Without question, anthropology was irrevocably changed by Darwin. Where previously anthropology remained disparate both in its theoretical and professional constructions, after Darwin it emerged as a unified intellectual discipline. This is not to suggest that evolutionary theory was uniformly accepted, nor that it provided an immediately unifying methodological framework for understanding anthropology. What it did do, however, was to focus anthropological minds on a single idea that spanned the full conceptual horizon. As Harris says, Darwin “put together an argument for the evolution of species that was unprecedented in detail, accuracy, and scope.” At the same time, it completely undermined previous systems of thought. According to Stephen Jay Gould:

Darwin’s impact, to use Oldroyd’s term, situated evolution at the vanguard of anthropological thinking, and located it at the intersection of science, ideology, and world view. For anthropology, this meant, among other things, an increasingly reformulated consideration of human origins and progress. Unsurprisingly, however, though Darwin would ultimately form the benchmark against which all evolutionary theories were measured, types of evolutionary theory had existed previously, and many continued to exist afterward alongside Darwin’s own. Variations of Darwin’s own views are considered under the conventional rubric of Darwinism or Darwinianism. Hence, Michael Ruse can write of the “Darwinian paradigm,” or conversely Peter Bowler, the “non-Darwinian revolution.” Stocking, in fact, suggests that we should even distinguish between “ ‘Darwinian’ and ‘Darwinistic.’ “