Snippets from the Introduction and Chapter 1 of On the Origin of Species

This is my copy of the book.

Snippets from the Introduction

He specifically mentions that this is not a complete representation of his work, he says that the book is an abstract he decided to publish early.

First mention of the core concept.

This single page of introduction talks about 3 major concepts of the book. It mentions coadaption, variation under selection in its natural and artificial form and it also mention the idea of the struggle for existence (survival of the fittest).

The introduction ends by noting that Natural Selection is what we will be focusing on in the rest of the book.

Snippets from Chapter 1 - Variation under Domestication

This makes it clear how Darwin's ideas are different from Lamarck. It is not the individual it is about the treatment of the individual by its environment.

Since this chapter is about domestication he gives a lot of examples of different animal's response to domestication.

I guess we know more about this laws know. Since I don't think the idea of genes and chromosomes was known in Darwin's time.

One objection people had to the idea that domestication is creating variety is by saying if you sent those domesticated animals into the wild they would revert back to their pre domestication behaviours. Darwin combats this by seeing that would not be a valid experiment to determine if domestication causes variation because the mere act of sending them to the wild will change their environment and therefore the selection forces the animals would experience.

The question of all domesticated breeds of an animal all descend from a single wild species is also discussed in this chapter.

Here he talks about how artificial selection is one of the strongest forces that led to variation in domesticated animals.

He talks about how artificial selection has been practiced since ancient times in various cultures. Also first mention of the N word.

This came out of no where.

He then expands on his idea of artificial selection to say that it is not the only kind of selection out there. For this he uses the example of "uncivilized" people who still have variation in their domestic animals even though there is not mention of specific practice or artificial selection in their culture. He then says since this domesticated animals are forced to fend for themselves there must be some natural form of selection taking place.

He also mentions that having large flocks makes it easier to see the effects of selection.

He ends the chapter by saying that the cumulative effect of selection whether it be artificial or natural is the main driving force for variation in species.

Hopefully will do this same thing for Chapter 2 next week.