JADT 2010 : 10 th International Conference on Statistical Analysis of Textual Data Reading Darwin between the lines: a computer-assisted analysis of the concept of evolution in the Origin of species Maxime Sainte-Marie, Jean-Guy Meunier, Nicolas Payette, Jean-François Chartier 1 Laboratoire d’Analyse Cognitive de l’Information (LANCI) – Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) Abstract While Darwin’s irst major work, On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, is generally considered as the birth document of the theory of evolution, studies on and around this book often overlook the fact that the word evolution itself is rarely used by the author and thus complicates any attempt to properly analyze the concept. This speciic issue will be addressed via a computer-assisted analysis of the concept of evolution in the Origin of Species: by means of automatic classiication, categorization, and annotation strategies used in text mining, a new and automated approach for “reading Darwin between the lines” is here proposed, aiming to give a full account of the said concept regardless of any proper designation. Keywords: Text mining, Conceptual Analysis, Darwin, Evolution, Philosophy of Biology 1. Introduction: the two meanings of “evolution” Simultaneously praised and condemned by both clergymen and scientists, the Darwinian theory of modiied descent by means of natural selection marks the birth of a radically new and modern conception of nature, life, science and man, built on the revitalization and reworking of an old biological concept: evolution. Whereas Darwin is nowadays considered the founder of the modern theory of evolution, he wasn’t however the irst to use the word in a biological context: as noted a while ago by Thomas Henry Huxley in his 1878 article on evolution published in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the word “evolution” has been historically used by naturalists and biologists for two different purposes: “initially, to refer to the particular embryological theory of preformationism; and later, to characterize the general belief that species have descended from one another over time” (Richards, 1992: 4). At the time Darwin published the irst edition of On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859), both embryological and speciic uses of the term “evolution” were still very much in use by supporters and opponents of transmutation theory alike. 1.1. Embryological evolution Deriving from the Latin evolutio, which refers to the scroll-like act of unfolding or unrolling, the word «evolution» irst occurs in a biological context in 1670, in an anonymous paper published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Reviewing Jan Swammerdam’s (1637- 1680) book Historia Insectorum Generalis, this article explained that by applying the word