A paper read at The Linnean Society was the impetus for Darwin to publish his now famous book. The Darwin and Wallace paper was delivered as follows:
On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection. By Charles Darwin, Esq., F.R.S., F.L.S.., & F.G.S., and Alfred Wallace, Esq. Communicated by Sir Charles Lyell, F.R.S., F.L.S., and J.D. Hooker, Esq., M.D., V.P.R.S., F.L.S., &c.
[Read July 1st , 1858]
London, June 30th , 1858
The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
Chapter One–Variation Under Domestication
Here are my observations and what I gained by reading this chapter. NOTE: Much of this was NOT the point or his reason for writing. I found these thoughts interesting nonetheless.
Observations and Conclusions
- He uses the term plastic quite frequently. His meaning is malleable or easily formed and changeable. Most of us today would think of this word as a manufactured product.
- I didn’t realize that people throughout time prized pigeons. They seem a nuisance to me. I now know that they have been highly valued by the the fifth Egyptian dynasty around 3000 B.C., that Pliny of Roman times reported “immense prices were given for pigeons”, and the Akber Khan on India never held court with fewer than 20,000 pigeons.
- It struck me odd how little he knew of things we today take for granted, genes in particular. Of course it wasn’t until 1959 (a hundred years AFTER he published his book) that Watson and Crick unveiled the nature and double helix structure of DNA (a mere five years before I studied it in my high school freshman biology class).
- Mr. Darwin contends that most things that are domesticated have attributes pleasing to man and are a result of our selection of those traits. E.G. each generation breeds plant and animals most pleasing to man and prevents the inferior ones from breeding. This has gone on for long periods of time and slowly results in plants and animals that please us in some way. Tasty abundant food, pleasing to our eyes, or some other trait that we find desirable.
Point by Point Summary:
This book is detailed, influential in virtually every aspect of human thought so will receive a detailed review by me. Be patient, this will take time.
- Causes of Variability
The nature of the organism and the nature of the conditions produce variations. The nature of the organism being more important than the conditions. One peculiar notion that struck me. He states “Nothing is more easy than to tame an animal, and few things more difficult to get it to breed freely under confinement.”
- Effects of Habit and of the Use or Disuse of Parts; Correlated Variation; Inheritance
Charles makes the point that for plants, changes due to the environment produces an inherited effect. In animals, increased use or disuse of parts produce a more marked influence.
- Character of Domestic Varieties; Difficulty of Distinguishing between Varieties and Species; Origin of Domestic Varieties from One or More Species
A passage: “…to obtain a race intermediate between two quite distinct races, would be very difficult. … The offspring from the first cross between two pure breeds is tolerably and sometimes quite uniform in character, and everything seems simple enough; but when these mongrels are crossed one with another for several generations, hardly two of them are alike, and then the difficulty of the task becomes manifest.”
- Breeds of the Domestic Pigeon, Their Differences and Origin
Mr. Darwin goes into a fairly lengthy description of a wide variety of pigeons and then and equally lengthy proof of why they are descended from the rock-pigeon. He also notes that nearly every breeder “is firmly convinced that the several breeds to which each has attended, are descended from so many aboriginally distinct species.” In other words, we would each tend to see the differences in our animals and be unwilling to think they could have descended from the same stock.
- Principles of Selection Anciently Followed, and Their Effects
A key passage: “We cannot suppose that all the breeds were suddenly produced as perfect as as useful as we now see them; indeed, in many cases, we know that this has not been their history. They key is man’s power of accumulative selection: natures gives successive variations; man adds them up in certain directions useful to him.”
Intelligent designers I imagine would take strong exception to this statement and often give the eye as an example. An unworking eye would be a liability and hinder a species. They think of the eye as an all or nothing proposition. Consider the eye a perfect camera. Who would look at a camera and think that it wasn’t the result of an intelligent design.
- Methodical and Unconscious Selection
An interesting passage: “If it has taken centuries or thousands of years to improve or modify most of our plants up to their present standard of usefulness to man, we can understand how it is that neither Australia, the Cape of Good Hope, nor any other region inhabited by quite uncivilised man, as afforded us a single plant worth culture. It is not that these countries, so rich in species, do not by a strange chance possess the aboriginal stocks of any useful plants, but that the native plants have not been improved by continued selection up to a standard of perfection comparable with that acquired by the plants in countries anciently civilised.”
- Circumstances Favourable to Man’s Power of Selection
- Mr. Darwin claims that “the accumulative action of Selection; whether applied methodically and quickly, or unconsciously and slowly but more efficiently seems to have been the predominant Power.”
