Darwin- The Origin of Species
On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin, is a scientific abstract about revolutionary ideas on evolution and the diversity of species from the evolutionary process. This book was originally a personal journal while Darwin was touring onboard the ship H.M.S. Beagle as the naturalist. The ship sailed along the west coast of South America and stopped by islands that were later called the Galapagos Islands. Darwin discovered new sub-divisions of species that were on mainland South America and started hypothesizing on how so many different kinds of sub-divisions could occur. He eventually formed the journal into an informal scientific abstract and let colleagues, who later urged Darwin to publish the abstract, read and critique his ideas. The book was published in 1859 and within fifteen years of the publication the majority of the scientific community accepted Darwin's ideas as fact. Darwin wrote on his ideas that included new insights on the processes of evolution, gradualism, population speciation, common descent, and natural selection. Natural selection is probably the most unique and radical idea about which Darwin wrote, but his other insights were also to play an important role in how the scientific community would vi
Lastly, Darwin discusses the mechanism of natural selection for which evolution can ultimately occur. Natural selection is a theory that involves the change within a species for selection for or against certain characteristics that will ultimately help members of a species live or eliminate the weak. The book goes over the prior theory of why a species may flourish or become extinct. This is called the "struggle for existence" or competition. It was found that each species require a certain niche in nature; they need their own food, water, territory and sometimes these niches overlap with the niches of another species which creates competition for survival. But the struggle would be most severe between the individuals of the same species because they lived in the same areas, ate the same kind of food and are exposed to the same kind of dangers. Therefore, it was assumed that the strongest survive. Darwin took this concept a step further by saying that there are changes within a species that help it survive. Part of this concept was the idea called population speciation. This stated that there can be random phenotypic, variations within a species that give advantages selected for by natural selection and so these variations can be then passed from parent to offspring. So now natural selection had a process to it also. Using the example given in Origin about natural selection, say when a giraffe is born with a longer neck than its herd, it gains an advantage because it is able to reach more food. The long-neck giraffe is therefore stronger, lives longer, and more likely to have offspring. The offspring are born with the same long neck as their parents, though some
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Approximate Word count = 1137
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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