Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
Darwin's theory of evolution is based on key facts and the inferences drawn from them, which biologist Ernst Mayr summarised as follows: [6] Every species is fertile enough that if all offspring survived to reproduce, the population would grow (fact). Despite periodic fluctuations, populations remain roughly the same size (fact).
Darwin's theory resonated with various movements at the time and became a key fixture of popular culture. [VI] Cartoonists parodied animal ancestry in an old tradition of showing humans with animal traits, and in Britain, these droll images served to popularise Darwin's theory in an unthreatening way.
The "theory of evolution" is actually a network of theories that created the research program of biology. Specifically Darwin, for example, proposed five separate theories in his original formulation, which included mechanistic explanations for: populations changing over generations; gradual change; speciation; natural selection; common descent ...
Darwin's first sketch of an evolutionary tree from his First Notebook on Transmutation of Species (1837). Charles Darwin became a naturalist at a point in the history of evolutionary thought when theories of Transmutation were being developed to explain discrepancies in the established faith based explanations of species.
The concept of natural selection originally developed in the absence of a valid theory of heredity; at the time of Darwin's writing, science had yet to develop modern theories of genetics. The union of traditional Darwinian evolution with subsequent discoveries in classical genetics formed the modern synthesis of the mid-20th century.
Darwin published his theory of evolution by natural selection in On the Origin of Species in 1859. [18] His theory means that all life, including humanity, is a product of continuing natural processes.
The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication is a book by Charles Darwin that was first published in January 1868.. A large proportion of the book contains detailed information on the domestication of animals and plants but it also contains in Chapter XXVII a description of Darwin's theory of heredity which he called pangenesis.