The Evolution of Darwin

Lamarck’s iconic representation of the giraffe neck through many generations of strain, stood against Darwin’s first works of natural selection, but later in Darwin’s sixth and final edition of The Origin of Species he added in the inherited effect of increased parts as well as natural selection. This was the idea that learnt physical and mental attributes could be passed on biologically through generations and a nineteenth century belief that through the struggle of one’s environment one can increase the intelligence of the next generation. ‘Mind has not been banished from nature; it has been incorporated into it as the guiding force of evolution.’ (Bowler, 1990: 183). Darwin tried to turn morality into a branch of biology through the idea that instinct was a process of natural behaviour such as child rearing. The moral instinct was therefore of use and not placed there by a higher power. Darwin believed that mental and physical evolution was a construct of trial and error through random variation and the mixture of Lamarckism and natural selection helped to make his argument more flexible for the question of the origin of the human species. This essay will further discuss Darwin’s theory of the human species and its influence over the modern world.

There are many scientists that believe in Darwin’s idea of individual selection and see group selection as to altruistic. However research needed to be done where Darwin failed to explain why species like humans work as a collective. Edward Wilson released his work called Sociobiology in 1975 which disclaimed the idea of tubular-rasa and explained that there is a genetic link to other peoples kin that gives creatures a primordial instinct to protect and cooperate with each-others relatives. This he explained is why neuter creatures such as ants cooperate because their genes will be passed on by the queen ant. Richard Dawkins later coined this The Selfish Gene (Malone, 1998).   However this did not explain social...