276°
Posted 20 hours ago

The Orange of Species: Darwin's Classic Work. Now with More Citrus!

£8.88£17.76Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

Breeding of animals and plants showed related varieties varying in similar ways, or tending to revert to an ancestral form, and similar patterns of variation in distinct species were explained by Darwin as demonstrating common descent. He recounted how Lord Morton's mare apparently demonstrated telegony, offspring inheriting characteristics of a previous mate of the female parent, and accepted this process as increasing the variation available for natural selection. [136] [137]

On the Origin of Species (or, more completely, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life) [3] is a work of scientific literature by Charles Darwin that is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology; it was published on 24 November 1859. [4] Darwin's book introduced the scientific theory that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection. The book presented a body of evidence that the diversity of life arose by common descent through a branching pattern of evolution. Darwin included evidence that he had collected on the Beagle expedition in the 1830s and his subsequent findings from research, correspondence, and experimentation. [5] Hairless dogs have imperfect teeth; long-haired and coarse haired animals are apt to have … long or many horns; pigeons with feathered feet have skin between their outer toes; pigeons with short beaks have small feet, and those with long beak large feet. Discussing this in January 1860, Darwin assured Lyell that "by the sentence [Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history] I show that I believe man is in same predicament with other animals. [192] Many modern writers have seen this sentence as Darwin’s only reference to humans in the book; [187] Janet Browne describes it as his only discussion there of human origins, while noting that the book makes other references to humanity. [193] Darwin's most famous work, and one of the most important ever written. It revolutionized our understanding of life on earth. Darwin brings together many convincing kinds of evidence and arguments to show that living things change over time and that they are related to one another genealogically. BOOK THE ORANGE OF SPECIES: DARWIN’S CLASSIC WORK. NOW WITH MORE CITRUS! by CHARLES DARWIN OVERVIEW ]produces this kind of consilience argument, and that his methodology is more properly aligned with that of Whewell. Darwin’s place in human thought could hardly have been predicted from the fortunes of that young boy who went to Edinburgh Medical School at age 16, following in the footsteps of his famous grandfather Erasmus Darwin, his father Robert Waring Darwin, and his older brother Erasmus. However, his prospects were not golden. In his Autobiography, Darwin recounts the attitude of that distant self, and his father’s own estimation of his son’s abilities:

Chapter XIII starts by observing that classification depends on species being grouped together in a Taxonomy, a multilevel system of groups and sub-groups based on varying degrees of resemblance. After discussing classification issues, Darwin concludes: Darwinian evolution, under the aegis of natural selection, is also progressive. As Darwin expresses it in the penultimate paragraph of the book: “And as natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection” (Darwin, 1859, p. 489). This kind of progress is not merely local. In chapter 10 of the Origin, for instance, Darwin asserts that “the more recent forms [of creatures] must, on my theory, be higher than the more ancient; for each new species is formed by having had some advantage in the struggle for life over other and preceding forms” (1859, pp. 336–337). This is a universal proposition, not confined to a local population. He then provides an operational test—at least in imagination—of this consequence. If Eocene creatures adapted to a particular environment were put in competition with modern animals, Darwin conjectures, “the Eocene fauna or flora would certainly be beaten and exterminated” (1859, p. 337). He assumes that the accumulation of improvements would give the advantage to more progressive (i.e., recent) creatures—even if compared with animals adapted to the same environment. This presumption of cumulative adaptational advantage, of course, does not play a role in neo-Darwinian theory. But then, as I’ve pedantically argued, Darwin was not a neo-Darwinian.Every species is fertile enough that if all offspring survived to reproduce, the population would grow (fact). Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely the production of the higher animals directly follows. In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history." [191] Another difficulty, related to the first one, is the absence or rarity of transitional varieties in time. Darwin commented that by the theory of natural selection "innumerable transitional forms must have existed," and wondered "why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?" [144] (For further discussion of these difficulties, see Speciation#Darwin's dilemma: Why do species exist? and Bernstein et al. [145] and Michod. [146])

Darwin's theory of evolution is based on key facts and the inferences drawn from them, which biologist Ernst Mayr summarised as follows: [6] Various evolutionary ideas had already been proposed to explain new findings in biology. There was growing support for such ideas among dissident anatomists and the general public, but during the first half of the 19th century the English scientific establishment was closely tied to the Church of England, while science was part of natural theology. Ideas about the transmutation of species were controversial as they conflicted with the beliefs that species were unchanging parts of a designed hierarchy and that humans were unique, unrelated to other animals. The political and theological implications were intensely debated, but transmutation was not accepted by the scientific mainstream. It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life.During the 3 years he spent at Cambridge, he did become acquainted with the rudiments of botany and a bit of geology, but he judged the time mostly wasted. He occupied himself with beetle collecting and dinner parties—not unknown to Cambridge students today, except for the beetle collecting. As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form. [112] Most contemporary interpreters of Darwin’s accomplishment presume that evolutionary theory left man morally naked to the world. Michael Ghiselin, for instance, in a fit of overheated hyperbole, asserted: “Scratch an altruist and watch a hypocrite bleed” (Ghiselin, 1974). Had Ghiselin scratched the master himself, he would have found the blood of naturalized compassion; Darwin thought his theory removed “the reproach of laying the foundation of the most noble part of our nature in the base principle of selfishness” (Richards, 1987, pp. 185–242, and Darwin, 1871, Vol. 1, p. 98). He opposed his own theory of moral conscience to that of utilitarians, like Jeremy Bentham and James Mill. I doubt he would have found Ghiselin’s characterization any more agreeable. Darwin himself was not against the idea of a divine creator. Rather, he sought to situate the scientific reading of the world within a religious worldview. In the book’s conclusion he states: “I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed by the Creator.” Ultimately Darwin was successful. Even though these days creationism is witnessing a revival in some circles, no serious student of biology would doubt that the origin of species (including the human species) is grounded in exactly those evolutionary forces Darwin described. Evolutionism within and beyond Darwin

On 28 March 1859, with his manuscript for the book well under way, Darwin wrote to Lyell offering the suggested publisher John Murray assurances "That I do not discuss origin of man". [64] [65] The sixth edition was published by Murray on 19 February 1872 as The Origin of Species, with "On" dropped from the title. Darwin had told Murray of working men in Lancashire clubbing together to buy the fifth edition at 15 shillings and wanted it made more widely available; the price was halved to 7 s 6 d by printing in a smaller font. It includes a glossary compiled by W.S. Dallas. Book sales increased from 60 to 250 per month. [3] [92] Publication outside Great Britain [ edit ] American botanist Asa Gray (1810–1888) But to this progressivist and cheerful British view, there appeared one salient objection: the Irish. Richard Rathbone Greg, a Scotts political theorist who was an advocate of the new Darwinian theory, pointed out in an article published 3 years before The Descent, that natural selection had been thrown out of gear. He mounted an argument that Darwin took extremely seriously. Greg, the dour Scotsman, wrote:

Darwin today

Chapter IV details natural selection under the "infinitely complex and close-fitting... mutual relations of all organic beings to each other and to their physical conditions of life". [126] Darwin takes as an example a country where a change in conditions led to extinction of some species, immigration of others and, where suitable variations occurred, descendants of some species became adapted to new conditions. He remarks that the artificial selection practised by animal breeders frequently produced sharp divergence in character between breeds, and suggests that natural selection might do the same, saying:

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment