Abstract

The chapter about hybridism written by Darwin falls in the cluster of The Origin of Species which deals with the main difficulties of the theory of descent with modification through natural selection. Darwin’s goal in analyzing the phenomenon of hybridism was to debate the validity of the existence of a fundamental distinction between species and varieties; thus, this discussion addresses an integral part of the so-called species problem, which includes a set of questions about the definition of the concept of species, that is, of what a species is. In this chapter, we analyze the historical background of this debate, from Linnaeus to Kölreuter and Gärtner, and discuss the structure and arguments present in Origin’s Chapter VIII, in which Darwin tackles the problem at hand.