Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
On the Origin of Species (or, more completely, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life) [3] is a work of scientific literature by Charles Darwin that is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology.
Charles Darwin in 1868. Darwinism is a term used to describe a theory of biological evolution developed by the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and others. The theory states that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual's ability to compete, survive, and reproduce.
By around 1880, most scientists were convinced of evolution as descent with modification, though few agreed with Darwin that natural selection "has been the main but not the exclusive means of modification". [224] During "the eclipse of Darwinism" scientists explored alternative mechanisms.
Darwin thought of natural selection by analogy to how farmers select crops or livestock for breeding, which he called "artificial selection"; in his early manuscripts he referred to a "Nature" which would do the selection. At the time, other mechanisms of evolution such as evolution by genetic drift were not yet explicitly formulated, and ...
The article was the first announcement of the Darwin–Wallace theory of evolution by natural selection; and appeared in print on 20 August 1858. The presentation of the papers spurred Darwin to write a condensed "abstract" of his "big book", Natural Selection. This was published in November 1859 as On the Origin of Species.
Darwin's ideas developed rapidly after returning from the Voyage of the Beagle in 1836. By December 1838, he had developed the basic principles of his theory. At that time, ideas about the transmutation of species were associated with radical political ideas of the Age of Enlightenment and the French Revolution, and some people, such as Darwin's old instructor Robert Edmond Grant had been ...
The publication of Darwin's theory brought into the open Charles Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection, the culmination of more than twenty years of work. Thoughts on the possibility of transmutation of species which he recorded in 1836 towards the end of his five-year voyage on the Beagle were followed on his return by ...
Darwin tried at a gathering at Downe on 22 April 1856 to amiably argue Huxley and Hooker round towards accepting evolution as a process, without going into the mechanism. Darwin intended to write human beings into Natural Selection through mid-1857. But his work required a tremendous amount of evidence and facts.