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Charles Darwin and His Legacy

Charles Darwin and His Legacy. Who was he?. Born in 1809 to a rich family. Not a great student Was enrolled at University in order for him to become a clergy man. Barely graduated with his degree. Took a position on the Beagle as a naturalist

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Charles Darwin and His Legacy

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  1. Charles Darwin and His Legacy

  2. Who was he? • Born in 1809 to a rich family. • Not a great student • Was enrolled at University in order for him to become a clergy man. • Barely graduated with his degree. • Took a position on the Beagle as a naturalist • Read thought provoking books and made very good observations of the natural world while voyaging. • Developed theory of natural selection concurrently with Wallace • Married first cousin • Poor health prevented him from more traveling • Published Origin of the Species (after 20 years developing theory) in 1859 and Decent of Man in 1879. • Decided not to defend his writings. • Died in 1888.

  3. Revolution in the Victorian Era • Many revolutionary thoughts in science appeared during the Victorian era. • Darwin’s contributions to radically changing biology, science philosophy and modern culture have been compared to the Copernican Revolution. • Darwin founded a new science: Evolutionary Biology

  4. His 4 Contributions • Non constancy of species • Species change over time • Branching evolution • Decent of all organisms from a common ancestor; not linear. • Gradual evolution • No breaks or discontinuities • Natural selection • His 4 principles on how it worked

  5. Effect of these ideas • Founded a new branch of science in which history is added. • Evolutionary biology acts as a bridge between science and humanities • Philisophicaly, the Darwin/Wallace theory was remarkable in its simplicity. • There are no “final causes” or end points which differed from religion or other evolutionary theories. • Random nature of nature.

  6. Darwin focused on the individual • The target of selection was the individual as a whole. • Genetics went further after 1900 to try and make the gene the selective target.

  7. The New Philosophy of Biology • Dual nature of biological processes. • Forces shaped by physical/chemical laws and by genetic programs. • The second part being exclusively owned by living things. • Role of Laws • In physical sciences, theories are based on laws which are backed up by math. • In evolutionary theory, they are based on biological relationships like competition, selection and dominance.

  8. Darwinian Zeitgeist • In 1850 almost all scientists were Christian men. • The main ideas of the time were based on a world created by God who imparted wise laws that brought about the perfect adaptation of organisms to their environment. • Modern scientists had constucted an idea of physicalism • everything which exists is no more extensive than its physical properties • Darwin’s ideas went counter to these ideas.

  9. Darwinian Counter Culture • Darwinism rejects all supernatural phenomenon. • No longer requires God as the designer. • Rejects “typology” • The idea of a stable and unchanging world. • His ideas of variation defied this unchanging concept (ex. Racism) • No teleology • No strive for perfection • No determinism • Randomness in nature is accepted. • New Anthropocentrism • Common decent applies to all creatures including man. • Most controversial in 1880 • Scientific foundation for ethics • How does evolution reward behavioral adaptations that favor cooperation. • Altruistic behavior and kin selection at odds with “social darwinism”.

  10. Greatest Contribution “He developed a set of new principles that influence the thinking of every person: • the living world, through evolution, can be explained without recourse to supernaturalism; • essentialism or typology is invalid, and we must adopt population thinking, in which all individuals are unique (vital for education and the refutation of racism); • natural selection, applied to social groups, is indeed sufficient to account for the origin and maintenance of altruistic ethical systems; • cosmic teleology, an intrinsic process leading life automatically to ever greater perfection, is fallacious, with all seemingly teleological phenomena explicable by purely material processes; • and determinism is thus repudiated, which places our fate squarely in our own evolved hands.”

  11. Reference Mayr, Ernst, 2000. Darwin’s influence on modern thought. Scientific American.

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