Posted date: 2007-01-14
Posted By :
Marc
This morning, I finished reading Origin of Species for the first time.
It begins in a manner in some ways reminiscent of a textbook. At the beginning, it seems that Darwin is hoping to provide the layperson with the background for understanding the science he will later introduce. The reader finds that much of his research has resulted in effectively proving conclusions that simple reason would invite.
The reader would do well to attempt to set aside what he may already know of geology, biology, and physiology. Mr. Darwin presents a number of ideas that a person reasonably educated in modern science would take for granted. But clearing the mind, in a manner of speaking, helps one appreciate that a reader from the mid 19th century would be introduced thereby to some of the most esoteric scientific knowledge of the time.
Over the first two chapters, I got the distinct impression that Darwin was preparing a defense in advance of his thesis. By the third chapter, Natural Selection, we begin to see the formulation of some of what is to come. We also begin to appreciate his skill with the written word: Slow though the process of selection may be, if feeble man can do much by his powers of artificial selection, I can see no limit to the amount of change, to the beauty and infinite complexity of the co-adaptations between all organic beings, one with another and with their physical conditions of life, which may be effected in the long course of time by nature's power of selection. This elegant quote succinctly unifies the research and reason of the preceding 22 pages of material.
After another chapter on the background science, Darwin begins in earnest to introduce problems with the then extant genealogical knowledge in Difficulties on Theory. With adequate knowledge gleaned from animal husbandry, the reader is introduced to the relatively new science of geology is presented to further the basis upon which Darwin can build his theory. Aside from basic geological theory and the evidence of ancient life forms in the geological record, Darwin describes general trends in the effect of geography on species.
Up to this point, the entire work has been a compilation of known facts, hypotheses supported or contradicted by evidence, and reference to the works of a number of Darwin's predecessors and contemporaries. The final chapter, however, is much different in character. Recapitulation and Conclusion, effectively reminds the reader of the arguments made in previous chapters without the clutter of the supporting references and specific case studies.More individuals are born than can possible survive. A grain in the balance will determine which individual shall live and which shall die; -which variety or species shall increase in number, and which shall decrease, or finally become extinct. As he has done throughout this work, Darwin anticipates his critics and confronts them directly:It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as the "plan of creation", "unity of design", &c., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject my theory. Of naturalists who consider only certain species to have appeared through special creation and others merely varieties of those:They admit variation as a vera causa in one case, then arbitrarily reject it in another, without any distinction in the two cases. The day will come when this will be given as a curious illustration of the blindness of preconceived opinion.
...do they really believe that at innumerable periods in the earth's history certain elemental atoms have been commanded to suddenly flash into living tissues?
...
Although naturalists very properly demand a full explanation of every difficulty for those who believe in the mutability of species, on their own side they ignore the whole subject of the first appearance of species in what they consider reverent silence. Darwin ends Origin of Species with the one and only appearance of the word "evolve" in the entire tome:There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst the planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. Certainly one of the most powerful sentences ever written in the English language.
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