When Charles Darwin convinced the scientific community that species evolve, the long-held essentialist view of each species as fixed was rejected and a clear conceptual understanding of the term was lost. For the next century, a real species problem existed that became culturally entrenched within the scientific community. Although largely solved decades ago, the species problem remains entrenched today due to a suite of factors. Most of the factors that help maintain its perceived intractability have been revealed and logically dismissed; yet this is not widely known so those factors continue to be influential. It is time to recognize this false foundation and relegate the species problem to history.