Orlando Heredia
Philip Jenks
Forbidden Knowledge
20 April 2004
Darwin
There are a lot of concepts and terms integrated through out all of Darwin’s book The Origin of Species, however a select number of those concepts are ones that he felt were crucial to his argument and life work, so he did nothing less then to mentioned them in his conclusion in order to show their importance. One of those crucial concepts is that of the struggle for life.
According to Darwin the Struggle for Survival is universal and it becomes more severe between individuals and varieties of the same species as well as between species of the same genus. In fact every form of life on earth is always striving for the fastest and most sure way of increasing its numbers. With that comes the inevitable factor of destruction and extinction. The rule goes that every organic being naturally increases in such a rapid rate through time that it must suffer any sort of devastation as to lower its numbers, if not the world would soon become dominated by the offspring of a single pair. A factor besides devastation that acts as a restraint, or makes it almost impossible for the spreading of only the offspring of one single pair is the fact that the struggle for existence follows the high rate at which all organic beings intend to increase. With this being true how is it that there is survival of species and of varied life forms. If all life is striving to survive what is the factor that ultimately determines if survival is in a life form’s path or not? Accordion to Darwin and his research that factor is Natural Selection.
Natural Selection is not necessarily survival of the fittest as it became to be interpreted by a majority of people over time. And by that I mean that natural selection is a process in which not the strongest and the fittest survive. It is a process in which the life form that has what is needed to survive is the one that comes out on top, no matter if it is weak and unfit, because maybe that might just be the trait that is needed at a certain pint in time. One way in which natural selection works is by modifying and adapting various life forms to the many different and variable living conditions .The basis on this is usually a mutation or a special trait that is inherited. Natural selection makes divergence of character possible and as a result it also makes it possible for a larger amount of life to be supported in the same area. So Natural Selection is about diversity and variety and so basically it is also a chooser that allows a special breed to continue breeding. There is yet another factor the coincides and ties in to both the Struggle for Survival and Natural Selection and that is Variability.
Variability is a major section in Darwin’s book and he does a good job explaining it too.
Struggle for life, natural selection, variation