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³¢³Üòõ's Reviews > On the Origin of Species
On the Origin of Species
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³¢³Üòõ's review
bookshelves: 2021-readings, english-editions, e-5, science, philosophy, anthropology, british-literature
Dec 10, 2021
bookshelves: 2021-readings, english-editions, e-5, science, philosophy, anthropology, british-literature
A founding text of the thought of humanity. What a pleasure to immerse yourself in the world of a nineteenth-century naturalist. We touch on daily life by consulting a mass of documents on the insects of Central Asia and the beetles of Paraguay, observing the life of an anthill for days and days every year. Argue in front of a wall of perplexed scholars or conquered on the natural selection and evolution of species and then scrolls in our mind a list of plants and animal species ranging from cabbage, holly, oak, and Sylvester pine to the silk, the wolf, the cock of heather and the alligator. Like many men of his time, Charles Darwin is an observer who enjoys trying to try the results, observing them, and analyzing them to conclusions. So it is returning, through his work's reading, to the scientific methodology that has imposed itself as a rule in the nineteenth century. His tremendous observation capacity points out phenomena that he can not explain by his theory of evolution but that will be known a few years later, thanks to the appearance of genetics.
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Reading Progress
November 20, 2021
– Shelved
November 20, 2021
– Shelved as:
to-read
December 5, 2021
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Started Reading
December 5, 2021
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0.0%
"Modern evolutionists still deal with whole populations. Although they use tools and concepts not available in Darwin's lifetime, the contemporary enterprise of evolutionary biology still rests on the foundations Darwin established. Origin is the most important book ever published in the life sciences."
December 5, 2021
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3.0%
"No one ought to feel surprised at much remaining as yet unexplained in regard to the origin of species and varieties if he makes due allowance for our profound ignorance in regard to the mutual relations of all the beings which live around us. Who can explain why one species ranges widely and is very numerous, and why another allied species has a narrow range and is rare? (...)"
December 5, 2021
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9.0%
"(...) In plants that are temporarily propagating by cuttings, buds, &c., the importance of crossing both distinct species and varieties is immense. The cultivator here entirely disregards the extreme variability of hybrids and mongrels and the frequent sterility of combinations. Still, the cases of plants not propagated by seed are of little importance to us, for their endurance is only temporary. (...)"
December 5, 2021
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12.0%
"We have also seen that it is the most flourishing and dominant species of the larger genera, which on average vary most, and varieties, as we shall hereafter see, tend to become converted into new and distinct species. (...)"
December 5, 2021
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12.0%
"(...) The larger genera thus tend to become more extensive. Throughout nature, the forms of life that are now dominant tend to become more dominant by leaving many modified and dominant descendants. But by explaining the steps hereafter, the larger genera also tend to break up into smaller genera. And thus, the forms of life throughout the universe become divided into groups subordinate to groups."
December 5, 2021
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15.0%
"(...) When we reflect on this struggle, we may console ourselves with the full belief that the war of nature is not constant, that no fear had felt, that death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply."
December 6, 2021
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24.0%
"(...) 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."
December 6, 2021
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30.0%
"Whatever the cause may be of each slight difference in the offspring from their parents (...) it is the steady accumulation, through natural selection, of such differences, when beneficial to the individual, that gives rise to all the more important modifications of structure, by which the innumerable beings on the face of this earth are enabled to struggle with each other, and the best adapted to survive."
December 6, 2021
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30.0%
"He who believes that independently created each equine species will, I presume, assert that each species has been created with a tendency to vary, both under nature and under domestication, in this particular manner, so as often to become striped like other species of the genus; (...)"
December 7, 2021
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36.0%
"(...) Suppose we admire the several ingenious contrivances by which the flowers of the orchis and many other plants fertilised through insect agency. Can we consider as equally perfect the elaboration by our fir-trees of dense clouds of pollen so that a chance breeze may waft a few granules onto the ovules?"
December 7, 2021
–
36.0%
"(...) the adaptations being aided in some cases by use and disease, being slightly affected by the direct action of the external conditions of life, and being in all instances subjecting to the several laws of growth. Hence, the law of the Conditions of Existence is the higher law, as it includes, through the inheritance of former adaptations, that of Unity of Type."
December 7, 2021
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42.0%
"Thus, I believe, the wonderful fact is of two distinctly defined castes of sterile workers existing in the same nest, both widely different from each other and their parents have originated. We can see how useful their production may have been to a social community of insects, on the same principle that the division of labour is useful to civilised man. (...)"
December 7, 2021
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42.0%
"This theory is also strengthened by some few other facts regarding instincts, as by that typical case of closely allied, but certainly distinct, species, when distant inhabitant parts of the world and living under considerably different conditions of life, yet often retaining nearly the same instincts. (...)"
December 8, 2021
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48.0%
"(...) Of course, if we look at species as specially created and at varieties produced by secondary laws, this similarity would be an astonishing fact. But it harmonises perfectly with the view that there is no essential distinction between species and varieties."
December 8, 2021
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48.0%
"First crosses between forms known to be varieties, or sufficiently alike to be considered varieties, and their mongrel offspring, are generally fertile but not quite universally. (...)"
December 8, 2021
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53.0%
"(...) Each word of the slowly-changing language, in which the history is supposed to be writing, more or less different in the interrupted succession of chapters, may represent the abruptly changed forms of life entombed in our consecutive but widely separated formations. On this view, the difficulties above discussed are greatly diminished or even disappear."
December 9, 2021
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58.0%
"It may ask in ridicule whether I suppose that the megatherium and other allied giant monsters have left behind them in South America the sloth, armadillo, and anteater, as their degenerate descendants. This fact cannot for an instant have been admitted. These massive animals have become wholly extinct and have left no progeny. (...)"
December 9, 2021
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59.0%
"(...) On the other hand, all the prevailing laws of palaeontology proclaim, as it seems to me, that species had been producing by ordinary generation: old forms had been supplying by new and improved forms of life, produced by the laws of variation still acting round us, and preserved by Natural Selection."
December 9, 2021
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65.0%
"(...) The various beings thus left stranded may be compared with savage races of man, driven up and surviving in the mountain-fastnesses of almost every land, which serve as a record, full of interest to us, of the former inhabitants of the surrounding lowlands."
December 10, 2021
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69.0%
"(...) This fact, together with the seeds and eggs of many common forms being very minute and better fitted for distant transportation, probably accounts for a law which has long been observing, and which has lately been admirably discussed by Alph. de Candolle regarding plants, namely, that the lower any group of organisms is, the more widely it is apt to range."
December 10, 2021
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69.0%
"(...) and the more nearly any two forms are related in blood, the nearer they will generally stand to each other in time and space; in both cases, the laws of variation have been the same, and modifications have been accumulating by the same power of natural selection."
December 10, 2021
–
77.0%
"(...) On the view of descent with modification, we may conclude that the existence of organs in a rudimentary, imperfect, and useless condition, or quite aborted, far from presenting a strange difficulty, as they assuredly do on the ordinary doctrine of creation, might even have been anticipated, and can be accounted for by the laws of inheritance."
December 10, 2021
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77.0%
"(...) The importance of embryological characters and rudimentary organs in classification is intelligible because an arrangement is only so far natural as it is genealogical."
December 10, 2021
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83.0%
"(...) There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, have been initially breathing into a few forms or 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."
December 10, 2021
– Shelved as:
2021-readings
December 10, 2021
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Finished Reading
December 11, 2021
– Shelved as:
english-editions
December 24, 2021
– Shelved as:
e-5
August 1, 2023
– Shelved as:
science
August 1, 2023
– Shelved as:
philosophy
August 1, 2023
– Shelved as:
anthropology
August 1, 2023
– Shelved as:
british-literature
Comments Showing 1-18 of 18 (18 new)
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David
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Dec 10, 2021 02:40PM
I think you are the only person I know that has read this book and i much enjoyed your selections you posted, Luis. Thank you!
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David wrote: "I think you are the only person I know that has read this book and i much enjoyed your selections you posted, Luis. Thank you!"Thank you so much for your comments, David.
He wrote well, Darwin. The Voyage of the Beagle is also a good read.
Nick wrote: "He wrote well, Darwin. The Voyage of the Beagle is also a good read."Thank you, Nick, for the rec. Appreciated.
Anthony wrote: "Nice review Luis"Thanks Anthony.
I like how methodical and detailed his observations are.
Now I'm even more interested in reading this :D
Scott wrote: "I like how methodical and detailed his observations are."That's fantastic.
7jane wrote: "Now I'm even more interested in reading this :D":D
What a pleasure to immerse yourself in the world of a nineteenth-century naturalist.I'm honoured to recommend... this work to you, ³¢³Üòõ ;)
The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World
P.E. wrote: "What a pleasure to immerse yourself in the world of a nineteenth-century naturalist.I'm honoured to recommend... this work to you, ³¢³Üòõ ;)
[book:The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's..."
Thank you so much, P.E.
P.E. wrote: "Thank you for the review!";)
Great review Luis, and a great book too. It is incredible how such a work had had an everlasting influence not only on the literature of the era, but also of the way we read and see it today (even with all the up-to-date data we have)
Sid wrote: "Great review Luis, and a great book too. It is incredible how such a work had had an everlasting influence not only on the literature of the era, but also of the way we read and see it today (even ..."Thank you, Sid. I read it with immense pleasure.
³¢³Üòõ, have you read The Voyage of the Beagle? I love it even more. There is an unabridged version that is really wild ~ for some reason in the English versions at least some editions are edited and pruned of the most interesting parts
Lark wrote: "³¢³Üòõ, have you read The Voyage of the Beagle? I love it even more. There is an unabridged version that is really wild ~ for some reason in the English versions at least some editions are edited and..."Yes, I read it. This is the one:
/review/show...
