About the origin of species

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Title page of the 1st edition from 1859

On the Origin of Species is the main work of the British naturalist Charles Darwin (1809-1882). Published on November 24, 1859, it is considered the seminal work of evolutionary biology . The full title was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life . Darwin edited a total of six editions. In the sixth edition (1872) the short title was The Origin of Species .

In this work, Darwin presented ample evidence for his theory that animal and plant species change over long periods of time through natural selection and that all living things that exist today are descended from a common ancestor. Already on his world voyage on the HMS Beagle (1831-1836) Darwin had collected evidence for his theory of evolution , later known as Darwinism . Later he increased his knowledge through experiments and scientific correspondence.

Darwin's work in the history of biology

Different evolutionary concepts have been developed throughout the history of biology . While there was growing support for such ideas among individual anatomists and sections of the public, they appeared to be speculative and almost inaccessible to scientific methods. Assumptions about a transmutation of species conflicted with the Church's teaching that species are immutable works of creation that have a fixed place in a Scala Naturae and that man is unique and unrelated to the animal kingdom.

Darwin addressed an educated lay audience in his book; in fact, his book aroused great interest. Since he was already a respected scientist, his statements were taken very seriously and his arguments led to lively scientific, philosophical and theological discussions. His book was categorized in the spirit of the cause of Thomas Henry Huxley and the X-Club , who sought to secularize science and promote philosophical naturalism . By about 1880, the majority of scientists came to believe that evolution with a pedigree of living beings and a common origin was a fact. However, most researchers rejected the mechanism proposed by Darwin, namely natural selection as the engine of evolution. During the "decline of Darwinism" (a catchphrase coined by Julian Huxley ) from 1880 to 1930, there were numerous alternative concepts that attempted to explain evolution. With the development of the synthetic theory of evolution in the 1930s and 1940s, Darwin's assumption of evolutionary adaptation through natural selection became a unifying principle of the life sciences.

Principles of Darwin's theory

Photograph of Darwin at the time of publication of Origins

Darwin's theory of evolution is based on facts and conclusions that the biologist Ernst Mayr summarized as follows:

  • Each species produces enough offspring that if all offspring survived, the population would increase (fact).
  • Despite (periodic) fluctuations, populations always remain about the same size (fact).
  • Resources such as food are finite and constant over time (fact).
  • From this follows a struggle for survival (conclusion).
  • The individuals in a population differ significantly from one another (fact).
  • These variations are hereditary (fact).
  • Individuals that are less well adapted to their environment have a lower chance of survival and fewer offspring. Individuals that are better adapted to their environment have a higher chance of survival and more offspring. They inherit their traits. This results in natural selection (conclusion).
  • This slowly progressing process means that populations of living beings are better adapted to their environment. As changes accumulate, new species emerge (conclusion).

Prehistory of Darwin's theory

Cuvier's 1799 study of living elephants and elephant fossils was a contribution to the question of species extinction .

In later editions of his book, Darwin traced evolutionary ideas back to Aristotle . He quotes a text by Aristotle that summarizes Empedocles ' ideas . The Christian church fathers and medieval scholars tended towards an allegorical interpretation of the biblical story of creation , that is, they were not committed to a literal interpretation. They described the mythological and heraldic significance of organisms and compared their shapes. Nature was seen as unstable and capricious, characterized by the existence of monstrous hybrids and the spontaneous generation of organisms.

The Protestant Reformation promoted a literal interpretation of the Bible , including in relation to the creation of the world. Among the natural scientists there was a tendency towards explanations along the lines of the mechanistic philosophy of René Descartes and the empiricism of Francis Bacon .

After the turmoil of the English Civil War , members of the Royal Society strove to show that science was not a threat to the church and political stability. The English naturalist John Ray subsequently developed an influential variant of natural theology with a taxonomy that stipulated that biological species were immutable and created by God, along with their adaptations, and that variants were caused by environmental conditions. In God's creation, the carnivorous predators would bring their prey a merciful and quick death. However, the suffering caused by pathogens would add to the problem of theodicy in this concept .

Darwin's book

Video: What does Darwin's theory of evolution say?

Darwin wrote in a letter in March 1855: "I am working hard on my notes, collecting and comparing them, in order, in about two or three years, to write a book containing all the facts that I can gather, speaking for and against the immutability of species, to write.” By the end of 1859 the time had finally come: the work bears the full title On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life . The first German translation by the paleontologist and zoologist Heinrich Georg Bronn appeared in 1860 under the title About the emergence of species in the animal and plant kingdom through natural breeding, or preservation of the most perfect races in the struggle for existence . However, this translation underwent modifications and “cleanings”. The translation by Julius Victor Carus followed in 1876 , which is mostly used as a standard translation: On the emergence of species through natural selection or the preservation of favored races in the struggle for existence (Stuttgart, E. Schweizerbart'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1876).

Darwin argues in this book for the thesis that groups of organisms (now called populations ) gradually evolve through the process of natural selection . The book introduced the concept of natural selection to a broad public for the first time (cf. Darwinism ). Darwin presented detailed scientific evidence gathered through his own experiments and during his voyages to South America, the Galápagos Islands and Australia aboard HMS Beagle from 1831 to 1836 and since his return, presenting and challenging his theory the concept of the " constancy of species ". The term evolution is still missing in the first edition from 1859. However, Darwin uses the verb evolve .

Darwin later supported his argument with his two books, The Descent of Man and Sexual Selection (1871) and The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals (1872).

The first edition of 1250 copies went on sale on November 22, 1859, but the number of orders was already larger, so this edition was sold out immediately.

In the final sentence of his work, Darwin classified the scientific-theoretical and socio-political significance of his work by alluding to the "Copernican turn" in cosmology:

"There is truly something sublime about the notion that the Creator breathed the germ of all life that surrounds us into but a few or even a single form, and that while our earth rotates in circles according to the laws of gravity, from one from such a simple beginning an infinite number of the most beautiful and wonderful forms came into being and are still coming into being.”

Darwin did not add the reference to the creator until the 2nd edition of 1860. At that time he was still leaning toward deism . In the years that followed, however, he tended more and more towards agnosticism , but nevertheless left this final sentence standing.

Darwin's original manuscript is now in the National Library of Scotland . The ideas presented in the book form the basis of today's scientific theories of evolution.

Darwin's argument

Darwin saw his book as "a long chain of evidence". With these words he starts the summary in the last chapter, in which the way of his argumentation can be well understood. Darwin was always trying to weigh up the pros and cons of individual findings.

Darwin begins here with five objections (without numbering the pros and cons): First, the perfection of complex organs and instincts suggests their emergence from a higher intelligence - the belief that these organs became more and more perfect through the accumulation of numerous minor modifications, seems difficult for the viewer to imagine. Second, there is a striking difference between species and varieties - these are mostly fertile with each other, those almost never. This observation suggests the notion of strictly defined, immutable species. Third, it seems difficult to imagine that each individual species spread widely from any one starting point, e.g. T. even worldwide. Fourth, we should find an infinite number of intermediate forms among fossils. And fifthly, according to the calculations of the physicist William Thomson (probably no more than 200 million years), the time since the earth became solid is too short for the entire evolution.

Darwin provided answers to these objections and then presented the "facts and evidence" "supporting the theory". In all, he makes 17 pro-arguments, using the following line of reasoning: he presents empirical findings that his theory makes understandable, while the alternative theory—the creation of constant species—remains incomprehensible. If one takes his theory as a basis, "these facts no longer appear as strange but as quite self-evident".

For example, the difficulty that often arises in taxonomy in distinguishing between varieties and species becomes understandable when—as Darwin believed—varieties are incipient species. The rule that "nature makes no leaps" ( natura non facit saltum ) fits well with Darwin's theory, which counts on an accumulation of small successive favorable modifications. It is also understandable that "not all structures in nature are absolutely perfect". "Let us admit that the geological record is highly incomplete," these also fit Darwin's theory. "The resemblance of the skeletons of the human hand, the bat wing, the fin of the porpoise, and the horse's foot" is explained "easily on the theory of descent, with slight successive modifications".

The six editions during Darwin's lifetime

  • 1st edition, John Murray , London 1859 - 1250 copies
  • 2nd edition, John Murray, London 1860 - 3000 copies
  • 3rd edition, John Murray, London 1861 - 2000 copies
  • 4th edition, John Murray, London 1866 - 1500 copies
  • 5th edition, John Murray, London 1869 - 2000 copies
  • 6th edition, John Murray, London 1872 - 3000 copies

further reading

  • Keith Francis: Charles Darwin and The Origin of Species . Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007, ISBN 0-313-31748-8 .
  • Wolfgang Lefèvre: The emergence of the biological theory of evolution . Ullstein, Frankfurt/M. etc. 1984; Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt/M. 2009 (prehistory, reasoning, first reception of Darwin's book).
  • Charles Darwin: The Origin of Species . Annotated and illustrated edition, edited by Paul Wrede and Saskia Wrede, VCH-Wiley Verlag, Weinheim 2013, ISBN 978-3-527-33256-4 .

web links

German
Wikisource: On the Origin of Species (1860). Digital full-text edition of the Bronn translation. 1st German edition  - Sources and full texts
Wikisource: On the Origin of Species. Digital full-text edition of the Bronn-Carus translation. 6th German edition (1876)  - sources and full texts
English
Commons : On the Origin of Species  - Collection of images
Wikisource: several full text editions in English  - sources and full texts (English)

sources

  1. ↑ Ernst Mayr: The Growth of Biological Thought. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1982, ISBN 0-674-36446-5 , pp. 479-480.
  2. ↑ Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. 6th edition. John Murray, London 1872, p. xiii ( darwin-online.org.uk ).
  3. ↑ English translation of Physics by RP Hardie and RK Gaye (1930)
  4. ↑ Roger Forster, Paul Marston: Reason, Science and Faith. Monarch, Crowborough 1999, ISBN 1-85424-441-8 , pp. 26–27.
  5. ↑ Peter J. Bowler: Evolution. The History of an Idea. 3rd Edition. University of California Press, Berkeley 2003, ISBN 0-520-23693-9 , pp. 27, 43, 45.
  6. ↑ to William Darwin Fox on March 19, 1855; quoted from Ronald W. Clark: Charles Darwin. Biography of a Man and an Idea . S. Fischer, Frankfurt/M. 1985, p. 118.
  7. ↑ Storch, Welsch, Wink: Evolutionary Biology . Berlin-Heidelberg 2001.
  8. ↑ Ernst Mayr: Evolution and the diversity of life. Springer Verlag, Berlin / Heidelberg / New York, 1979, p. 81.
  9. ↑ " 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. ” From Charles Darwin: The Origin of Species. 1st ed., 1859, p. 490.
  10. ↑ Adrian Desmond, James Moore: Darwin. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1994, p. 541 (previously in Paul List, Munich 1992; English original London 1991).
  11. ↑ quoted from the 1963 translation by Carl W. Neumann for the edition published by Verlag Philipp Reclam jun., Stuttgart.
  12. ↑ Franz Stuhlhofer : Charles Darwin - Journey around the world to agnosticism. 1988, pp. 69–92 (“Darwin's religious attitude”) and 99f.
  13. ↑ Quotations after the translation by Carl W. Neumann for the edition by Verlag Philipp Reclam jun., Stuttgart 1963, chap. 15
  14. ↑ For the argumentation at that time, see Lefèvre: Genesis , pp. 69-106.