Chapter 3 offers a short history of evolutionary thought before and since Darwin. It is shown that Darwin was both an accomplished theorist and empiricist, a multidisciplinary thinker with an eclectic interest, and a generalist as well as a specialist. Moreover, he developed a range of methods to provide support for evolution. It is argued that one can learn from Darwin about how to go about evolutionary studies in non-biological domains. An extended table summarizes chapter by chapter Darwin’s foundational book On the Origin of Species. The chapter further discusses central concepts of evolution and connects these in a schematic manner. It also pays attention to the rise of genetics and its main achievements. Nine types of evidence allow the reader to appreciate the broad set of data and methods that jointly attest to the veracity of an evolutionary history of organic life. In addition, the chapter devotes attention to the major transitions in natural history. It conceptualizes these in various ways, allowing one to learn about transitions in other, non-biological systems.