Darwin's "On the Origin of Species: By Means of Natural Selection"

WordCloud from The Floating Academy

Reading this text is a difficult shift in perspective - it's so tempting to read all of the detailed representations of animal behaviour as a metaphor for mankind as we would any of the Arts and Social Science text that we've covered.  Even more so as the plants and animals do, in fact, represent human-kind as Darwin quietly uses them as a template for mankind's own evolution.  On the Origin of Species: By Means of Natural Selection was revolutionary for 1859, but what strikes me most is what Darwin doesn't outright say - that man is just another species on Earth.

Darwin establishes immediate comparisons between plants and animal life, yet no direct comparison to human-kind - this is only implied.  Instead, he focuses on the familiar.  Domesticated animals.  Canine species. Bees.  Ants.  Plants.  He lightly introduces concept of man as a comparison to the animal world when speaking of the impact of the environment and epidemics killing 10% of mankind  "this is a tremendous destruction when we remember that ten percent is an extraordinarily severe mortality from epidemics with man" (68), but uses mankind here to contrast the difference in our vulnerability... ie. mankind is stronger and more resiliant than the animal world, and a 10% loss for us is rare and horrible. He also links the concept of the cultures of countries and inhabitants affected and improved by Natural Selection. (82)

The concept of Natural Selection is introduced as "The preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations" (80) and is the main focus of Darwin's theory. He says "Natural selection tends only to make each organic being as perfect as, or slightly more perfect than, the other inhabitants of the same country with which it has to struggle for existence. And we see that this is the degree of perfection attained under nature." (204)

Darwin compares the evolution of breeding to the evolution of dialects, and cites personal experience, references the bible, other scientists, Chinese and roman classical authors to establish credibility.  He speaks at length about man and nature's role in the manipulation of breeding, however he shys away from defining God's role, mentioning God only at the end of chapter 5 with the somewhat vague: "To admit this view [that each species is independently created] is, as it seems to me, to reject a real for an unreal, or at least for an unknown, cause. It makes the works of God a mere mockery and deception; I would almost as soon believe with the old and ignorant cosmogonists, that fossil shells had never lived, but had been created in stone so as to mock the shells now living on the sea-shore" (169-170).

Works Cited:

Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species: By Means of Natural Selection. Public Domain: Amazon. Kindle e-book.