Michael Ruse has made the following comments, which I post with his permission. (I stand corrected on what the rival theories were before Darwin; it does not change my basic points, with which Michael agrees: that before Darwin, others thought otherwise; that Darwin's theory was both fruitful and right; and that it was not just a tautology -- though I doubt that the random-drift effects make it any less tautological...)

Michael Ruse:

"A couple of points: Pre-Darwin, I don’t think anyone by 1859 believed that organisms had existed forever – the fossil record (worked out by non-evolutionists) negated this. The big question was whether they arrived supernaturally after catastrophes (Adam Sedgwick) or naturally somehow on an ongoing basis (Lyell thought this, but could not specify how it happened and could not reconcile natural creation with the design-like nature of organisms). And then there were the evolutionists like Lamarck, Chambers, and Herbert Spencer: Their problem was that they had either no mechanisms (Chambers) or they were wrong  (Lamarck and Spencer both endorsed the inheritance of acquired characteristics, although mainly Lamarck believed in a kind of vitalistic force upwards). 

"The natural-selection-is-a-tautology critique seems to me to be clearly refuted by the hypothesis of genetic drift. That hypothesis claims that the fitter or fittest do not always succeed!!   How widely genetic drift applies is a debated question but no one thinks it a contradictory claim, which it would have to be if selection were a tautology.

"Fodor’s claims about metaphor being a sign of immaturity have always struck me as... out of tune with science: How can you do any modern science without thinking of the world as a machine?  I have always assumed that he has ideological objections to the idea of any application of science, especially Darwinism, to the mind and so this is why he argues as he does..."