Chapter 39 of Zoonomia, “On Generation,” presents Erasmus’ ideas on competition, extinction, and how “different fibrils or molecules are detached from…the parent…to form” the child. The Temple of Nature goes even farther, declaring “all vegetables and animals now existing were originally derived from the smallest microscopic ones, formed by spontaneous vitality” in ancient oceans.

system was described by Charles Darwin:I keep from thirty to forty large portfolios, in cabinets with labeled shelves, intowhich I can at once put a detached reference or memorandum. I have bought manybooks and at their ends I make an index of all the facts that concern my work.Before beginning on any subject I look to all the short indexes and make a generaland classified index, and by taking the one or more proper portfolios I have all theinformation collected during my life ready for use.13

his original French

Whewell was one of the Cambridge dons whom Charles Darwin met during his education there, and when Darwin returned from the Beagle voyage he was directly influenced by Whewell, who persuaded Darwin to become secretary of the Geological Society of London. The title pages of On the Origin of Species open with a quotation from Whewell's Bridgewater Treatise about science founded on a natural theology of a creator establishing laws:[33] But with regard to the material world, we can at least go so far as this—we can perceive that events are brought about not by insulated interpositions of Divine power, exerted in each particular case, but by the establishment of general laws.

Like many people, I’d always been baffled by the occasional, undeniably ‘Lamarckian’ passages in On the Origin of Species, bearing in mind Darwin is generally credited with having discredited such thinking.

An alternative school of Darwinism emerged in Russia emphasizing cooperation, not competition, as the driver of evolutionary change. In 1902 this approach found a voice in a popular book, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, by naturalist and revolutionary anarchist pamphleteer Peter Kropotkin.

Spencer, in turn, was struck by how much the forces driving natural selection in On the Origin of Species jibed with his own laissez-faire economic theories. Competition over resources, rational calculation of advantage, and the gradual extinction of the weak were taken to be the prime directives of the universe.

The only diagram or image in The Origin of Species, a tree depicting divergence (source)

he was working on the same theme with Stefanie Posavec. They completed their piece some time later, depicting the changes as lovely branching trees — a kind of homage to Darwin’s lone diagram in the book.

Fifty years ago, coinciding with the centennial of the release of Darwin’s manuscript, author Morse Peckham collected all six editions into a single “variorum” text. Peckham painstakingly created a reference system that denotes the modifications and changes between editions. The text was created by Peckham’s careful enumeration of every sentence from every edition, copied onto index cards; from these cards, he carefully assembled them into a final text.

the phrase “survival of the fittest” — usually considered central to the theory and often attributed to Darwin — instead came from British philosopher Herbert Spencer, and didn't appear until the fifth edition of the text.

New DNA technology is shaking up the family trees of many plants and animals.

“I had [...]during many years followed a golden rule, namely, that whenever apublished fact, a new observation or thought came across me, whichwas opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of itwithout fail and at once; for I had found by experience that such factsand thoughts were far more apt to escape from the memory thanfavorable ones. Owing to this habit, very few objections were raisedagainst my views, which I had not at least noticed and attempted toanswer.” (Darwin 1958, 123)

Charles Darwin wrote an entire book about humans being social creatures. He wrote that any Hobbesian human would be an “unnatural monster.”

For if I wait out the uncomfortable night by the river,I fear that the female dew and the evil frost togetherwill be too much for my damaged strength, I am so exhausted, and in themorning a chilly wind will blow from the river; 470 but if I go up the slopeand into the shadowy forest,and lie down to sleep among the dense bushes, even if the chill andweariness let me be, and a sweet sleep comes upon me,I fear I may become spoil and prey to the wild animals.’

3 results for charles darwin

Species described by Charles Darwin

Galapagos Species Checklist

How inexplicable are these facts on the ordinary view of creation! Why should the brain be enclosed in a box composed of such numerous and such extraordinarily shaped pieces of bone? As Owen has remarked, the benefit derived from the yielding of the separate pieces in the act of parturition of mammals, will by no means explain the same construction in the skulls of birds. Why should similar bones have been created in the formation of the wing and leg of a bat, used as they are for such totally different purposes? Why should one crustacean, which has an extremely complex mouth formed of many parts, consequently always have fewer legs; or conversely, those with many legs have simpler mouths? Why should the sepals, petals, stamens, and pistils in any individual flower, though fitted for such widely different purposes, be all constructed on the same pattern ?

If it could be proved that the Hottentot had descended from the Negro, I think he would be classed under the Negro group, however much he might differ in colour and other important characters from negroes.

Finally, with respect to the comparative value of the various groups of species, such as orders, sub-orders, families, sub-families, and genera, they seem to be, at least at present, almost arbitrary. Several of the best botanists, such as Mr Bentham and others, have strongly insisted on their arbitrary value. Instances could be given amongst plants and insects, of a group of forms, first ranked by practised naturalists as only a genus, and then raised to the rank of a sub-family or family; and this has been done, not because further research has detected important structural differences, at first overlooked, but because numerous allied species, with slightly different grades of difference, have been subsequently discovered.

We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours. If I had remembered this it would have prevented some mistakes. This was not the light in which I hoed them. The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology!—I know of no reading of another's experience so startling and informing as this would be. The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can, old man—you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind—I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that. One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels.