The A to Z of isms... Darwinism.
The philosopher Daniel Dennett
described Charles Darwin's
theory of evolution, Darwinism,
as "the single best idea
anyone has ever had".
It certainly was a brilliant one,
though Darwin wasn't the only one
to come up with it.
The naturalist and explorer
Alfred Russel Wallace
put forward a very similar
explanation of the biological data
independently of him
at around the same time.
But once Darwin published his book,
On The Origin Of Species, in 1859,
the theory of evolution was
ever-after linked with his name.
It was a radical idea
because, although Darwin
didn't spell this out,
people soon realised it entailed
the view that human beings
were just another species
in the animal kingdom
and shared a common
ancestor with apes.
For Victorian England,
this was quite a bombshell.
As a young man,
Darwin had spent five years as a
naturalist on a round the world trip
aboard HMS Beagle.
He'd gradually come to realise
that species change over time -
they evolve.
Imagine you're a finch
on a Galapagos island.
There are lots of plants with seeds,
but not much else to eat.
Your bill is a good shape
for cracking them open.
Lucky you.
That's probably just the result of a
variation you find within a species.
You happen to have a beak
that allows you to eat seeds.
Others aren't so fortunate.
You survive and reproduce,
and pass that trait on
to some of your offspring.
The offspring that have
beaks like yours flourish.
The same thing happens
in the next generation.
Gradually, over many
thousands of years,
the finches on this island
that survive
become better adapted
to the available foodstuff.
Your type of beak predominates.
On another island,
the main diet is prickly pear,
and the finches that
survive and flourish there
have very different
shaped beaks from yours.
Not only do members of a species
change as a result of such evolution,
but also entirely new species emerge.
Today's Darwinism
is rather different from
Charles Darwin's Darwinism though.
We now have a much better
understanding
of the biology of
heredity than he did.
Darwinism today
is a powerful combination
of Darwin's general theory
with modern genetics.
Darwinism is central to understanding
how we came to be what we are.
It's possibly the
most important ism yet.
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