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Darwin is born
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Darwin Introduces Natural Selection
Darwin, along with Alfred Russell, first introduces natural selection in a series of papers in 1858. He would expand on it further the following year in The Origin of Species. Darwin, Charles; Wallace, Alfred Russel (1858), "On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection", Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 3 (9): 46–62, doi:10.1111/j.1096-3642.1858.tb02500.x -
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What is Natural Selection?
Natural selection is the process of selecting for survival and reproduction success of a species by varience in heritable traits. For instance, there is the famous example of finches. Let's say there are regular seed eating finches which have a certain sized beak evolved to eat seeds. Mutations may result in differences in beaks amongst some in the population which are more advantageous, such as a longer beak to eat insects, and this helps the species survive and reproduce. -
What is the Significance of Natural Selection?
Natural selection is a highly inferential theory. There are many layers of certain facts which lead to certain inferences, which inferences combine into a theory of natural selection. The idea of natural selection is significant because of it advanced a scientific view of the world further. In the west this inference conception of evolution quickly overtook religious explanations for the origin of the species. -
Natural Selection after Darwin
Natural selection is the foundation of modern biology. As an explanatory model, it caused a smaller scientific revolution in its own way, ushering in its own phase of normal science. Various scientific discoveries came after Darwin which helped to further explain the mechanism of natural selection. Discoveries in genetics led to understanding the hereditary mechanism, which mechanism Darwin did not have. -
On the Origin of the Species is Published
On the Origin of the Species was Darwin's explanation of his proposal to explain the origin, that is, the mechanism of producing, the species. He proposed the concept of natural selection, a heavily inferential concept which led to its own kind of scientifical revolution. Darwin, Charles (1859), On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, London: John Murray. -
Darwin dies
