Charles Darwin: Evolution through Social Darwinism to Dating

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Galapagos Islands. Darwin applied intense scientific rigor to his work. He would spend hours during the day in the field collecting specimens, then in the evenings he would spend hours processing his finds; labeling them, classifying them and sending them back with long letters to scientists in England for further analysis.

Although the five year trip was the catalyst for Darwin’s theory on evolution, it was many years before he was able to distill all his evidence and thinking into his extraordinary book, On The Origin Of Species. Published first in 1859, the book was a mere abstract to Darwin’s huge volume of research but nonetheless immediately polarized people’s opinions. On the one hand, young open-minded scientists and thinkers praised the book as the new basis of biological science. They realized the rigor of Darwin’s work and that it could stand up to repeated scientific testing (in the same way that modern research on ‘Unified Theory’ including genetics and DNA also confirms Darwin’s work). On the other hand, more conservative scientists and religious leaders found Darwin and his ideas a threat to their way of life. Interestingly, Darwinian Theory does not necessarily interfere with creationism or Natural Theology since Darwin is interested in how species evolve rather than how they were first created (which belongs to either biophysics or theology depending on one’s viewpoint).

The key to understanding On The Origin of Species is to view the book as the “one long argument” that Darwin intended (Darwin 435) with two key points: (1) ‘common descent’; and (2) ‘natural selection’. Common descent means that all living organisms derive from just an initial handful of groups. Darwin noticed that the embryos of many vastly different species were very similar. He examined the skeletons of differing species and saw that, for example, the bones in a bat’s wings bear striking similarity to the bones in human hands. Common descent means that all species are related and can be classified accordingly. It means, for example, that we

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humans are related like ‘cousins’ to apes (not descended from them as is a common misperception) and that birds are descended from reptiles.

Natural selection is to do with the variation shown by organisms in their ability to be adapted to their environment. When Darwin visited the Galapagos Islands he sent back to England two almost identical looking finches that he had caught. Years later back in England, Darwin showed the finches to ornithologists who noticed that they actually had a few minor differences. Darwin speculated that these differences were due to how they adapted over many years to the slightly different environments that they lived in. Darwin noticed that birds from the same species but with different food sources would have beaks that over time had adapted to their food source. These gradual changes, natura non facit saltus (nature does not make sudden jumps)—or evolutions—would occur over long periods of time and at varying rates (evolution is not necessarily constant). They offered the chance for a species to constantly refine itself in relation to its environment and lead to a ‘survival of the fittest’. Natural selection requires (1) that the variation is heritable (i.e. able to be transmitted from one generation to the next); and (2) that it increases the fitness of the species (i.e. the survival chances and/or reproduction success). It is usually impossible and unnecessary to ascertain the relative merits of different scientific contributions since the main point is that they are able to be verified knowledge that can be added to the scientific cannon. Yet, because of the overwhelming brilliance of Darwin’s work and the incredible opposition from sections of society it deserves special mention. Darwin’s theory of evolution still has many detractors, however, the evidence Darwin provided is so overwhelming that any rational mind is unable to deny its significance to both science and society. Darwin himself addresses reservations to his theory and the need for “flexibility of mind” (Darwin 453) in the “Recapitulation and Conclusion) of On The Origin of Species:

ignorance under such expressions as the ‘plan of creation’…but I look with confidence to the future, to young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality. (On The Origin of Species 453)

The social sciences, such as sociology, sometimes try to justify research by attempting to apply a scientific framework to the study of human activity. The worthiness or otherwise of this is not relevant in this paper but it does explain why scientific works as influential as Darwin’s sometimes get (mis-)appropriated by governments and groups with their own agenda. ‘Social Darwinism’ is simply the logical extension of Darwinian principles of ‘survival of the fittest’ into the human dimension. It refers to various ideologies based on a concept that competition among all individuals, groups, nations, or ideas drives social evolution in human societies. Likewise, it is not a distant jump to Eugenics either.

It is debatable whether or not Darwin intended his arguments of On The Origin of Species to be extended to human societies in general or to Herbert Spencer’s Social Darwinism

and Eugenics in particular. Darwin was in many ways typical of many men of his social class and education in Britain of that era. Colonial Britain fostered a somewhat superior attitude, looking down on most other people of the world as less civilized than them. However, Darwin was known to have deplored the slavery he witnessed in Brazil whilst on HMS Beagle. The original title of his book was The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection—or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. ‘Race’ in this case probably meant for Darwin any plant, animal or person connected through common descent. However, a later book by Darwin, The Descent of Man, shows his views more damningly: