Darwin and the Darwinians

I have simultaneously started reading Darwin's "On the origin of species" and a book by philosopher Mary Midgley called "The solitary self: Darwin and the selfish gene". See this great review:
https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/24663-the-solitary-self-darwin-and-the-selfish-gene/
Read this review if you have the chutzpah, but rest assured that she does a pretty good job on Dawkins, Dennett, and the other "Darwinians". Midgley has brought home to me me how thoroughly Darwin's own very nuanced arguments and views were quickly and completely subverted by subsequent commentators, none of whom were as insightful or as careful as him in their conclusions. This started with Huxley while Darwin  was still alive.
Darwinists always have another agenda that is not related to biological science. Darwin himself just tried to understand and explain the biological world as we encounter it.
I am only on chapter 1 of Darwin but you are struck by his intellect and depth of observational experience.
I was equally stuck by the rare instances where he was wrong. He believed most domesticated animals had a single wild ancestor (based on lots of evidence and very clever induction), but strangely exempted the domestic dog from this. I suppose he thought that there were just too many types of very different breeds to support a single ancestor. Sadly, we now know definitively from genetic studies that he was wrong. Maybe he should have followed his own logic, applied to other domesticated species, but given the lack of any known mechanism for any of these things at the time, he must be forgiven.
I am looking forward to more insights from Darwin as I proceed slowly.
The short lesson from this post is: Don't confuse Darwin with Darwinism!

Online again after 6 years!

Having nowhere to air your ideas can be frustrating, so after many years of nothing I decided to resuscitate and rename an old blog and using as a sounding board. These are my thoughts, usually mixed with lots of input from what I am reading.
Feel free to comment if anything strikes you as profound , interesting or just plain wrong.