Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin, FRS FRGS FLS FZSwas an English naturalist and geologist, best known for his contributions to the science of evolution. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors, and in a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in...
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth12 February 1809
CityShrewsbury, England
struggle variation owing
Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relationship to other organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring.
struggle science survival
We will now discuss in a little more detail the Struggle for Existence.
strong struggle principles
... if variations useful to any organic being do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterized will have the best chance of being perserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance they will tend to produce offsping similarly characterized. This principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection.
powerful struggle race
In the survival of favoured individuals and races, during the constantly-recurring struggle for existence, we see a powerful and ever-acting form of selection.
struggle survival natural
The survival or preservation of certain favoured words in the struggle for existence is natural selection.
struggle mind bears
Nothing is easier than to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for life, or more difficult--at least I have found it so--than constantly to bear this conclusion in mind.
struggle years healthy
Each organic being is striving to increase in a geometrical ratio . . . each at some period of its life, during some season of the year, during each generation or at intervals, has to struggle for life and to suffer great destruction . . . The vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply.
strong struggle principles
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.
change struggle winning
In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.
struggle fighting race
I could show fight on natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of civilization than you seem inclined to admit. Remember what risk the nations of Europe ran, not so many centuries ago of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is! The more civilised so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world.
animal numbers community
In however complex a manner this feeling may have originated, as it is one of high importance to all those animals which aid and defend one another, it will have been increased through natural selection; for those communities, which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members, would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring.
hard-work men thinking
...I have always maintained that, excepting fools, men did not differ much in intellect, only in zeal and hard work; and I still think there is an eminently important difference.
against fine full geology graduated objection obvious organic reveal serious urged
Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such fine graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory.
appearance beings both brought fact fist great mysteries nearer seem somewhat space
Here, both in space and time, we seem to be brought somewhat nearer to the great fact -- the mysteries of mysteries -- the fist appearance of new beings on earth,