Darwin the Orgins of Species
...mutability. In 1856 Darwin began to write his ‘Big Book’, that is was he called it, it was to be titled Natural Selection. He had written nearly half of the book when, on June 18, 1885, something happened that shook him intensely. The postman brought a letter from Ternate in the Celebes Islands written by Alfred Russel Wallace, he was a young traveler and naturalist. With the letter there was a manuscript of an essay by the name of, On the tendency of variations to deport indefinitely from the original Type. This short essay was a perfect statement of Darwin’s own theory of evolution by natural selection. Later in 1855 Wallace wrote another paper entitled Essay on the Law which has regulated the Introduction of New Species. Wallace’s main conclusion was that every species has come into existence synchronized both in time and space with a pre-existing closely linked species. This paper was the most important “pre-Darwinian” publication about the origin of species. It was as a result of this paper that he started corresponding with Darwin, who told him that he had, for a long time, been collecting facts with an attitude on the question of the origin of species, but without giving any hint of his theory of natural selection. The Origin of Species is the only one of Darwin’s many books that in which the public has read. Darwin’s conversion to the theory that species were not immutable, but had undergone gradual changes, dates from his first notebook written between July 1837 and February 1838. In July his first notebook on Transmutation of Species had been influenced from some fossils found previously in March on the species of Galapagos Archipelago. In these notebooks he asked himself many questions: why animals and plants vary within species; why some species are born and others die; why species are related to each other and what is the link in their relationship. His tentative, groping answers to these questions were provided by his new theory of mutability. The tools and methods that Darwin used back than to search for facts would not impress researchers today. His methods were in fact, amateur by nineteenth century standards. The casualness of his fact collecting methods were very endearing. He welcomed information from any source, provided it fit into his new theory of mutability. His informants could be his father, his gardener, his neighbors, or anyone who had something helpful to say. He was contradictory. At times he spoke as the composed scientist, concerned with only the truth and prepared to throw away his beloved theory if those facts disprove it. Also at other times the theory was for him all-important and any facts would do, provided they supported it. He saw no point in looking for facts unless they could be welcomed in the secure some suggestive theory. Darwin read a lot of Malthus, he also took several of his ideas and used them quite differently. For example, instead of, like Malthus, giving the struggle for existence as an explanation of a tragic character of the human situation, he did the exact opposite. According to Darwin, the struggle of existence, or the principle of natural selection, was the means whereby species were constantly changing and improving. The strong, or the fittest, survive and the weak died out. The Origin of Species was comple...