Darwin Charles theory of evolution

Abstract Darwin's theory of evolution is one of the greatest of all time. It's also one of the most controversial. This article presents the most fundamental concepts of the theory. We'll also provide results of modern science and discuss to which extend to they confirm Darwin's postulates. | Outline | Intro-Video | Biodiversity, Biology, Evolution | 5025 |

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In 1859, in, English naturalist Charles Darwin introduced his masterpiece: The Theory of Evolution.

But isn’t Darwin’s theory just a theory?

It is pretty straightforward to say that Darwin’s theory is a theory. But Darwin’s theory isn’t just any theory. It’s probably science’s greatest theory of all time!!!

So, is it a fact?

We have submitted this question on Facebook. But since I hate judging an idea without understanding it, let’s first study it. In this article, we’ll go through every postulate of the theory and discuss to which extent they are questionable. Eventually, I’ll apply epistemology to provide an answer.

I have done a lot of research to write this article, and it yields my understanding of Darwin’s theory. But I’m no biologist and there may be mistakes. If you see them, please tell me so that I can improve this article.

Life Evolution by Natural Selection

The core of Darwin’s ideas lies in the two following assumptions: Life evolves by natural selection. Let’s start with the evolution of life.

Life evolves? What do you mean?

To understand this, we need to imagine the main reasoning in Europe in Darwin’s time. It was thought that God had created life perfectly. Thus, species were eternal. They, as a species, never evolved. They never obtain new features.

So what made Darwin question that?

First, several geologists, economists and even biologists had started to suggest evolution in all their fields. But what really helped Darwin in his thoughts are… Dogs! By carefully mixing dogs with specific features to reproduce themselves, breeders had managed to seemingly create new species. This phenomenon, along with the diversity of pigeons, convinced Darwin of the evolution of life!

OK, dogs and pigeons evolve… But does this mean that all species evolved?

To answer this question, Darwin studied a large variety of species, including humans. For instance, he noticed that there were variations among his children. He imagined that if someone were to pick which children to mix, we could observe a similar evolution among humans as among dogs and pigeons.

But in cases you mention, transformation of species would require human selection…

The loss of his daughter made him realize that not every animal got to reproduce. It led him to question the existence of God and the perfection of its creation, that is, nature. This is how he came up with natural selection, as opposed to human selection.

I don’t really like the terminology of natural selection, as it seems to imply that there is an intelligent action undertaken by nature. A better terminology would be natural evolution: the concept of natural selection actually corresponds to the causal evolution of populations of species, when interacting with the environment, other species and themselves.

It now seemed to him that nature was actually a heartless world, in which species were competing for survival over limited ressource. By thinking so, he envisioned death as a process of creation.