Contemporary interest in Darwin rises from a general ideal of what Darwin-s books ought to contain: a theory of transformation of species by natural selection. However, a reader opening Darwin-s masterpiece, On the Origin of Species, today may be struck by the fact that this "selectionist" view does not deliver the key to many aspects of the book. Without contesting the importance of natural selection to Darwinism, much less supposing that a fully-formed "Darwinism" stepped out of Darwin-s head in 1859, this innovative volume aims to return to the text of the Origin itself.
Revisiting the ''Origin of Species'' focuses on Darwin as theorising on the origin of variations; showing that Darwin himself was never a pan-selectionist (in contrast to some of his followers) but was concerned with "other means of modification" (which makes him an evolutionary pluralist). Furthermore, in contrast to common textbook presentations of "Darwinism", Hoquet stresses the fact that
