1. Foster Chamberlin Humanities 102 April 10, 2019
The Theory of Evolution “Struggle for Existence” from Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species
Foster Chamberlin
Humanities 102
April 10, 2019

2. Class Outline The Origins of the Theory Darwin’s Argument
The Reception of the Theory
Social Darwinism
Conclusion: Darwin and the Humanities

3. Ancient and Early Modern Ideas
The idea of evolution
The idea of a fixed world (Plato, Aristotle, Christianity)
Copernicus decentering Earth
Galileo and knowledge through observation

4. Geological Evolution James Hutton (1726-1797)

5. Evolution through Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829)

6. Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and the Voyage of the Beagle (1831-1836)

8. Alfred Russel Wallace ( ) “On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type” (1858)

9. How Darwin Makes His Argument

10. Chapter I- Variation under Domestication

11. Chapter 2- Variation under Nature
“It has been seen in the last chapter that amongst organic beings in a state of nature there is some individual variability; indeed I am not aware that this has ever been disputed.” (60)

12. Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798)

13. Chapter 3- The Struggle of Existence
“It is the doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms” (63)
“There is no exception to the rule that every organic being naturally increases at so high a rate, that if not destroyed, the earth would soon be covered by the progeny of a single pair. Even slow-breeding man has doubled in twenty-five years, and at this rate, in a few thousand years, there would literally not be standing room for his progeny.” (64)
“Every single organic being around us... lives by a struggle at some period of its life... heavy destruction inevitably falls either on the young or old” (66)
“Battle within battle must ever be recurring with varying success; and yet in the long-run the forces are so nicely balanced, that the face of nature remains uniform for long periods of time, though assuredly the merest trifle would often give the victory to one organic being over another.” (73)

14. Chapter 4- Natural Selection
“Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring. The offspring, also, will thus have a better chance of surviving, for, of the many individuals of any species which are periodically born, but a small number can survive. I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man’s power of selection.” (61)

15. Chapter 4- Natural Selection
Putting together the premises
Individuals vary
The struggle for existence
Breeds change through artificial selection
Nature does the same thing as humans, the fittest survive
The Descent of Man (1871)
Reception of the Theory
Chapter 4- Natural Selection

16. Darwin’s “Tree of Life” Diagram

17. Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) The Father of Genetics

18. DNA Replication

19. Social Darwinism Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)

20. Eugenics Francis Galton (1822-1911)

21. Social Darwinism & Eugenics
Darwin and Social Darwinism
“Scientific” racism
Sterilization programs
Aktion T4
From Darwin to Hitler?

22. Darwin and the Humanities
Man and the universe
Temporality
Struggle
Man vs. nature
Destruction and creation
The individual
The social
Positivism
Progress
Relativism
Aesthetics
“When we reflect on this struggle, we may console ourselves with the full belief, that the war of nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply.” (79)

23. Darwin and the Humanities
“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” (490)