You make an interesting point.
My main quibble is with terminology. You say...
he was ultimately incorrect in asserting that evoltuion was the mechanism which explained the speciation of the entire spectrum of life from primitive organisms
But "evolution" was not the mechanism proposed by Darwin. Darwin proposed "natural selection" as the mechanism. "Evolution" is a catch all phrase for change in heritable characteristics in populations over time. The "mechanisms" by which change arises and persists and accumulates are numerous, and natural selection remains a central aspect but not the whole story.
Of course, selection requires variation to work upon, and Darwin also proposed a notion of "gemmules", with blending inheritance and scope for inheritance of some acquired characteristics; a notion also associated with Lamark. There is a good discussion by John Wilkins at the
Heredity section of a FAQ on Darwin's precursors and influences.
Darwin's views on the source of variation were indeed quite wrong. His identification of "natural selection" as a crucial mechanism remains solid. His thoughts on variation have been replaced by modern genetics.
The other quibble is with the sweeping use of the term "pseudoscience". We don't normally call a research program "pseudoscience" just because it gets things wrong. Galileo was not a "pseudoscientist" for failing to figure out all modern cosmology. He was a scientist, making important progress which others continue to refine.
Identifiying "pseudoscience" is a problem for philosophy of science, and it is not easy. There have been attempts to give formal definitions which can make a sharp distinction between science and pseudoscience; but it is widely felt that this is not really a sharp distinction at all.
But at least we can say this. Pseudoscience is about how you pursue questions and hypotheses; not about whether you are correct; and on this basis Galileo's work on astronomy and Darwin's work in biology were not pseudoscience, even though their original notions have been substantially refined and altered.
On the other hand, some folks have such a startling lack of integrity and blythe mishandlings of available information that they are not doing "science" by any stretch of the imagination. Creationism and "Intelligent Design" as proposed by Dembski and others are a case in point.
But there are arguably other maverick theorists who are critical of conventional evolutionary biology without being so obviously incompetant. The issues are generally on mechanisms; with notions that may involve information from mRNA modulating the DNA sequence (rather than exclusively a one way transcription), or notions of chaotic or disipative structures being crucial, or notions of genetic information crossing lineages, and so on.
Cheers -- Sylas
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