Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Darwin , Charles (1911), On the origin of species by means of natural selection,: Or, The preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life, Hurst, Retrieved on 2011-05-20Source Material [www.literature.org]
Folksonomies: evolution natural selection Memes
20 MAY 2011
There is Grandeur in this View of Life
Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death,* the most exalted object which we are
capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. 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, evo... 1 
notes
notesFamous quote from Darwin's Origin of Species.
16 SEP 2011
Darwin Considers Intermediaries Between Species
I have found it difficult, when looking at any two species, to avoid
picturing to myself, forms directly intermediate between them. But this
is a wholly false view; we should always look for forms intermediate
between each species and a common but unknown progenitor; and
the progenitor will generally have differed in some respects from all of
its modified descendants.Folksonomies: evolution missing links
Folksonomies: evolution missing links
1 notes
notesBut recognizes that this line of thinking is misleading, because species have common ancestors that are something different from both their descendants.
23 MAR 2012
The War of Nature is Not Incessant
All that we can do, is to keep steadily in mind that each organic being is striving to increase at a geometrical ratio; that each at some period of its life, during some season of the year, during each generation or at intervals, has to struggle for life, and to suffer great destruction. 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 healt...Folksonomies: evolution survival of the fittest
Folksonomies: evolution survival of the fittest
1 notes
notesThere are times in a creatures live when it is reproducing and others when it is struggling to survive. A positive explanation of survival of the fittest.
23 MAR 2012
The Earth Buries Older Forms with More Beautiful Ones
As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications. 1 notes
notesLike vines growing over a decaying tree.
23 MAR 2012
The Entangled Bank
It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almos... 1 notes
notesThe closing chapter of Darwin's "Origin" inspiring and beautiful view of evolution and life.
12 JAN 2015
The Evolution of the Eye
To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei, as every... 1 notes
notes"Absurd," Darwin admits, but entirely possible.
13 APR 2012
The Bonds Revealed Through Taxonomy
From the most remote period in the history of the world organic beings have been found to resemble each other in descending degrees, so that they can be classed in groups under groups. This classification is not arbitrary like the grouping of the stars in constellations. The existence of groups would have been of simpler significance, if one group had been exclusively fitted to inhabit the land and another the water; one to feed on flesh, another on vegetable matter, and so on; but the case i...
1 Darwin notes how the exercise of classification of species reveals connections to other living things.
