Theory
Charles went house-hunting by day. At night he thought about "innumerable variations" (which he still thought were acquired in some way) with competitive nature selecting the best leading to step by step change, while vestigial organs like the human coccyx (tail) were not, as commonly thought, God "rounding out his original thought exhaustion", but ancestral remnants pointing to "the parent of man".
Darwin considered Malthus's argument, that human populations breed beyond their means and compete to survive, in relation to his findings about species relating to localities, earlier enquiries into animal breeding, and ideas of Natural "laws of harmony". Around late November 1838 he compared breeders selecting traits to a Malthusian Nature selecting from random variants, now thrown up by "chance", and in mid-December described this comparison as "a beautiful part of my theory, that domesticated races of organics are made by precisely same means as species — but latter far more perfectly & infinitely slower", so that in "species every part of newly acquired structure is fully practical & perfected."
The second edition of Charles Babbage's The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise. A Fragment published that year included a copy of a letter John Herschel had sent to Charles Lyell in 1836, not long before Darwin visited Herschel in Cape Town. On 2 December, Darwin wrote in his E Notebook "Babbage 2d Edit. p. 226 — Herschel calls the appearance of new species the mystery of mysteries, & has grand passage upon the problem.! Hurrah — 'intermediate causes' ". Herschel's letter advocated seeking natural causes, as opposed to miraculous causes, and gave philosophical justification to Darwin's project.
Read more about this topic: Inception Of Darwin's Theory
Famous quotes containing the word theory:
“There is in him, hidden deep-down, a great instinctive artist, and hence the makings of an aristocrat. In his muddled way, held back by the manacles of his race and time, and his steps made uncertain by a guiding theory which too often eludes his own comprehension, he yet manages to produce works of unquestionable beauty and authority, and to interpret life in a manner that is poignant and illuminating.”
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