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, and in the letters that passed between them before they started they avowed to one another that the object of their quest was a solution of the pressing biological enigma of creation or evolution. Starting with fresh hopes and a few pounds in pocket, on an old, worn-out, and unseaworthy slave-trader, they often discussed these deep problems of life and nature together upon the Sargasso sea, or among the palms and lianas of the Brazilian woodlands. The air was thick with whiffs and foretastes of
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, Robert, 20 on catasetum, 78; Darwin, Robert Waring, 25, 26; accepts Darwinism, 117,; publishes his home, 31 his 'Flora of Australia,' ib. De Candolle, 63 Horner, Leonard, 17 Down House, Darwin settles Humboldt, 33 at, 65 Huxley, Prof., lecture at Royal Du Chaillu, 134 Institution, 117; 'Man's Place in Nature,' 122; on coming of age of 'Origin of EARTHWORMS, 66,168 Species,' 166 Edgeworth, 25 Evolution, general theory of, 177 JUSSIEU, 63 FlLHOL, 168 Fiske, Prof., 58; on natural KANT, nebular
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general and almost universal that, unless it be got rid of at the very outset of our sketch, much of the real scope and purport of Darwin's life and work must, of necessity, remain entirely misunderstood by the vast mass of English readers. In the public mind Darwin is, perhaps, most commonly regarded as the discoverer and founder of the evolution hypothesis. Two ideas are usually associated with his name and memory. It is believed that he was the first propounder of the theory which supposes all
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How far Darwin's special idea of natural selection supplemented and rendered credible the earlier idea of descent with modification we shall see more fully when we come to treat of the inception and growth of his great epoch-making work, 'The Origin of Species' for the present, it must suffice to point out that in the world into which he was born, the theory of evolution already existed in a more or less shadowy and undeveloped shape. And since it was his task in life to raise this theory from
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course of evolutionary thought in scientific Europe. True, owing to the retrograde tendencies of the First Empire, it caused but little immediate stir at the precise moment of its first publication; but the seed it sowed sank deep, and, lying fallow long in men's minds, bore fruit at last in the next generation with the marvellous fecundity of the germs of genius. Indeed, from the very beginning of the present century, a ferment of inquiry on the subject of creation and evolution was everywhere
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hypothesis. Among the depths of Brazilian forests Bates was reading the story of evolution on the gauze-like wings of tropical butterflies. Under the scanty shade of Malayan palm-trees Wallace was independently spelling out in rude outline the very theory of survival of the fittest, which Charles Darwin himself was simultaneously perfecting and polishing among the memoirs and pamphlets of his English study. Wollaston in Madeira was pointing out the strange adaptations of the curious local
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crosses. That last truth of natural selection was the only cardinal one in the evolutionary system on which Erasmus Darwin did not actually forestall his more famous and greater namesake. For its full perception, the discovery of Malthus had to be collated with the speculations of Buffon. 'When, we revolve in our minds,' says the eighteenth century prophet of evolution, 'the great similarity of structure which obtains in all the warm-blooded animals, as well quadrupeds, birds, and amphibious
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is leading up by gradual stages to the finished and all-sided philosophy of physical life, which at last definitely formulates itself through the mouth of Charles Darwin. We shall see hereafter wherein Erasmus Darwin's conception of development chiefly failed—in attributing evolution for the most part to the exertions and endeavours of the animal itself, rather than to inevitable survival of the fittest among innumerable spontaneous variations—but we must at least conclude our glimpse of his
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branches of study that finally bear upon the complex problems of our human life. No other subject of investigation was so well calculated to rouse Darwin's interest in the ultimate questions of evolution or creation, [page] EARLY DAYS 3
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little northern fauna and flora, the mere leavings of the vast ice sheets that spread across our zone in the glacial epoch, show us a world depopulated of all its largest, strangest, and fiercest creatures; a world dwarfed in all its component elements, and immensely differing in ten thousand ways from that rich, luxuriant, over-stocked hot-house in which the first great problems of evolution were practically worked out by survival of the fittest. But the tropics preserve for us still in all
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naturalist of the 'Beagle' notes with interest that feather and dirt-feeding and parasitic insects or spiders are the first inhabitants to take up their quarters on recently formed oceanic islands. This problem of the peopling of new lands, indeed, so closely connected with the evolution of new species, necessarily obtruded itself upon his attention again and again during his five years' cruise; and in some cases, especially that of the Galapagos Islands, the curious insular faunas and floras
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in real earnest with the ultimate questions of creation or evolution. A group of tiny volcanic islets, never joined to any land, nor even united to one another, yet each possessing its own special zoological features—the Galapagos roused to an extraordinary degree the irresistible questionings of Darwin's mind. They contain no frogs, and no mammal save a mouse, brought to them, no doubt, by some passing ship. The only insects are beetles, which possess peculiar facilities for being transported
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province. Darwin's mind with all its vastness was not, indeed, profoundly analytical. The task of working out the psychological and metaphysical aspects of evolution fell rather to the great organising and systematising intellect of Herbert Spencer. But within the realm of material fact, and of the widest possible inferences based upon such fact, Darwin's keen and comprehensive spirit ranged freely over the whole illimitable field of nature. 'No one,' says Buckle with unwonted felicity, 'can
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. Englishmen will not even believe that the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the squares on the containing sides until they have measured and weighed as well as they are able by rude experimental devices a few selected pieces of rudely shaped rectangular paper. It was a great gain, therefore, that the task of reconstructing the course of organic evolution should fall to the lot of a highly trained and masterly intelligence of the inductive order. Darwin had first to convince himself, and then he
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doctrine. At last, in 1844, Robert Chambers published anonymously his famous and much-debated 'Vestiges of Creation,' which brought down the question of evolution versus creation from the senate of savants to the arena of the mere general public, and set up at once a universal fever of inquiry into the mysterious question of the origin of species. Chambers himself was a man rather of general knowledge and some native philosophical insight than of any marked scientific accuracy or depth. His
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to the first living germ by the will of the Creator, and acting ever since continuously it is true, but none the less miraculously for all that. For many creations Chambers substitutes one single long creative nisus: where Darwin saw natural selection, his Scotch predecessor saw a deus ex machina, helping on the course of organic development by a constant but unseen interference from above. He supposed evolution to be predetermined by some intrinsic and externally implanted proclivity. In short
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, cartilaginous, unphilosophic evolutionism had full possession of the field for the moment, and claimed, as it were, to be the genuine representative of the young and vigorous biological creed, while he himself was in truth the real heir to all the honours of the situation. He was in possession of the master-key which alone could unlock the bars that opposed the progress of evolution, and still he waited. He could afford to wait. He was diligently collecting, amassing, investigating; eagerly reading every
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, Sir Herbert Spencer wrote as follows in an essay in the 'Leader' on creation and evolution. The expressions of so profound and philo- [page] 88 CHARLES DARWI
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already known in favour of organic evolution as a whole, the argument from Geological Succession, the argument from Geographical Distribution, the argument [page] 106 CHARLES DARWI
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country home at Down, was simply astonished at the rapid success of his own work. The first edition was published at the end of November 1859; it was exhausted almost immediately, and a second was got ready in hot haste by the beginning of January 1860. In less than six weeks the book had become famous, and Darwin found himself the centre of a European contest, waged with exceeding bitterness, over the truth or falsity of his wonderful volume. To the world at large Darwinism and evolution became
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