Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species

Abstract

The chapter traces the development of Charles Darwin’s ideas about the concept of organic evolution, discusses the reasons why he delayed publishing his ideas for many years, and describes the major elements of the theories of evolution presented in his 1859 book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. The influence of his grandfather’s ideas about evolution is also discussed, as well as the common themes found in Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species and the writings of Erasmus Darwin (his grandfather), the Comte de Buffon, and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. These similarities include their emphasis on the similarities between the breeding of domesticated plants and animals (which Charles Darwin called Artificial Selection) and the natural processes underlying the evolution of wild plants and animals (which Charles Darwin called Natural Selection). The chapter discusses key elements of Darwin’s theories of evolution, including that: (1) animals reproduce at a rate that exceeds their food resources, (2) which creates competition for resources, (3) that members of a species vary in terms of their inherited characteristics, (4) that some inherited characteristics enhance survival and reproduction, (5) that such adaptive characteristics are inherited by offspring, (6) which leads to the spread of these adaptive characteristics within the population, such that (7) successive generations of the descendants of members of the original species may become sufficiently different from their ancestors that they become a different kind of animal over time through the accumulation of adaptive characteristics.