Tameka Tift reports on a lecture given by David Quammen on Charles Darwin:
“Throughout David Quammen's discussion of Charles Darwin and On the Origin of the Species, he focused on the theme that Darwin was a cautious and honest man.
Quammen notes that On the Origin of Species is not just a scientific book but rather a foundational work of Western culture and thought.
“"Evolution, not extinction, not conservation but evolution as a history is the idea," explained Quammen, multi-award winning naturalist and science writer.
Quammen points out that Darwin devoted a chapter to answering any potential questions that critics might have about the theory of evolution.
In chapter six of On the Origin of Species, entitled Difficulties on Theory, Darwin argues with himself as he answers every criticism that arose from his own departure from Christianity.
"He wasn't just talking about the grandeur of an idea but rather the grandeur of life itself. Its biological diversity gives joy and meaning to Darwin's own life," Quammen said.
The latter discussion of the lecture focused on Darwin's basics for natural selection. The concept of natural selection centers around the idea of the survival of the fittest. Species will adapt and develop to ensure existence by any means necessary.
Quammen descried three key points to illustrate Darwin's concept of natural selection. First, offspring tend to resemble their parents (principle of inheritance). Second, offspring do vary somewhat from their parents as they are not exact replicas (principle of variation). Lastly, life on our little planet is crowded.
Quammen sums it up by saying that crowding leads to competition, which then results in individual species dying out.”
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