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Darwin, although he was not the Beagle' s official naturalist, was encouraged to collect and observe anything of interest to natural history that he might encounter during the voyage. The Beagle had an excellent collection of relevant scientific books on board so he was able to consult the literature during the trip. His original intent was to concentrate on the two areas in which he had gained experience at Edinburgh and Cambridge respectively: He took the first volume of Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology with him, and the other two volumes reached him later on en route.

Lyell was an advocate of the principle of uniformitarianism, and was opposed to the deluges and other major upheavals that had been invoked by advocates of catastrophism. Darwin was soon convinced of the merits of Lyell's approach and became one of his most effective supporters. As the voyage continued, Darwin realized that his geological researches were yielding important results. Yet he continued to observe and collect plants and animals. He also made some observations on behavior that seem, in retrospect, to relate to the kind of evolutionary speculation that he had encountered at Edinburgh.

He traveled and collected extensively on land, and as a result realized that there had been a considerable amount of change, and rather recently. Giant animals had become extinct. Introduced animals and plants were invading new territory. And there were peculiar distribution patterns. Interest in such matters was further stimulated by Lyell's negative, albeit penetrating, assessment of the evolutionary ideas of Lamarck. During the voyage, Darwin evidently believed that species could change somewhat in adaptation to local circumstances, but not that such change could go so far as to bring new species into existence.

Along the Atlantic coast of South America Darwin found clear indications that the continent had been uplifted; on the Pacific coast he found further evidence of the same phenomenon. He worked out much of the geological history of the Andes. While he was in Chile, for example, a major earthquake occurred and he was able to document the immediate effects of upheaval.

Sedgwick arranged for an account of his discoveries, sent as correspondence, to be published as Darwin's first contribution to the scientific literature. Darwin was ever concerned with the implications of his discoveries, and while still in South America he speculated about the uplift and subsidence of the land on a global scale. One result was the formulation of his famous theory of coral reefs. Coral grows in shallow water, along coasts and on islands.

If an island rimmed by coral were to sink, and the coral were to grow at the same time, the island might gradually disappear and nothing but coral would be left. Later on in the voyage Darwin was able to test this theory by observations on coral formations at Tahiti and, more importantly, at Keeling Atoll in the Indian Ocean. By his own accounts published much later, Darwin did not become an evolutionist during the voyage, though he began to think seriously about such matters. He was still a creationist both before and for some time after his famous visit to the Galapagos Archipelago, which is now treated as a living laboratory of evolution.

The notion that he became a convert to evolution while visiting the Galapagos is a myth. He was looking for "centers of creation" that Lyell had invoked to explain the different faunas and floras in various parts of the world. He did not try to collect evidence related to evolution while he was there. As the voyage continued, however, he visited New Zealand and other islands with peculiar animals and plants, and of course the continent Australia too.

The possibility of evolution may have been in his mind late in the voyage. However, he did not become convinced that evolution has in fact occurred until after he got home and had some of his specimens examined by specialists. Some of what he had thought were varieties turned out to be distinct species.

And some of the South American fossils were giant relatives of smaller forms that were still living in the same area. There followed a period of some months, beginning in March, , during which Darwin speculated a great deal and tried to invent a plausible mechanism for evolution, something that would explain the adaptations of animals and plants.

The development of his ideas can be traced in part because of the notebooks that he kept. It was in October that Darwin read "for amusement," as he misleadingly put it, Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population. Malthus, the first professor of economics, had pointed out that the potential rate of multiplication of any animal, man included, is so great that the supply of food and other resources will tend to restrict, and ultimately prevent, population growth.

Malthus expressed the relationship by saying that the population increases geometrically, whereas the resources can only be increased arithmetically. We can ignore the niceties and details here, the point being that scarcity of resources means that there is competition between the organisms that make up the population for the wherewithal to survive and reproduce. Because some organisms are more vigorous, fertile, or otherwise well endowed than others, in subsequent generations the population changes in the direction of being more effectively equipped to win out in the reproductive competition.

This was Darwin's concept of natural selection, which he presented to the world as a well developed theory some twenty years later. Darwin kept a diary during the voyage. It provided a lively account of his travels and observations on the state of society as well as the natural scene, and was clearly influenced by Darwin's reading of Alexander von Humboldt's Personal Narrative. Early in the voyage Darwin showed his diary to Captain FitzRoy, who liked it very much and encouraged him to publish it.

The diary was the basis for Darwin's first book, which is popularly known as The Voyage of the Beagle. It was extensively supplemented by additional material, and much revised. The Diary itself, edited by Richard Darwin Keynes, has been published. The first edition, published in , appeared as part of a series that includes FitzRoy's account of the voyage.

It was prepared at a time when Darwin was convinced that evolution has in fact occurred, but before he read Malthus and discovered natural selection.

A second edition, with a slightly different title, was published in We will refer to the work as the Journal of Researches , or just the Journal , for short. By then Darwin had developed his evolutionary theory extensively, and had even written a preliminary outline and then a draft of a short book explaining it.

Later published as the "Sketch of " and the "Essay of The second edition adds material that bears upon the theory of natural selection, even a brief passage on Malthus. If one is interested in the evolution of Darwin's ideas, it can be an enlightening exercise to compare the three versions in some detail. For most readers, especially beginners, there is no particular reason for doing that, but the circumstances of revision should be borne in mind.

The edition is the most widely available and just as good reading as the first. The book is one of the classics of travel literature and can be enjoyed simply as a literary work. Humboldt praised it for its "painterly" qualities. It also contains fascinating materials about the economy and the state of society at the time.

The book provides brief accounts of material that was discussed at greater length in Darwin's later publications, such as his book on coral reefs, and the reader will probably have no difficulty understanding their significance. However, a few comments seem in order about some of the observations that were significant for his evolutionary ideas but for good reason he did not fully explain at the time. His observations on various peoples, including primitive ones, reflect a few of his ideas about social and cultural evolution.

Darwin took considerable interest in groups of animals having representatives that live in habitats that are different from those to which the group as a whole seems to be adapted. These include terrestrial flatworms, a group that is largely aquatic, and the terrestrial crab Birgus latro.

In the Galapagos Islands he experimented on the behavior of a lizard that makes excursions into the sea to feed. He explicitly mentions Lamarck in his discussion of a burrowing rodent, the tucutuco, in which the eyes seem to be degenerating. In the Falklands he encountered a goose that could no longer fly, though it could move over the surface of the water quite rapidly by a combination of paddling and flapping. He discusses the habit of cuckoos and other birds of laying eggs in the nests of birds of other species, a phenomenon that he later interpreted in evolutionary terms.

Anybody would have been impressed by the extinct fossil mammals, many of them of large body size, that Darwin discovered. He, however, was impressed by their close relationship to smaller animals that were still living. It was an important clue to evolution. The new species of ostrich that he discovered in Patagonia was also a hint about evolution, for it replaced another one geographically. A poisonous snake, Trigonocephalus , behaves like a rat-.

Darwin used this as an example of change in behavior setting the stage for change in structure. In addition to preparing the Journal for publication, Darwin was very active dealing with his collections, presenting his ideas to the scientific community, and otherwise furthering his career. He got to know many of the leading scientists of the day, the most important being Lyell, and became a participant in the activities of scientific organizations such as the Geological Society of London. Meanwhile he married and took a house in London.

However, his health began to decline and in he and his family moved to the village of Downe, south of London. At the very least we can say that his condition, whatever its physical basis may have been, was exacerbated by anxiety and stress. Darwin had neither the time nor the expertise that would have been necessary for him to deal with all of his collections himself.

They had to be turned over to specialists for interpretation. Preliminary publications on birds that were studied by John Gould reflected some of the evidence for evolution. Darwin asked various specialists to describe the materials, and obtained a grant to edit and publish the Zoology of the Voyage.

This work, which appeared in installments over a period of several years, contains Darwin's commentary on biogeography, behavior and other matters. Other collections, including those of plants and various groups of insects were treated separately. Darwin reserved some of the marine biological materials for himself, but he did not do much with them until after he got the geology out of the way.

Darwin dealt with the geology of the voyage in a few short papers and in a series of three books: The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs ; 2 nd ed. Much of the material in these books is presented in more preliminary and less technical form in the Journal. Although Reefs was published first, the sequence of Darwin's research makes it more readily understood if the three are read in the opposite order than the chronological sequence in which they appeared. Darwin's geological books are of considerable philosophical and methodological interest and cast much light on his intellect and its development.

A particularly useful document for understanding how he became a geologist is a chapter entitled Geology that he wrote for the British Navy's Manual of Scientific Enquiry , edited by Sir John Herschel and first published in In addition to giving much practical advice, it advises the beginner on how to become a geologist. One can read it as a reflection of how Darwin taught himself to become a great master of that discipline.

Among other things, Darwin suggests that one should read, then observe, and compare what one has seen with what one has read. This is important, for, contrary to the impression that one might get from the vast amount of factual detail that goes into his works, Darwin believed that theory should be one's guide in the conduct of scientific research. Not everybody shared that view in the early nineteenth century, so the following passage from a letter to Henry Fawcett dated September 18, is worth quoting: How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service!

To understand Darwin's geological reasoning we need to consider some of the ideas of Lyell that influenced him. Lyell advocated a "steady-state" view of the world in agreement with his predecessors Hutton and Playfair. Indeed the notion of an eternal world that undergoes cyclical change, coming back to more or less the same condition, goes back to Aristotle's treatise Meteorologia. The earth might change through erosion in one place accompanied by deposition in another. That implied that the crust of the earth might move up and down and also that the areas exposed as land might occupy quite different positions with the passage of time.

Lyell also thought that the living inhabitants of the earth differ from one another at different times. However, he did not believe that there is any sign of progressive, or unidirectional, change in the fossil record. He took it as a methodological assumption that in reconstructing the history of the past we should begin by invoking only. That tended to rule out catastrophes, such as universal deluges, giving the terms "uniformitarianism" and "catastrophism" for the alternative positions.

Catastrophes might have occurred, but the progress of science would be more effective if they were invoked only as a last resort. One thing that never changes, however, is the laws of nature. Any reconstruction of the past history of the earth must be consistent with the laws of nature, understood as regularities that must happen irrespective of time and place, such as the laws of gravity. Geology, like other historical sciences, creates explanatory narratives based on a combination of particular facts and nature's timeless uniformities. Much of what Darwin was doing for South American geology was working out the sequences in which layers of rock strata were laid down.

The basic intellectual instrument for such historical reconstruction is the "principle of superposition," which is attributed to the seventeenth-century Danish naturalist Steno. In the case of sandstone, for example, new layers can only be deposited on top of layers that already exist. There is no way in which water carrying sand can slip under a layer of rock and deposit a bed of sandstone in that position. Therefore, the younger strata overlie the older ones. There are all sorts of complications, not the least of which is that a whole series of strata can be overturned.

However, there are additional principles for deciding "which way is up. Although the plants and animals that are present at any time differ from place to place, the same species often ranges over considerable areas, and the co-occurrence of such a species in deposits at different places is evidence that those deposits are contemporaneous. On the other hand, the fossils in older deposits are increasingly different from those in younger ones.

Lyell reasoned that he could date the deposits approximately by determining the proportion of species that are still in existence. The larger the proportion of extant rather than extinct species, the newer the rocks. It was this kind of inference that Darwin was applying in much of his geological research, and understanding that approach makes it much easier to follow his reasoning. Treating, as noted above, the geology of the voyage in a conceptual order rather than by year of publication, let us now consider its third volume, Geological Observations on South America , first published in It treats research that preceded that on islands and reefs and paved the way for it.

The grand theme of the whole series is the gradual upheaval and subsidence of the land on a global scale, something that was very much in tune with Lyell's views. We should note at the beginning some later developments in the history of geology of which Darwin was unaware. Firstly, although the land rises and falls much as Darwin believed, so too does the level of the sea, partly as a result of glaciers forming and melting.

Secondly, the land moves laterally, not just up and down. That aspect of the history of the earth was not well understood until the emergence of plate tectonics in the second half of the twentieth century. The earth's crust is made up of plates of rock that are continually being formed and destroyed.

The subduction of one plate under another is a major reason for the formation of mountain chains, and it also accounts for areas of vulcanism and earthquakes in bands around the world. Darwin could see that there was a causal link between uplift and vulcanism. He explained it in terms of molten lava getting injected under rock.

This is not exactly what happened, but it does not affect the correlation that he observed or the legitimacy of his coral reef theory. Darwin begins with an account of uplift on the eastern coast of South America. He studied series of step-like terraces rising above sea level.

These were associated with the shells of marine animals, indicating that they had formerly been at sea level. The shells were very much like those living at the time, but they were sometimes associated with the remains of extinct fossil mammals.

The elevation seemed to have taken place gradually. He then discusses similar evidence from the western coast. He was present during the earthquake that rocked the region on February 20, and therefore was able to document an uplift of several feet. He also drew upon published accounts of a great earthquake in In a third chapter he discusses the related topic of erosion and deposition of sediment as well as the formation of valleys and salt deposits.

The fourth chapter, on the Pampas formations, is of particular interest because it discusses the fossil mammals that helped to convince Darwin that evolution has occurred. The remains of large, extinct mammals were found together with shells of marine animal species that were still living on the nearby coast. Not only were they taxonomically indistinguishable, they seemed to be in the same relative proportions, indicating that the marine environ-. The fifth chapter deals with the older, Tertiary formations. Darwin established the relative dates of fossiliferous strata both by superposition and by the proportion of living species of shells in them to extinct ones.

He gives some rather forced arguments for the temperature not having changed much. The chapter ends with a discussion on the incompleteness of the fossil record, a topic that Darwin discussed at great length in The Origin of Species. The sixth chapter discusses the igneous and metamorphic rocks and the topic of cleavage and foliation. The 7 th and 8 th final chapters deal with the geology of the Cordillera of the Andes. Darwin had crossed the Andes in late March and early April of , and during that trip he made extensive drawings. He was able to document both subsidence and elevation over long periods of time.

He explains why the fossil record is not as complete as was generally believed. And he urges the point that change has occurred gradually, step-wise, and over long periods of time. At many times during the Beagle voyage Darwin had opportunity to study volcanic islands.

Lyell had opposed the notion of von Buch and others that volcanic craters should be treated as "craters of elevation. Darwin provided further evidence that the craters had been gradually built up by deposits of lava. Lyell had suggested that coral atolls had formed on the rims of craters. Part of the Admiralty's instructions to FitzRoy had been to study such atolls with the end in mind of investigating such matters.

During the course of the voyage Darwin reflected upon subsidence and elevation, and, while still in South America, formulated his own theory of coral formations. This interest helps one to form a more balanced view of his activities while in the Galapagos. The reader who wants to study the development of Darwin's thinking should realize from the outset that his observations are not presented in chronological order, even though St. Jago, the first island he visited and one that was revisited at the end of the voyage, is treated first. Rather the materials are arranged so as to show how volcanic islands are formed.

He begins with islands that are close to continents and contain a substantial amount of sedimentary rock characteristic of such areas, and those that are more distant from the land and consist mainly of volcanic material. The distinction between continental and oceanic islands was fundamental to Darwin's island biogeography but he does not refer to that explicitly here.

The first volume of the geology of the voyage, entitled The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs , was first published in A second edition, considerably revised, was published in , and a third, posthumous, one in The second edition includes response to criticisms by various contemporary scientists, reflecting the fact that although the theory was immediately accepted by geologists it later came under fire from all sorts of quarters.

It is no coincidence that much of the criticism came from persons, mainly zoologists, who were also critical of Darwin's evolutionary ideas. The debates continued until shortly after the Second World War, when soundings and drilling made it clear that Darwin's basic ideas were correct. Daly and William Morris Davis, and more recently by studies related to the modern theory of plate tectonics. Coral Reefs begins with a brief introduction that explains the problem and defines his three classes of coral reefs.

Fringing reefs are located next to the shore and often surround islands Fig. Barrier reefs are separated from shore by a body of water called a lagoon that generally opens into the sea by channels Fig. They are often capped by islets of land, and may encircle an entire island. In some cases there is no such island, but just a lagoon surrounded by a reef. Darwin briefly explains that the sequence is a developmental one, the result of corals having grown upward only in shallow water as the land has subsided.

He then devotes three chapters to detailed descriptions of the three classes of reefs, beginning with atolls, and ending with fringing reefs. The first of these atolls is Keeling Atoll, which he and Fitzroy studied during the voyage of the Beagle. He includes a considerable amount of material on how the corals and other animals grow and interact with one another, and provides evidence that the archipelago has sunk and has the kind of shape that one would expect if corals and other reef building organisms had grown up on a sinking island.

He compares the other known. A AA Outer edge of the reef at the level of the sea. BB Shores of the island. A'A'Outer edge of the reef, after its upward growth during a period of subsidence. CC The lagoon-channel between the reef and the shores of the now encircled land. B'B'The shores of the encircled island.

In this, and the following woodcut, the subsidence of the land could only be represented by an apparent rise in the level of the sea. B A'A' Outer edges of the barrier-reef at the level of the sea. The cocoa-nut trees represent coral-islets formed on the reef. CC The lagoon channel. B'B' The shores of the island, generally formed of low alluvial land and of coral detritus from the lagoon-channel.

A"A" The outer edges of the reef now forming atoll. C The lagoon of the newly formed atoll. According to the scale, the depth of the lagoon and of the lagoon-channel is exaggerated. The chapter on fringing reefs begins with Mauritius, which Darwin had also visited when on the Beagle. He again compares quite a variety of reefs.

A separate chapter is devoted to the conditions that are favorable to the growth and prosperity of corals and reefs, and to their rate of growth and related topics. He was able to establish that reef-forming corals grow only in warm, shallow waters. He knew that they are carnivores, but the fact that reef-forming corals are largely dependent upon symbiotic algae in their tissues for their energy supply was not discovered or fully appreciated until around the middle of the twentieth century.

The absence of coral formations in some warmer areas puzzled Darwin. Their limited ability to cope with sediment still seems a valid explanation. Darwin's chapter on such physiological and ecological topics provided part of the explanation for the distribution of the reefs. The rest of the distribution pattern was due to the long term geological changes that had been taking place all over the world. He then relates the two by proposing that what kind of reef occurs in a given place depends upon whether the crust of the earth has been in the process of uplift or subsidence.

Given his theory that subsidence is compensated for by uplift due to volcanic activity, the type of reef should correlate with it. Darwin makes this argument strikingly by means of a map in which the different types of reefs are shown to have the properties that this hypothesis predicts. The fringing reefs occur near to areas of volcanic activity, whereas the barrier reefs, and especially the atolls, tend to be located far from such areas. It is a fine example of Darwin's scientific method.

Darwin published some shorter geological papers that deserve mention. These include several in support of his and Lyell's interpretation of the transport of sediments and related topics. The possibility of extensive glaciation and its effects on the level of the sea became an active topic for investigation but Darwin was more or less on the losing side of that debate. By analogy with what he had found in South America, he tried to explain them as the result of the rise of the land and its occasional erosion by the sea. It turned out that they were the product of lakes that were dammed by glaciers.

Another geological topic that attracted his interest was the effects of earthworms in forming the soil and changing the landscape. He returned to that in has last book, supplemented by much later research on the behavior of the worms. When Darwin finished his geological works in , he planned to write a few short papers on zoology based on specimens that he had collected during his voyage and then prepare his work on evolution for publication.

That plan succeeded insofar as he published some short papers on flatworms and one on a little-known pelagic creature, the chaetognath Sagitta. One animal that interested him was an aberrant barnacle that did not fit into the existing schemes of classification. To describe it properly he needed to dissect and compare some other barnacles. One thing led to another, and he wound up revising the classification of the entire subclass Cirripedia and devoting a monograph to them well over a thousand pages long.

I say "a" monograph in spite of the fact that he was compelled to publish the parts on fossil cirripedes. This was because of the pettiness of the institutions that sponsored the publication. The barnacle research delayed the publication of Darwin's evolutionary theory for some eight years. Many reasons have been given for the delay. The best of these is that he was obsessive about details in all of his scientific work and wanted to do the job as well as possible.

The results are more easy to document.

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His monograph changed one of the least known groups of animals into one of the best known. It also established his reputation as a comparative anatomist, systematist and paleontologist, one who could speak with authority about all sorts of matters. It was not obvious to all his readers at the time that the Monograph was a book on evolutionary comparative anatomy but that is easy to make out in retrospect.

Darwin even refers to the genealogical tree of these organisms.

However, the evolutionism was only implicit, and the language could be read metaphorically. Darwin showed how the various groups of barnacles could be derived from common ancestors and produced a classification that is roughly consistent with that genealogy. He gave interesting examples, not all of which are now considered correct, of parts changing their function in the course of evolution. In some ways the most remarkable findings were the dwarf males that had evolved within the basically hermaphroditic group.

His work on their reproduction led him to realize that hermaphrodites are not, as had been widely assumed, self-fertilizing animals, and consequently that sex is far more important than his contemporaries believed. This initiated Darwin's extensive research on sex, including much comparative and experimental work on plants. He realized that sex is somehow connected with variability, and for him one of the most important results of the barnacle research was the realization that natural populations are highly variable.

Variation was exceedingly important for Darwin because it is a necessary condition for evolution by means of natural selection. Readers of Darwin may reasonably defer, or omit altogether, reading the Monograph. It is not an easy book to read, even if one has taken a course on invertebrate zoology. However, one might want to sample some of the more accessible passages. The volume on living Lepadidae stalked cirripedes begins with some general material on the comparative anatomy and embryology of the group pp. The next two hundred pages or so provide descriptions of various species that are not of much general interest.

One might want to read the parts on the peculiar hermaphrodites, males and females, though the summary on pages to gives the main points and their implications. The section on the genus Lithotrya includes material on how these animals burrow that provides an interesting example of Darwin's evolutionary approach to functional anatomy and behavior.

It might be best to read these passages after some of the later works in which the evolutionary thinking is explicit. The volume on living Balanidae and other cirripedes begins with an introduction that explains the anatomy. Well worth reading are the discussion on pages 9 to 22 on the general morphology of these animals and the one on their sexual peculiarities that follows on pages 23 to There are further discussions on the females and dwarf males of the burrowing barnacles Alcippe and Cryptophialus.

After completing the barnacle monograph, Darwin began to work up his materials on evolution and natural selection. He gathered new information from the literature, through his own experiments, and by requesting it from his informants. Although most of these informants did not know what Darwin was up to, he did confide in his botanist friend Joseph Dalton Hooker and later in another botanist, Asa Gray of Harvard University.

Among the many persons with whom he corresponded was Alfred Russel Wallace, who in September of published a paper entitled "On the law which has regulated the introduction of new species. In June, Darwin was working on a long book manuscript entitled Natural Selection , when a letter arrived from Wallace, along with a manuscript of a paper on evolution by natural selection.

This naturally created quite a stir. The upshot was that a joint publication was assembled and read to the Linnaean Society on July 1, establishing Darwin and Wallace as co-discoverers. It appeared in print some time in August.

Wallace was in the Malay Archipelago at the time and did not find out about this arrangement until much later. He never objected to it. Whatever we may think of what took place, the joint publication is readily available and well worth reading. It begins with an introductory letter by Lyell. There follows a section of a chapter from Darwin's "Essay" of It seems to have been edited slightly, but the changes are minor and do not affect the content.

At the end there is a paragraph on sexual selection, something that had not occurred to Wallace, and this is important because it establishes that Darwin's theory was somewhat more general than Wallace's. There follows a brief explanation of natural selection that was included with a letter to Gray dated September 5, It too seems to have been slightly edited but without any substantive changes.

At the end is a discussion on the principle of the divergence of character, which explains the diversification of life in ecological terms. Although one commentator suggested that Darwin took the principle of the divergence of character from Wallace's manuscript, there is no trace of it in the original. It was something that Darwin thought of in the s, so it is present in the letter but not in the "Essay. Wallace emphasized the selection of varieties as well as organisms, and he seems not to have made the distinction as clearly as Darwin did. Both Darwin and Wallace emphasized the analogy between artificial and natural selection.

They focused mainly on selection as a mechanism for producing adaptation and said very little about the long-term effects and larger consequences. For that reason, and perhaps others, the paper had little immediate effect on Darwin's contemporaries, other than indicating that something was in the works. The theory had to be fully explicated before it would be understood. Darwin soon began to write an "abstract" of his unfinished book manuscript. It ultimately became The Origin of Species. The first edition of the Origin is probably the best choice from the reader's point of view.

It is the original statement of Darwin's views, and later editions became complicated as he responded to various criticisms. Therefore we will begin with an examination of the first edition and afterward consider what changes were made in the later ones. Darwin's claim, in the Introduction, that he worked by patiently accumulating facts before allowing himself to speculate must be taken with a block of salt. Rather than following the "Baconian" approach that was widely popular in his day, he took theory as his guide, using the facts to test hypotheses.

The approach that he used was more in line with what has been called the hypothetico-deductive approach, or as some would say, the argument to the best explanation. The rationale of his "one long argument" is that evolution by natural selection explains a wide range of phenomena that are otherwise inexplicable in scientific terms. Throughout the work he opposes his hypothesis to special creation, but he also provides reasons for rejecting the views of Lamarck and others. The first chapter explains the process of natural selection using the analogy of artificial selection of domesticated animals and plants.

The reason for the analogy is not just to make the mechanism seem plausible. Rather it is to establish selection combined with variation as something more than purely conjectural. Selection really does produce change: Whether it suffices to account for the diversification of life from one or a few ancestral forms is of course another matter. In addition to selection Darwin invokes correlated growth or variability, something that later came to be discussed under the rubric of pleiotropy.

Darwin knew, for example, that white cats with blue eyes tend to be deaf. So somebody trying to produce a breed of white cats with blue eyes might inadvertently get ones that were deaf as well. This was one of several mechanisms that Darwin invoked in addition to natural selection.

Others are use and disuse, inherited habit, and sexual selection. He treats the breeds of domesticated animals and plants as analogous to what we would call incipient species. In Chapter II Darwin considers variation in nature, but his main concern is to show that there is no clear break between species and varieties. Speciation as he saw it is a gradual process, and one would only expect an unbroken continuum in the degree of distinctness.

As he put it, there would be no "essential" difference between species and varieties. This discussion can be confusing to the reader and for more than one reason. We now distinguish between 1 the species category, in other words, "species" in the abstract, and 2 particular species taxa, such as Homo sapiens , which are generally considered concrete populations, composite wholes or, in other words, individuals in a technical philosophical sense.

In discussing whether taxonomic groups are "real" it makes an enormous difference whether we are talking about the distinction between species and subspecies on the one hand, or something like Homo sapiens or Drosophila pseudoobscura on the other. Furthermore, in this section, Darwin is discussing the species concepts of other authors, whereas his own view of such matters is expounded in a later chapter. Some of the principals who played leading roles in Darwin's scientific career. Darwin explains what he calls the struggle for existence, in other words, competition in Chapter III.

He takes care to point out that what really matters is reproductive success. In order to do that he develops the basic principles of modern ecology, which is hardly surprising given that he founded that science in its modern form. The word ecology was coined by Darwin's German follower Ernst Haeckel. One of the more important points that he makes is that the competition will be most severe between close relatives. Darwin explains natural selection, sexual selection, and evolution in the long term in Chapter IV. Natural selection leads organisms to diversify and to occupy different places in the natural economy.

Darwin's notion of a place in the economy of nature is roughly equivalent to that of a niche in the sense that the term was used by such later ecologists as Elton and Gause, who derived much of their thinking from him. In a very important passage, Darwin notes that natural selection cannot modify the structure of one species solely for the good of another. That kind of "altruism" he argues does not and cannot exist.

One merit of a good theory is that it makes strong predictions like that, ones that may have been quite unexpected. Sexual selection is only briefly discussed, but it is crucial to the argument. If all that really matters is out-reproducing organisms of one's own species, then it makes sense that some features would have no other function, and even be deleterious to the welfare of that species. Darwin saw the combat between males and efforts to woo the females as examples of precisely such maladaptation.

Again, this is a crucial move, and one that has often been misunderstood. Darwin believed that there are three kinds of selection: His theory made different predictions for each of these, and sexual selection was therefore compelling evidence for selection theory in general. He gives a few details about natural selection that are developed in later works on pollination and other topics, including the previously unexpected vast amount of sexuality in the natural world.

Then he proposes that competition over long periods of time will cause organisms to diversify while the intermediate forms will often become extinct. The result is a pattern that relates the taxonomic hierarchy with its groups within groups and the gaps that often separate them to the competitive process. The tree diagram makes sense of taxonomy in a way that creation does not.

In Chapter V, Darwin discusses the laws of variation. One of the philosophical points that he seeks to make in this chapter is that variation is not as is often said random, in the sense that one change is just as likely as any other. It displays its own laws, or perhaps it would be better to say rules. Among these regularities he gives the principle of the correlation of growth mentioned above. He shows how natural selection makes sense out of rudimentary organs and throwbacks or atavisms. This chapter is really about embryology, though that may not be obvious.

Modern genetics, with its notions of pleiotropy and the like, did not come into existence until after the rediscovery of Mendel's work around Darwin's way of approaching these matters looks remarkably like the kind of "evo-devo" that became popular around Darwin considers what he calls difficulties with respect to his theory in Chapter VI, and indeed continues the same theme in the next four.

We need to avoid getting the impression that he was immunizing his theory from criticism or explaining away unpleasant facts. On the contrary, the difficulties in question played an important strategic role in his argument.

Much as he argued that there were indeed phenomena that his theory could not explain but that such do not exist, he showed that the difficulties in question were more apparent rather than real. Indeed, he was often able to turn an argument against his theory on its head, thereby converting an argument against it into one in favor of it.

Raising objections and shooting them down was an effective rhetorical ploy. He gives the stock example of the vertebrate eye. He says that his theory would break down if such an organ could not have been formed by small steps, again denying the claim. He explains why not all characters are adaptive. In the sixth edition of the Origin , Darwin added another chapter to allow for extensive rebuttal of his critics, but the order of the chapters remained the same. Darwin shows for instance that a bee does not have to be a mathematician to create a hexagonal cell of wax.

But the most compelling example is that of the neuter castes of social insects such as ants, bees and termites. How could such colonies evolve through natural selection when the workers are sterile? Darwin reasoned that in social insects the unit that gets selected is the family. He also invokes breeding from the same stock, or what later came to be called "kin selection.

Any degree of sterility would tend to decrease an organism's reproductive success, and natural selection would therefore prevent it from evolving. Darwin answers that by maintaining that such sterility is not an adaptation, but rather an incidental byproduct of some other change. Chapters IX and X address the imperfection of the fossil record. As a leading geologist and an expert on fossil barnacles Darwin was able to speak with great authority on that topic. Negative evidence in general is to be viewed with skepticism, and in the case of missing fossils Darwin provides reasons for thinking that the fossil record is even more fragmentary than had been believed.

Fossils are formed only under favorable conditions and they often get destroyed. As it turned out, the point that the evidence was negative created a strong incentive for paleontologists to search for more specimens, and the fossil record became considerably less fragmentary even in Darwin's lifetime. Darwin also shows how the fossil record makes sense in view of his diversity model and argues that his theory explains the apparent progress that has occurred in the organization of plants and animals in geological time.

Such progressive trends were something that Lyell had denied. It was biogeography that first convinced Darwin that evolution has in fact occurred, and biogeography was the most compelling evidence for it in his day. It remains so in ours. The kind of biogeography that was practiced by Alexander von Humboldt attempted to relate distribution patterns to climate and other physical conditions of life and that perspective has never been abandoned altogether by biogeographers and ecologists. But that approach was ahistorical, whereas descent with modification, with taxonomic groups conceived of as branches of a genealogical tree, provided the basis for an evolutionary approach to the subject.

Animals and plants have moved about as they have diversified, and their ability to do so has been limited by barriers. Terrestrial animals and plants find it difficult to cross bodies of water, deserts and mountain ranges. Marine ones would be blocked by land masses. By analyzing the different kinds of barriers and relating these to the ability of the animals and plants to move about, that aspect of the history of life could be reconstructed. Species could be traced to their point of origin. Darwin considers the means by which organisms may have crossed barriers.

He had experimented on the effects of seawater on the seeds of terrestrial plants, and found that many of them could survive for long periods. His discussion on the glacial period accounts for many distribution patterns in terms of changes in the climate. Darwin's delay in publishing resulted in Edward Forbes getting credit for some ideas about glaciation and plant distribution. It is particularly in Chapter XII that Darwin shows how many facts make sense only in terms of evolution.

The fresh water and marine organisms show characteristic patterns of distribution as a result of their mechanisms of dispersal. But the peculiar biotas of oceanic islands provide perhaps the most compelling evidence. Frogs and other amphibians, he points out, have very little capacity for surviving in seawater either as eggs or adults, and they are absent from oceanic islands.

And the older islands and island groups are often inhabited by groups of closely related species that occur nowhere else endemics. Thus, for example, his observations on the Galapagos birds are easily explained. This chapter marks the beginnings of insular biogeography, a topic that was pursued to great effect by Darwin's supporters, especially Joseph Hooker and Alfred Russel Wallace.

In Chapter XIII Darwin argues for his version of evolutionary theory by showing how it makes sense of classification and the data upon which it had been based. His biogeographical arguments depended upon uniting the data of distribution with the existing classification systems, which his predecessors had not interpreted as having evolutionary significance. He proposes that the Linnean hierarchy with its groups within groups is intelligible on the basis of each group being derived from a common ancestor. He explains why characters important in classification are not necessarily the ones that are most important in the life of the organisms, and why larger groups of animals seem to be derived from a common plan.

He likewise explains why embryology provides so much valuable evidence for classification at higher levels. The idea that evolution occurs by a modification of devel-. More than just a way of reconstructing evolutionary history, it is fundamental to his views on variation.

In discussing rudimentary organs such as the teeth in the embryos of whales that are toothless as adults, Darwin argues again that these at last become plainly intelligible as traces of earlier conditions. In Chapter XIV Darwin briefly recapitulates his main arguments, dismissing the objections and emphasizing the explanatory value of the theory.

The attentive reader may note that although natural selection has been explained, the arguments for evolution are the more compelling ones. Darwin suggests that the dead weight of tradition is apt to create much resistance to his views. Then he switches his argument strategy and predicts a major revolution in the life of the intellect. Psychology, he says, will be based on a new foundation.

This follows what is perhaps the greatest understatement in the history of English literature: The first edition of the Origin was published late in and immediately sold out. The second, which appeared a few weeks later, was not much changed, although some minor errors were corrected. Darwin also added a reference to the Creator.

It is uncertain whether he personally considered this particular emendation an improvement. The book of course created an immense uproar. In later editions, Darwin responded to criticisms and incorporated much new material. The details of the emendations are perhaps of minor interest to the readers of this Guide , but it seems a good idea to discuss some of the most important changes that Darwin made in later editions. Not the least reason for doing so is that it shows how the book itself evolved. To the third edition of the Origin , finished in early , Darwin added an "Historical Sketch" discussing his predecessors.

It was modified in later editions, and the total number of these predecessors was brought up to thirty. Some of them are more than dubious, for example Aristotle and Lorenz Oken, both of whom believed in spontaneous generation. Others, as Darwin points out, made statements that were vague or noncommittal. A few, such as Patrick Matthew, seem to have thought of natural selection, but they neither perceived its significance nor worked out its implications.

Darwin says much about Richard Owen, some of whose claims, he believed, were misleading and indeed downright dishonest. It is clear from his publications that Owen straddled the fence about various issues and was not always forthright in his arguments. The "Sketch" was somewhat revised in the fourth and fifth editions. There were quite a number of other changes in the third edition.

One of the most interesting is Darwin's response to objections to the use of the term "natural selection. He also clarified his views on progress. The fourth edition of the Origin , written in early , was extensively revised. A great deal had happened in the six years that had passed since the first was published. Evolution had become a very popular topic of discussion and not just among the scholarly community.

The book had been translated into several languages and was well known all over the world. But most important, Darwin had attracted an enthusiastic following, and one that included many able scientists as well as informants who were happy to provide him with the information he needed. This essay connects Kafka's German and his Jewish linguistic sources, and explores the trans-national perspective on literary tradition they helped him create. I begin with a critique of Deleuze and Guattari's view of Kafka as a minority writer, showing how their cold war nationalism scants the positive contributions that Yiddish and Hebrew made to his work.

I continue with an examination of the "twilight of containment," when this postcontemporary Kafka began to break through his cold war canonization after The Echoes of Yiddish," on Kafka's cultural politics; "Hebrew: I conclude by considering the Jewish and other sources of Kafka's "linguistic turn," and the general, transnational focus on tradition that Jewish languages brought to his classic texts. You must fill out fields marked with: X This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies. I accept this policy Find out more here.

Kafka's Jewish Languages: The Hidden Openness of Tradition

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