PART ONE
 

Occam’s Castle

Would it be too bold to imagine, that in the great length of time, since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind, would it be too bold to imagine, that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament … possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down those improvements by generation to its posterity, world without end!

—ERASMUS DARWIN,

Zoonomia, 1794

My handwriting same as Grandfather.

—CHARLES DARWIN,

a scribble in the M notebook, 1838