Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin, FRS FRGS FLS FZSwas an English naturalist and geologist, best known for his contributions to the science of evolution. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors, and in a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in...
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth12 February 1809
CityShrewsbury, England
The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.
We will now discuss in a little more detail the Struggle for Existence.
Man tends to increase at a greater rate than his means of subsistence.
This preservation of favourable variations and the destruction of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest. Variations neither useful nor injurious would not be affected by natural selection and would be left a fluctuating element.
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change, that lives within the means available and works co-operatively against common threats.
The most important factor in survival is neither intelligence nor strength but adaptability.
Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy.
I long to set foot where no man has trod before.
One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.
I have no great quickness of apprehension or wit which is so remarkable in some clever men, for instance Huxley
Extinction has only separated groups: it has by no means made them; for if every form which has ever lived on this earth were suddenly to reappear, though it would be quite impossible to give definitions by which each group could be distinguished from other groups, as all would blend together by steps as fine as those between the finest existing varieties, nevertheless a natural classification, or at least a natural arrangement, would be possible.
Language is an art, like brewing or baking.... It certainly is not a true instinct, for every language has to be learnt.
I am a firm believer, that without speculation there is no good and original observation.
He who understands baboons would do more towards metaphysics than Locke.