Another intersting point brought out in page 140 is the fact that natural selection as an idea was there a long time before darwin, but it was envisaged as a ‘negative’ evolution force: A mechanism that eliminates the weak and negative from a population and selects the strong and fit. Darwin’s breakthrough was to use this mechanism as a ‘positive’, ‘creative’, ‘progressive’ element that guides the full states of evolution.

However, in order for this to apply there are other assumptions that have to be bundled together in the theory (like herdeity, producing more offspring than ‘necessary’ etc.).