Evolution by Natural Selection. Charles Darwin , Alfred Russel Wallace

1960 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 332-332
Author(s):  
Bentley Glass
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Alfred Russel Wallace ◽  
Evolution By Natural Selection

Evolution: A Very Short Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Charlesworth ◽  
Deborah Charlesworth
Keyword(s):  
New Species ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
Alfred Russel Wallace ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Living Species ◽  
Evolution By Natural Selection ◽  
Special Creation

Less than 150 years ago, the view that living species were the result of special creation by God was still dominant. The recognition by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace of the mechanism of evolution by natural selection has completely transformed our understanding of the living world, including our own origins. Evolution: A Very Short Introduction provides a summary of the process of evolution by natural selection, highlighting the wide range of evidence, and explains how natural selection gives rise to adaptations and eventually, over many generations, to new species. It introduces the central concepts of the field of evolutionary biology and discusses some of the remaining questions regarding evolutionary processes.

2. Evolution and natural selection

2019 ◽  
pp. 9-26
Author(s):  
Samir Okasha
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Philosophical Argument ◽  
Modern Biology ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Philosophical Significance ◽  
Argument From Design ◽  
Evolution By Natural Selection

In 1859 Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, in which he set out his theory of evolution. The book marked a turning point in our understanding of the natural world and revolutionized biology. ‘Evolution and natural selection’ outlines the theory of evolution by natural selection, explaining its unique status in biology and its philosophical significance. It considers how Darwin’s theory undermined the ‘argument from design’, a traditional philosophical argument for the existence of God; how the integration of Darwin’s theory with genetics, in the early 20th century, gave rise to neo-Darwinism; and why, despite evolutionary theory being a mainstay of modern biology, in society at large there is a marked reluctance to believe in evolution.

A Genealogy of Variation

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
History Of ◽  
Evolution By Natural Selection

This chapter traces the genealogy of variation, as shaped by Charles Darwin and his legacy of evolution by natural selection. It argues that tracing the history of variation through a naturecultural framework reveals the inherent underlying logic of eugenics. A naturecultural framework allows us to see that evolutionary biologists have long wrestled with some version of what we recognize as the nature/nurture debates. Furthermore, in chronicling this history, the chapter deals with the major figures, including the four patriarchs, or fathers, of the field: Darwin, the father of evolution; Galton, the father of biometry; Malthus, the father of demography; and Mendel, the father of genetics.

Henry Walter Bates—his life and contributions to biology

1995 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES E. O'HARA
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Geographical Society ◽  
Alfred Russel Wallace ◽  
Popular Book ◽  
Spare Time ◽  
Evolution By Natural Selection ◽  
Number Of Publications

Henry Walter Bates was born in Leicester, England, on 8 February 1825. Early in life he developed a keen interest in natural history in general, and in insects in particular. He met and befriended Alfred Russel Wallace, and in 1848 the two embarked on a collecting expedition to the Amazon Valley. They soon parted company and thereafter collected separately in different areas of Amazonia. Bates returned to England 11 years later, in 1859. He was quick to embrace Darwin's and Wallace's theory of evolution by natural selection, and was one of the first to back the theory with evidence from the natural world. A case in point was Bates's theory of mimicry, which now bears his name. In 1863, his popular book The Naturalist on the River Amazons was published. Bates took the post of Assistant Secretary at the Royal Geographical Society of London in 1864 and continued in that position until his death in 1892. During that period he produced in his spare time a prodigious number of publications in systematic entomology, mostly on Lepidoptera and Coleoptera. Many of his works were accompanied by insightful discussions of zoogeography, thus distinguishing Bates as one of the more remarkable and progressive systematists of his time.

Charles Darwin and the Falkland Islands

Polar Record ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 22 (139) ◽  
pp. 413-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Grove
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
South America ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Galapagos Islands ◽  
Falkland Islands ◽  
Galápagos Islands ◽  
Southern South America ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Evolution By Natural Selection ◽  
Endemic Flora

AbstractCharles Darwin's notes, diary entries and letters covering visits to southern South America and the Falkland Islands in 1833 and 1834 throw light on the revolutionary events of the time. His notes also contain the first indication of an evolutionary concept, suggested by the endemic flora and fauna of the Falklands, which guided his later observations on the Galapagos Islands and lead ultimately to his theory of evolution by natural selection.

The Gene's-Eye View of Evolution

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Arvid Ågren
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Evolutionary Genetics ◽  
Selfish Gene ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
The Social ◽  
Evolution By Natural Selection

To many evolutionary biologists, the central challenge of their discipline is to explain adaptation, the appearance of design in the living world. With the theory of evolution by natural selection, Charles Darwin elegantly showed how a purely mechanistic process can achieve this striking feature of nature. Since Darwin, the way many biologists think about evolution and natural selection is as a theory about individual organisms. Over a century later, a subtle but radical shift in perspective emerged with the gene’s-eye view of evolution in which natural selection was conceptualized as a struggle between genes for replication and transmission to the next generation. This viewpoint culminated with the publication of The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (Oxford University Press, 1976) and is now commonly referred to as selfish gene thinking. The gene’s-eye view has subsequently played a central role in evolutionary biology, although it continues to attract controversy. The central aim of this accessible book is to show how the gene’s-eye view differs from the traditional organismal account of evolution, trace its historical origins, clarify typical misunderstandings and, by using examples from contemporary experimental work, show why so many evolutionary biologists still consider it an indispensable heuristic. The book concludes by discussing how selfish gene thinking fits into ongoing debates in evolutionary biology, and what they tell us about the future of the gene’s-eye view of evolution. The Gene’s-Eye View of Evolution is suitable for graduate-level students taking courses in evolutionary biology, behavioural ecology, and evolutionary genetics, as well as professional researchers in these fields. It will also appeal to a broader, interdisciplinary audience from the social sciences and humanities including philosophers and historians of science

Adaptation

2001 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Reznick ◽  
Joseph Travis
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Cause And Effect ◽  
Evolution By Natural Selection ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Life On Earth ◽  
Diversity Of Life ◽  
First Time ◽  
Over Time

When Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace proposed their theory of evolution by natural selection, the concepts of evolution and speciation were not new. Darwin introduced The Origin with “An Historical Sketch,” in which he summarized the work of 34 previous authors who had speculated on evolution and the origin of species. What was new about Darwin and Wallace’s proposition was natural selection as the mechanism of evolutionary change. Darwin further proposed that natural selection was a unifying process that accounts for adaptation, for speciation, and hence for the diversity of life on earth. Darwin and Wallace proposed natural selection as a process that caused evolution. Adaptations are features of organisms that were shaped by this process. The modern version of Darwin and Wallace’s theory allows for other agents of evolution, such as genetic drift, migration, and mutation, but adaptation remains a product of natural selection alone. The virtue of their proposal is that it allows us to develop testable hypotheses about cause-and-effect relationships between features of the environment and presumed adaptations. Natural selection immediately became a source of controversy, although the nature of the controversy has shifted over time. First, there has been considerable debate about the definition of adaptation (e.g., Reeve and Sherman 1993). We do not wish to add to or summarize this debate because we feel that Darwin got it right the first time. Besides defining a cause-and-effect relationship between selection and adaptation, Darwin emphasized that we should not expect organisms to be perfectly adapted to their environment. In fact, this emphasis was a large component of his argument against divine creation. For example, Darwin recognized, through his experience with artificial selection, that different aspects of morphology were in some way “tied” to one another so that selection on one trait would cause correlated changes in others that were not necessarily adaptive. He also recognized that organisms were subject to constraints that might limit their ability to adapt. Finally, he argued that how organisms evolved was a function of their history, so that the response to selection on the same trait would vary among lineages. A more telling criticism considers the application of cause-and-effect reasoning to the interpretation of features of organisms as adaptations, and hence to the empirical study of adaptation.

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