Hyun+Darwin+D

     **Hyun Darwin Research**

Social Darwinism - Progressiveness - Things get better over time - Evolution - Fight for limited resources - Industrialization: attempt to survive and progress - Belief that society progresses over time

Influence Because of his early childhood education Darwin became a natural historian and a geologist. Charles Lyell: created the uniformitarian theory of geology…the earth’s geological processes happen gradually over time. The “key to the past is the present”: ancient geological processes can be studied through geological processes that happen now. Lyell was on the Beagle with Darwin when Darwin went to the Galapagos. This theory of geology helped Darwin come up with his theory that organisms //gradually// evolve over time (just as the earth “gradually evolves” over time). In the third edition of //The Origin of Species//, Darwin cites Erasmus Darwin (his grandfather), Goethe, and Geoffroy St. Hillaire as people who anticipated his theory of evolution

Problem What is your philosophy trying to solve? The theory of evolution is an answer to the question, “what is the origin of the diverse species of life in this world?” On the one hand, there is the idea that the world is a creation made by an intelligent God. This “theory of design,” however, was contradicted by newer theories of “transmutation” which said that species somehow changed from one to another through mutation. Originally, when I was trying to become an Anglican minister, I believed in the theory of design. However, as a scientist I could not ignore these newer theories. After many years of study, I finally came up with my theory of evolution as the answer. Species are made from natural selection, where organisms with advantageous traits win resources and pass these traits on to the next generation.

Philosophy Survival of the Fittest- Life is a struggle for existence As organisms reproduce, they fight for limited resources: food, shelter, etc These resources become scarce because there is not enough for everyone And because there aren’t a lot of resources for everyone, ones with even the slightest advantage will obtain the resources. The ones who do not have the advantage will die out. This “selection” of advantageous qualities influence the next generation. These qualities get passed down from generation to generation, while disadvantageous qualities disappear. This is the basis for the theory of evolution; over a long period of time, these inherited traits will lead to a diversification of life.

"Charles Darwin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." __Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia__. 7 Dec. 2008 .


 * Primary Sources**

As natural selection acts solely by accumulating slight, successive, favorable variations, it can produce no great or sudden modifications; it can act [|only by short and slow steps. (1)] Hence, the canon of [|"Natura non facit saltum," (2)] which every fresh addition to our knowledge tends to confirm, is on this theory intelligible. We can see why throughout nature the same general end is gained by an almost infinite diversity of means, for every peculiarity when once acquired is long inherited, and structures already modified in many different ways have to be adapted for the same general purpose. We can, in short, see why nature is prodigal in variety, though [|niggard (3)] in innovation. But why this should be a law of nature if each species has been independently created no man can explain. Many other facts are, as it seems to me, explicable on this theory. How strange it is that a bird, under the form of a woodpecker, should prey on insects on the ground; that upland geese which rarely or never swim, should possess webbed feet; that a thrush-like bird should dive and feed on sub-aquatic insects; and that a petrel should have the habits and structure fitting it for the life of an auk! and so in endless other cases. But on the view of each species constantly trying to increase in member, with natural selection always ready to adapt the slowly varying descendants of each to any unoccupied or ill-occupied place in nature, these facts cease to be strange, or might even have been anticipated. We can to a certain extent understand how it is that there is so much beauty throughout nature; for this may be largely attributed to the agency of selection. That beauty, according to our sense of it, is not universal, must be admitted by every one who will look at some venomous snakes, at some fishes, and at certain hideous bats with a distorted resemblance to the human face. Sexual selection has given the most brilliant colors, elegant patterns, and other ornaments to the males, and sometimes to both sexes of many birds, butterflies, and other animals. With birds it has often rendered the voice of the male musical to the female, as well as to our ears. Flowers and fruit have been rendered conspicuous by brilliant colors in contrast with the green foliage, in order that the flowers may be easily seen, visited, and fertilized by insects, and the seeds disseminated by birds. How it comes that certain colors, sounds, and forms should give pleasure to man and the lower animals,--that is, how the sense of beauty in its simplest form was first acquired,--we do not know any more than how certain odors and favors were first rendered agreeable. As natural selection acts by competition, it adapts and improves the inhabitants of each country only in relation to their co-inhabitants; so that we need feel no surprise at the species of any one country, although on the ordinary view supposed to have been created and specially adapted for that country, being beaten and supplanted by the naturalized productions from another land. Nor ought we to marvel if all the contrivances in nature be not, as far as we can judge, absolutely perfect, as in the case even of the human eye; or if some of them be abhorrent to our ideas of fitness. We need not marvel at the sting of the bee, when used against an enemy, causing the bee's own death; at drones being produced in such great numbers for one single act, and being then slaughtered by their sterile sisters; at the astonishing waste of pollen by our fir-trees; at the instinctive hatred of the queen-bee for her own fertile daughters; at [|ichneumonidae (4)] feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars; or at other such cases. The wonder indeed is, on the theory of natural selection, that more cases of the [|want (5)] of absolute perfection have not been detected. . . . Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied with the view that each species has been independently created. To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual. When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the [|Cambrian (6)] system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled. Judging from the past, we may safely infer that not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity. And of the species now living very few will transmit progeny of any kind to a far distant futurity; for the manner in which all organic beings are grouped, shows that the greater number of species in each genus, and all the species in many genera, have left no descendants, but have become utterly extinct. We can so far take a prophetic glance into futurity as to foretell that it will be the common and widely-spread species, belonging to the larger and dominant groups within each class, which will ultimately prevail and procreate new and dominant species. As all the living forms of life are the lineal descendants of those which lived long before the Cambrian epoch, we may feel certain that the ordinary succession by generation has never once been broken, and that [|no cataclysm has desolated the whole world. (7)] Hence we may look with some confidence to a secure future of great length. And as natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, [|all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection. (8)] It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse: a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. 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. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this 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.

"Charles Darwin: The Origin of Species." __Washington State University - Pullman, Washington__. 7 Dec. 2008 <[|http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/darwin.html]>.

The main conclusion here arrived at, and now held by many naturalists who are well competent to form a sound judgment, is that man is descended from some less highly organised form. The grounds upon which this conclusion rests will never be shaken, for the close similarity between man and the lower animals in embryonic development, as well as in innumerable points of structure and constitution, both of high and of the most trifling importance, - the rudiments which he retains, and the abnormal revisions to which he is occasionally liable, - are facts which cannot be disputed. They have long been known, but until recently they told us nothing with respect to the origin of man. Now when viewed by the light of our knowledge of the whole organic world their meaning is unmistakable. The great principle of evolution stands up clear and firm, when these groups of facts are considered in connection with others, such as the mutual affinities of the members of the same group, their geographical distribution in past and present times, and their geological succession. It is incredible that all these facts should speak falsely. He who is not content to look, like a savage, at the phenomena of nature as disconnected, cannot any longer believe that man is the work of a separate act of creation. He will be forced to admit that the close resemblance of the embryo of man to that, for instance, of a dog - the construction of his skull, limbs and whole frame on the same plan with that of other mammals, independently of the uses to which the parts may be put - the occasional re-appearance of various structures, for instance of several muscles, which man does not normally possess, but which are common to the Quadrumana - and a crowd of analogous facts - all point in the plainest manner to the conclusion that man is the co-descendant with other mammals of a common progenitor. We have seen that man incessantly presents individual differences in all parts of his body and in his mental faculties. These differences or variations seem to be induced by the same general causes, and to obey the same laws as with the lower animals. In both cases similar laws of inheritance prevail. Man tends to increase at a greater rate than his means of subsistence; consequently he is occasionally subjected to a severe struggle for existence, and natural selection will have effected whatever lies within its scope. A succession of strongly-marked variations of a similar nature is by no means requisite; slight fluctuating differences in the individual suffice for the work of natural selection; not that we have any reason to suppose that in the same species, all parts of the organisation tend to vary to the same degree. By considering the embryological structure of man, - the homologies which he presents with the lower animals, - the rudiments which he retains, - and the reversions to which he is liable, we can partly recall in imagination the former condition of our early progenitors; and can approximately place them in their proper place in the zoological series. We thus learn that man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World. This creature, if its whole structure had been examined by a naturalist, would have been classed amongst the Quadrumana, as surely as the still more ancient progenitor of the Old and New World monkeys. The Quadrumana and all the higher mammals are probably derived from an ancient marsupial animal, and this through a long line of diversified forms, from some amphibian-like creature, and this again from some fish-like animal. In the dim obscurity of the past we can see that the early progenitor of all the Vertebrata must have been an aquatic animal, provided with branchiæ, with the two sexes united in the same individual, and with the most important organs of the body (such as the brain and heart) imperfectly or not at all developed. This animal seems to have been more like the larvæ of the existing marine Ascidians than any other known form. The high standard of our intellectual powers and moral disposition is the greatest difficulty which presents itself, after we have been driven to this conclusion on the origin of man. But every one who admits the principle of evolution, must see that the mental powers of the higher animals, which are the same in kind with those of man, though so different in degree, are capable of advancement.... The moral nature of man has reached its present standard, partly through the advancement of his reasoning powers and consequently of a just public opinion, but especially from his sympathies having been rendered more tender and widely diffused through the effects of habit, example, instruction, and reflection. It is not improbable that after long practice virtuous tendencies may be inherited. With the more civilised races, the conviction of the existence of an all-seeing Deity has had a potent influence on the advance of morality. Ultimately man does not accept the praise or blame of his fellows as his sole guide though few escape this influence, but his habitual convictions, controlled by reason, afford him the safest rule. His conscience then becomes the supreme judge and monitor. Nevertheless the first foundation or origin of the moral sense lies in the social instincts, including sympathy; and these instincts no doubt were primarily gained, as in the case of the lower animals, through natural selection. The belief in God has often been advanced as not only the greatest but the most complete of all the distinctions between man and the lower animals. It is however impossible, as we have seen, to maintain that this belief is innate or instinctive in man. On the other hand a belief in all-pervading spiritual agencies seems to be universal, and apparently follows from a considerable advance in man's reason, and from a still greater advance in his faculties of imagination, curiosity and wonder. I am aware that the assumed instinctive belief in God has been used by many persons as an argument for His existence. But this iS a rash argument, as we should thus be compelled to believe in the existence of many cruel and malignant spirits, only a little more powerful than man; for the belief in them is far more general than in a beneficent Deity. The idea of a universal and beneficent Creator does not seem to arise in the mind of man, until he has been elevated by long-continued culture.... I am aware that the conclusions arrived at in this work will be denounced by some as highly irreligious; but he who denounces them is bound to shew why it is more irreligious to explain the origin of man as a distinct species by descent from some lower form, through the laws of variation and natural selection, than to explain the birth of the individual through the laws of ordinary reproduction. The birth both of the species and of the individual are equally parts of that grand sequence of events, which our minds refuse to accept as the result of blind chance. The understanding revolts at such a conclusion, whether or not we are able to believe that every slight variation of structure, - the union of each pair in marriage, - the dissemination of each seed, - and other such events, have all been ordained for some special purpose. Sexual selection has been treated at great length in this work, for, as I have attempted to shew, it has played an important part in the history of the organic world. I am aware that much remains doubtful, but I have endeavoured to give a fair view of the whole case. In the lower divisions of the animal kingdom, sexual selection seems to have done nothing: such animals are often affixed for life to the same spot, or have the sexes combined in the same individual, or what is still more important, their perceptive and intellectual faculties are not sufficiently advanced to allow of the feelings of love and jealousy, or of the exertion of choice. When, however, we come to the Arthropoda and Vertebrata, even to the lowest classes in these two great Sub-Kingdoms, sexual selection has effected much.... Sexual selection depends on the success of certain individuals over others of the same sex, in relation to the propagation of the species; whilst natural selection depends on the success of both sexes, at all ages, in relation to the general conditions of life. The sexual struggle is of two kinds; in the one it is between the individuals of the same sex, generally the males, in order to drive away or kill their rivals, the females remaining passive; whilst in the other, the struggle is likewise between the individuals of the same sex, in order to excite or charm those of the opposite sex, generally the females, which no longer remain passive, but select the more agreeable partners.... The main conclusion arrived at in this work, namely that man is descended from some lowly organised form, will, I regret to think, be highly distasteful to many. But there can hardly be a doubt that we are descended from barbarians. The astonishment which I felt on first seeing a party of Fuegians on a wild and broken shore will never be forgotten by me,< for the reflection at once rushed into my mind - such were our ancestors. These men were absolutely naked and bedaubed with paint, their long hair was tangled, their mouths frothed with excitement, and their expression was wild, startled, and distrustful. They possessed hardly any arts, and like wild animals lived on what they could catch; they had no government, and were merciless to every one not of their own small tribe. He who has seen a savage in his native land will not feel much shame, if forced to acknowledge that the blood of some more humble creature flows in his veins. For my own part I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper, or from that old baboon, who descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs - as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practises infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions. Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hope for a still higher destiny in the distant future. But we are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with the truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it; and I have given the evidence to the best of my ability. We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system - with all these exalted powers - Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.

"Modern History Sourcebook: Charles Darwin: Descent of Man, 1871 ." __FORDHAM.EDU__. 8 Dec. 2008 .

Interview

Hello Mr. Darwin, it’s an honor to meet you. Hello, I am Charles Darwin, the writer of the “Origin of Species”. Are you aware that you are extremely hated by many religious people and that this interview might make you even more unpopular? I am aware of that fact. However, I don’t think much about it. It was natural that I would get such criticisms from religious people around the world because I would be criticizing the origins of men. This goes against many theories such as the design theory and etc. I do not fault them because I have believed the design theory myself too, until I went on the Beagle Voyage. Before then, I studied to become an Anglican minister. However, afterwards, I decided that now that it would be better to be just an agonistic.

Why did you decide to write about the Origin of species? One of the key people who inspired me to write the book: “The Origin of Species” was Charles Lyell. He created the uniformitarian theory of geology, the earth’s geological processes happen gradually over time. The “key to the past is the present”: ancient geological processes can be studied through geological processes that happen now. Lyell was on the Beagle with me when I went to the Galapagos. This theory of geology helped me come up with my theory that organisms gradually evolve over time (just as the earth “gradually evolves” over time). Also, other people that helped me were cited in the third edition of The Origin of Species: my grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, Goethe, and Geoffroy St. Hillaire as people who anticipated my theory of evolution.

What is your philosophy stated in the Origin of Species? My philosophy stated in the Origin of Species is……….. wait.. oh god im growing old. (flips paper)Ok here it is My theory of evolution states that organisms evolve gradually over time. This is because as organisms reproduce, they fight for limited resources: food, shelter, mate, etc. These resources become scarce and therefore, there is not enough for everyone. Therefore, ones with even the slightest advantage are qualified to obtain the resources and survive. The rest dies out with their disadvantageous trait. This “selection” of advantageous qualities influence the next generation. These qualities get passed down from generation to generation, while disadvantageous qualities slowly disappear. For example, in the Galapagos Islands, I found many interesting animals that were similar, yet in ways different from animals of the mainland. Tortoises and mocking birds had different shells or beaks. Because they survived the best, they were able to inherit these positive traits to their descendents. These inherited traits, over a long period of time, lead to the diversification of life. This is also called “The survival of the Fittest” This leads to the gradual evolution of the organisms so that they are more adapted to the environment.

What question were you trying to solve when you wrote the “Origin of Species”? The theory of evolution is an answer to the question, “what is the origin of the diverse species of life in this world?” On the one hand, there is the idea that the world is a creation made by an intelligent God. This “theory of design,” however, was contradicted by newer theories I presented to the world of “transmutation” which said that species somehow changed from one to another through mutation. Originally, when I was trying to become an Anglican minister, I believed in the theory of design. However, as a scientist I could not ignore these newer theories. After many years of study, I finally came up with my theory of evolution as the answer: that species are made from natural selection, where organisms with advantageous traits win resources and pass these traits on to the next generation.

How does this relate to social issues? This can be adapted to social and political issues because as my natural theory states, living things go thorough competition in order to survive and reproduce. Humans are organisms too. This lets the theory of evolution take place in society. An evolution to the way people think: human equality ideas, and other important social and political things that are influenced by the progression start to develop amongst the people. The Social Darwinism states the idea of progresses and improvement. That the society gets better over time and competition keeps this going. The industrialization, according to the social Darwinism, is an attempt for people to survive and progress. However, this is not my idea. This was an idea presented by other people who were influenced by my theory of evolution. Ok thank you for the interview Mr. Darwin No problem Mr. Interviewer Good bye!

Primary Source DBQ

Why were religious people against the Theory of Evolution presented by Darwin?

What social belief emerged, inspired from the Darwin's "Origin of Species? Why was it related and how did it affect the way people thought?

What kind of influence did Darwin get, to write his book?

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