 100 years

This paper advances three stances. First, that Darwin’s most significant intellectual contribution was to take into science’s realm the origin and diversity of living organisms. The Copernican Revolution postulated the idea that the Universe is ruled by natural laws, which explain natural phenomena. Darwin complemented that revolution by extending such commitment to the living world. Second, natural selection consists on a creative process that can explain the appearance of genuine novelty. This creative process is point out with a simple example and is made clear with two analogies, artistic creation and the “typing monkeys,” where similarities are shared, as well as marked with important differences. The creative power emerges from a distinctive interaction between chance and necessity, or between hazard and deterministic processes. The third one deals with the nature of scientific method, its virtues and its limits.

Key words. Scientific revolution, scientific method, Darwin, natural selection, creative process, novelty, chance, necessity, natural law.