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Summary: A Book That Changed The Way We View The World
Review: I believe this book is well written. Darwin doesn't overload you with endless facts and information which would bore you to death and distract you from understanding his essential theories. Not that facts and tests are irrelevant. He has done tests and has lots of data, but he keeps this separately for those who wish to build upon his theories or dispute them. He uses just a few examples to prove his points, and the results are remarkable. There are several points in time which have changed the way people look upon the world around us. Finding out the world is not flat, but rather round is one. The Earth revolves around the Sun, rather than the reverse, and that all of the continents used to all be connected at one time, are a few more. Darwin's Theory of evolution rates right up there with these. For someone believing that the world evolved from Adam and Eve I can't imagine how upset he made these people feel by suggesting that we may have evolved from Monkeys, or some amphibian creature. Darwin's theories that animals (humans included) may have evolved from just four or five different progenitors, and that plants may have evolved from even fewer, or that we all may have evolved from just one species is fascinating. I believe he approaches it just the right way. He doesn't argue or criticize. He just lays it out there and you are forced to acknowledge it. Darwin keeps religion our of the equation. If religious groups want to go on there to name the amphibian being which crawled out of the ocean for the first time onto land Adam, that would probably be all right with him, so long as you admitted that their probably was such a being. Science has improved since Darwin's day's and geology and archeology has improved, but he is still correct that we will not be able to find perfect fossils after all of these years to match all of the changes. Some of his other thoughts and comments I do not know whether to contribute to the period in which he wrote them to or just as preliminary thoughts that the actual tests would disprove. For instance, Darwin mentions that he believes characteristics are only passed down to males to make them more capable of obtaining a mate and reproducing. Characteristics such as increased strength, brighter colors, and the ability to sing. However I would believe that other or similar traits would be passed down to the females as well to make them more attractive to male suitor, forcing them to want to fight over these particular females more than others. Also Darwin mentions that the strongest produce the most descendants. In our society today that is not necessarily true. Money is associated with power or strength. Someone who has two kids may have more money and be considered to have more power. Since they live within their means they may be able to afford a better house, and to put their kids through colleges, as opposed to a family with seven kids in which they live by lesser means, and are unable to afford the same amenities as the family with just two kids, because they have less money to go around. The family with seven kids by this example may not be considered the strongest since they have more money, but yet they have the most descendants.
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Summary: Common sensical talk makes for faulty science
Review: To illustrate what's wrong with this book, I below lift out the central hypothesis which is the theory of Natural Selection. " can we doubt (remembering that many more individuals are born than can possibly survive) that individuals having any advantage, however slight, over others, would have the best chance of surviving and of procreating their kind? On the other hand, we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed. This preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection." The fact is that *all* individuals do not survive, all individuals die. Such exactness is important in science and Darwin fails this scientific standard. This seemingly insignificant error in the fundament of the theory gives a cascade of errors later on. It is really quite different to say that the chance of reproduction determines which organisms are left in the world, then to say a struggle for survival/existence determines it. The first puts focus on the individual organism (since they reproduce, but don't survive), the last puts focus on the population (which doesn't reproduce much, but can be said to survive).
Throughout the book there is no effort at formalization, which is why Physicists, Chemists etc. people of the socalled hard sciences(up until the 19!80's when physicists also started to make their science softer because of the problems they ran into), looked down on Darwinism as a soft science employing a magical struggle for existence and intuitive terms like that. It is clear that Darwin, having dropped Christianity, invested as much emotion into his theory as he could, making it a suitable substitute religion for him, rather then try to make it a hard science. "Hence we may look with some confidence to a secure future of equally inappreciable length. And as natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection." The natural force of goodness? For crying out loud. This should have read something like: and as natural selection works by the chance of reproduction of each organism, all corpereal endowments normally contribute towards reproduction. The security of humanity depends on politics much. Certainly humanity is capable of killing themselves entirely, what with superweapons like the earth slicer, or some biological weapon, or destroying the ozoneshield, or stopping the oceanic pump etc. :( It is not good for Darwin to ignore politics as an active agency in favour of some biological determinism. This is something he also does in the Descent of Man in a *much* more creepy way when talking about the extermination of one race by another. There really is much better work done in biology in the same era, this is not up to scratch.
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Summary: Essential for Understanding Life
Review: This is it -- the "Old Testament" of modern biology! Most people who accept evolution as the dominant paradigm should read this book, so that they know why. It is tough to get through, but incredibly rewarding. People who know Darwin's basic ideas don't really know how he arrived at them. So why not find out? Every page demonstrate's Darwin's brilliance, humility and insight. It is a must for the science buff's bookshelf! AOK!
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Summary: Good read more for history than real science
Review: No one can underestimate the impact of the Origin of the Species. While Darwinian evolution was never accepted by the great masses of America (about 45% of people believe in Creation Science, and another 45% believe in intelligent design or "divinely-guided" evolution), Western society's elite has literally worshiped Darwin's thesis that order emerges from disorder without any intelligent agent guiding the process. This elite has been the movers and shakers of the 20th century. It's fair to say that Marxism, Nazism, totalitarianism, heartless Capitalism, nihilism, existentialism, and a host of other philosophies that have brought 20th century man to the brink of annihilation on both societal and personal levels find their roots in this modest book. But is Darwin's thesis true? The truth is that Darwinism explains nothing. The idea that variation plus natural selection accounts for life is nothing more than a tautology: of course the variants that were most fit for survival survived! That's simply saying the same thing twice. It doesn't account for how life arrived in the first place, and does account for why the "variations" showed up on time. The fossil record has been disasterous to Darwinism, showing that species appear suddenly without precursors, and vary very little within the duration of the species. (A theory called "punk eek" has been proposed to explain why this is, but it's totally unfalsifiable and therefore worthless.) More damaging has been studies in the field of mathematics, physics, and biochemistry, which show that the universe has not existed long enough for such evolution to take place, and that life is far more complicated on a molecular level than Darwin thought. So why does Darwinism endure? Why does anyone who questions Darwinism find himself out of a job? Two reasons. First, 20th century science has rigged the rules to say "a theory is always accepted, no matter what the evidence against it, as long as there is no other theory." In other words, if Darwinism can be bent to explain 25% of the evidence and no other theory exists to explain more, then Darwinism is accepted as fact. Second, Darwinism is the key component to most modern philosophy. It tells us who we are, where we're going, what we're capable of as a species. There has never, ever been a culture that doesn't have a "creation myth" that explains who humans beings are what the proper way to live is. Imagine for a moment a culture that truly has no idea what it means to be human...how long could such a culture endure? How long could people convince themselves of the rightness of their economic policies, social institutions, and pecking orders? If we admit that Darwinism is wrong but don't put anything in its place, society will intellectually collapse. That, rather than sound science, explains Darwin's duration, despite the sick, groteque legacy he has left mankind.
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Summary: The origin of species not kinds
Review: The firs two chapters of The Origin are titled: Variation Under Domestication and Variation Under Nature. Therein lays the main argument behind Darwin's view. Darwin observed how organisms vary in nature and he observed how man had harnessed this ability for man's own benefit. Darwin referred to this trait as artificial selection, which was the basis for Darwin's dangerous idea or extrapolation: Natural Selection. With natural selection however, Darwin, proclaimed it an unguided, random process that had no real purpose. Artificial selection is nothing of this sort though. Artificial Selection is an intellectual guided, predetermined event. In fact, it is more appropriately called Intelligent Selection, since knowledge is used to carefully select those traits that can be beneficial to man. In Intelligent Selection, nothing is left to chance; farmers did not and have not relied on randomness to maximize their crops output. They have always used knowledge and skill. Darwin used Intelligent Selection for establishing the basis of natural selection, proclaiming that he named it natural selection "in order to mark its relation man's power of selection." Pg 53 However, since Intelligent Selection requires knowledge, order, and guidance it can hardly be used to support Darwin's dangerous extrapolation: Natural Selection, a random, unguided process. Darwin repeatedly says that if man could do so much in his short time-span, than imagine what Nature could do through it's long time-span: "I can see no limit to the amount of change, to the beauty and infinite complexity of coadaptions between all organic beings, one with another and with their physical conditions of life, which may be effected in the long course of time by NATURE'S POWER OF SELECTION." Pg 91 However since Intelligent Selection is so different, or even more accurately the opposite of Natural Selection, it cannot be used as evidence for Darwin's dangerous extrapolation. Thus, Darwin's chief example for his theory is null and void. Chapters 3 thru 8 deal with specific examples of descent with modification found inside nature. To help clarify, the examples that Darwin gives are not in question. In fact, the ideas concerning populations that Darwin borrowed from Malthus, the struggle for existence that organisms go through, and many of the other examples that Darwin covers are not being questioned. What IS being questioned is the extrapolations that Darwin made that went past the evidence. Scientists observe that organisms vary in nature; Scientists observe that descent with modification occurs within nature. NO ONE doubts this. But rather the objections to Darwin's work are because his claims goes PAST the evidence. Scientists know that organisms can vary, but they ALSO know there is a limit to the amount of variation that can go into any organisms (called genetic homeostasis). There is a point of no return, where the variations start to have an overtly negative effect. To say that creatures have the ability to vary in nature is true, however to proclaim that nature can do what man has not been able to due goes beyond what the evidence tells us. In fact, it goes AGAISNT the evidence; it goes AGAINST science. Chapters 9-12 are devoted to the subject geology and geographical distribution of organisms. Darwin owed much credit to Charles Lyell, who gave Darwin the vast amount of time needed for natural selection to supposedly work. Darwin proclaimed that "the future historian" would recognize Lyell's book the Principle of Geology "as having produced a revolution in natural science" pg 232 Yet, Lyell's view of a gradual, non catastrophic, uniform geological rate has been rejected. Even today's most ardent evolutionists have conceded that catastrophes have vastly shaped today's earth. Darwin however believed the opposite. He relied greatly on the theory of uniformatarianism being the absolute truth and even declared that "species are produced and exterminated by slowly acting and still existing causes and not by miraculous acts of creation and by catastrophes." Pg 398 Thus, Darwin's view on the geological record is mistaken. Catastrophes have had a great deal to do with the formation of the earth and on the production and extermination of organisms. Darwin devotes Chapter 13 to talking about embryology and how the facts of embryology alone would be enough to convince him that evolution were true. (pg 374) But yet, studies in embryology since Darwin's time have not strengthened evolution. There are just too many examples where the embryo does not repeat the stages of his past ancestors. The human embryo for example develops its tongue at an early stage in their development, but it is only when the child is a few months old that they starts growing teeth. Yet, our supposed ancestors are said to have evolved their teeth first and then their tongue. Moreover, the idea that a human embryo goes from a single cell organism, to a fish, an amphibian, a mammal, a monkey, and then a human has been demonstrational shown to be false. (See the works of Embryologist Wayne Friar for further info) Anyone who still sticks to this old argument, is no longer dealing with science, but have entered the realm of the dogma, where evidence and reason takes a back seat. Charles Darwin has become synonymous with evolution. But why? He didn't reveal any new ideas in the Origin. (The idea that organisms shared common ancestry and that the earth was extremely old had been around for a while. Ancient Greek philosophers had similar speculations.) So, what was so different about Darwin? Why do people associate Charles Darwin with evolution and not Alfred Wallace, Charles Lyell, Thomas Huxley, or even Charles's grandfather Erasmus. The answer, although in no way a short one, can be partly attributed to his attempt to rid special creation from the scientific throne. In its place instituting a naturalist paradigm, that ever since has hindered science. Before Darwin, along the time of Galileo, the dogma came from the religious sect. But, since Darwin's time the dogma has switched sides, or at least superficially. The dogma still comes from the religious sect mind you, but a religious sect masquerading around as science. In short, Darwin is synonymous with evolution not because of his scientific contribution but because of his adherence to a naturalistic philosophy, which in the words of Richard Dawkins "made it possible to be an intellectual fulfilled atheist". Darwin removed the need for a designer.
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Summary: Can't tell a book by its cover
Review: Because these reviews are cross-posted this is a review of ISBN: 0517123207,with a cover that was defiantly made to be provocative. It depicts an (ape) allying view of going from all fours to upright. If this is what you are looking for then you need to read " 2001 : A Space Odyssey" by Arthur Charles Clarke. This is a quick review of the book not a dissertation on Darwin or any other subject loosely related. At first I did not know what to expect. I already read " The Voyage of the Beagle : Charles Darwin's Journal of Researches" ISBN: 014043268X (see my review May 24, 2000). I figured the book would be similar. However I found " Origin" to be more complex and detailed. Taking in account that recent pieces of knowledge were not available to Charles Darwin this book could have been written last week. Having to look from the outside without the knowledge of DNA or Plate Tectonics, he pretty much nailed how the environment and crossbreeding would have an effect on natural selection. Speaking of natural selection, I thought his was going to be some great insight to a new concept. All it means is that species are not being mucked around by man (artificial selection). If you picked up Time magazine today you would find all the things that Charles said would be near impossible to find or do. Yet he predicted that it is doable in theory. With an imperfect geological record many things he was not able to find at the writing of this book have been found (according to the possibilities described in the book.) The only draw back to the book was his constant apologizing. If he had more time and space he could prove this and that. Or it looks like this but who can say at this time. Or the same evidence can be interpreted 180 degrees different. In the end it is worth reading and you will never look at life the same way again.
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Summary: Darwin Has Been Vindicated
Review: Creationists often state categorically that "there are no transitional fossils". This is simply not true. In fact, ALL fossils are transitional. One of Darwins main points was that evolution is an on-going process. It may speed up and slow down, but on it goes. This book is a must read. Even after 120 years it's still selling and still being read. Darwins point in The Origin of Species has been overwhelmingly proven over and over. There are abundant transitional fossils of both the "chain of genera" type and the "species-to-species transition" type. There are documented speciations that cross genus lines and family lines. You cannot simply say that there are no transitional fossils, because there are. As Gould said (1994): "The supposed lack of intermediary forms in the fossil record remains the fundamental canard of current antievolutionists. Such transitional forms are scarce, to be sure, and for two sets of reasons - geological (the gappiness of the fossil record) and biological (the episodic nature of evolutionary change, including patterns of punctuated equilibrium and transition within small populations of limited geological extenet). But paleontologists have discovered several superb examples of intermediary forms and sequences, more than enough to convince any fair-minded skeptic about the reality of life's physical geneology." Darwin has been vindicated by the remarkable temporal pattern of fossil morphology, with "an obvious tendency for successively higher and more recent fossil assemblages to resemble modern floras and faunas ever more closely" (Gingerich, 1985) and with animal groups appearing in a certain unmistakable order. For example, primitive fish appear first, amphibians later, then reptiles, then primitive mammals, then (for example) legged whales, then legless whales. This temporal- morphological correlation is very striking, and appears to point overwhelmingly toward an origin of all vertebrates from a common ancestor. Creationist can say whatever they want to and practice all the deceit they want, but the clear evidence in the geological record is not in dispute by any one except fundamentalists. Numerous "chains of genera" that appear to link early, primitive genera with much more recent, radically different genera (e.g. reptile- mammal transition, hyenids, horses, elephants), and through which major morphological changes can be traced. Even for the spottiest gaps, there are a few isolated intermediates that show how two apparently very different groups could, in fact, be related to each other (ex. Archeopteryx, linking reptiles to birds). Many known species-to-species transitions (primarily known for the relatively recent Cenozoic mammals), often crossing genus lines and occasionally family lines, and often resulting in substantial adaptive changes. Even the gaps are easy to explain, since for stratigraphic reasons alone there must always be gaps. In fact, no current evolutionary model predicts or requires a complete fossil record, and no one expects that the fossil record will ever be even close to complete. As a rule of thumb, however, creationists think the gaps show fundamental biological discontinuities, while anyne who has studied the evidence knows they are the inevitable result of chance fossilizations, chance discoveries, and immigration events. Darwins revolution will continue, even if there are a few setbacks, because the evidence is real and overwhelming.
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Summary: A tedious genius
Review: I find it difficult to be able to rate this book in the conventional manner of attributing the books quality on a scale of 1 to 5. But I have and I've given it 'one'. I wondered onto this book site via a 'greatest books of all time' reading list which linked to this page. One of the few books on the list which I'd actually managed to read. My earlier statement of difficulty in ranking this book lies in its historical importance verses entertainment - the former immense, the latter minuscule. I'm a Zoological graduate and so the importance and reverence of Darwin's The Origin of Species have been fundamental to everything I've done in the last 3 years, however, when I actually sat down and decided to read the original text I got no more than halfway through the book before deciding I'd had enough. This work being in the greatest 100 books of all time is wholly justified - it is a great book. But the potential reader must keep in mind that Darwin wrote this book having to carefully detail the concept of evolution - decent with modification, his critics would be many and any flaws would be leapt upon to discredit his heresy. However, now we (most of us) understand and accept his teaching and so don't need to sit through pages of him waffling on about pigeon breeders to accept what he's saying. If I may be so bold to summarise Darwin (my lectures would no doubt crucify me for such defamation); Creature is created, creature reproduces, one creature offspring deviates from the norm which gives it a slight advantage over its rivals (slightly bigger teeth for killing, slightly longer ergo faster legs for running away), this enables the offspring's genes to spread wider then its competitors so become more common, this mutant offspring will reproduce until further useful mutations give greater advantage subsequent offspring thus spreading, the process continues indefinitely. And so, that's basically it, an important rule but please don't bother sitting through the entire book to learn this, it really isn't worth the effort.
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Summary: The dawn of modern biology.
Review: It is often said that Charles Darwin launched the modern science of biology with this book. Before he published The Origin of Species in 1859, biology was a collection of unrelated facts, much like the state of chemistry before the periodic chart of the elements was worked out. After its publication, biology became a systematic science with a unifying theory. To learn more about how Darwin's groundbreaking work led to the amazing growth of biological knowledge in the fourteen decades since its publication, I recommend that you also read British geneticist Steve Jones' new book Darwin's Ghost: The Origin of Species Updated.
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Summary: What happened to Darwin's "transitional" fossils?
Review: Regarding the complete lack of transitional forms in the fossil record, Darwin said in the 1850's: "Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record." ---Charles Darwin, "On the imperfection of the geological record", Chapter X, "The Origin of Species", J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, London, 1971, pp. 292-293. But 120 years later! "Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information -what appeared to be a nice simple progression when relatively few data were available now appears to be much more complex and much less gradualistic. So Darwin's problem has not been alleviated in the last 120 years and we still have a record which 'does' show change but one that can hardly be looked upon as the most reasonable consequence of natural selection. Also the major extinctions such as those of the dinosaurs and trilobites are still very puzzling." ---Dr. David M. Raup (Curator of Geology, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago), "Conflicts between Darwin and paleontology". "Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin", vol. 50 (1), January 1979, p. 25. Are there any transitional forms at all? "... I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualize such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic license, would that not mislead the reader? I wrote the text of my book four years ago. If I were to write it now, I think the book would be rather different. Gradualism is a concept I believe in, not just because of Darwin's authority, but because my understanding of genetics seems to demand it. Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils. As a palaeontologist myself, I am much occupied with the philosophical problems of identifying ancestral forms in the fossil record. You say that I should at least 'show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived.' I will lay it on the line-there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument." ---Personal letter (written 10 April 1979) from Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Palaeontologist at the British Museum of Natural History in London, to Luther D. Sunderland; as quoted in "Darwin's Enigma" by Luther D. Sunderland, Master Books, San Diego, USA, 1984, p. 89. "I know that, at least in paleoanthropology, data are still so sparse that theory heavily influences interpretations. Theories have, in the past, clearly reflected our current ideologies instead of the actual data." ---Dr. David Pilbeam (Physical Anthropologist, Yale University, USA), "Rearranging our family tree". "Human Nature", June 1978, p. 45. "The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution." ---Stephen Jay Gould (Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University), "Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?" "Paleobiology", vol. 6 (1), January 1980, p. 127. "The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils. Yet Darwin was so wedded to gradualism that he wagered his entire theory on a denial of this literal record: "The geological record is extremely imperfect and this fact will to a large extent explain why we do not find interminable varieties, connecting together all the extinct and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps. He who rejects these views on the nature of the geological record, will rightly reject my whole theory." Darwin's argument still persists as the favored escape of most paleontologists from the embarrassment of a record that seems to show so little of evolution. In exposing its cultural and methodological roots, I wish in no way to impugn the potential validity of gradualism (for all general views have similar roots). I wish only to point out that it was never 'seen' in the rocks. Paleontologists have paid an exorbitant price for Darwin's argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study." ---Stephen Jay Gould (Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University), "Evolution's erratic pace". "Natural History", vol. LXXXVI (5), May 1977, p. 14. For truly eye-opening information...the kind you were never allowed to hear in high-school and university, see "Icons of Evolution" by Jonathan Wells, "Darwin's Black Box" by Michael Behe, "Bones of Contention" by Marvin Lubenow, "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis" by Michael Denton and "Evolution: The Fossils Still Say No!" by Duane Gish.
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