“Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, California” (1944) by Ansel Adams, at the Museum of Modern Art (New York)
What he sees on the trip inspires him to spend the next three years developing new theories about life and the history of the world.
Darwin comes to believe that massive mountain ranges are built up a result of tiny uplifts over millions of years. And all animal life—including human life—also developed as a result of tiny changes over millions of years.
It will be twenty more years before Darwin shares those theories publicly.
Darwin comes to believe that massive mountain ranges are built up a result of tiny uplifts over millions of years. And all animal life—including human life—also developed as a result of tiny changes over millions of years.
It will be twenty more years before Darwin shares those theories publicly.
In 1859, Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species.
As populations grow, animals compete with each other for food and other resources. Each animal differs from its ancestors in random, tiny ways. Eventually, after “ten thousand trials,” those who differ in helpful ways endure; others are weeded out. The survivors pass on to the next generation the qualities that helped them survive. Darwin calls this process “natural selection.”
As Darwin sees it, you can’t rank one surviving species as higher than another on some kind of ladder of improvement. Each new species simply finds a unique way to survive in a changing world.
When Darwin publishes his work, many conservative Christians are outraged by the ways Darwin’s account differs from the account of creation described in the Bible.
"Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work
worthy the interposition of a deity.
More humble, and I believe truer,
to consider him created from animals."
From: Notebook, 1838
As populations grow, animals compete with each other for food and other resources. Each animal differs from its ancestors in random, tiny ways. Eventually, after “ten thousand trials,” those who differ in helpful ways endure; others are weeded out. The survivors pass on to the next generation the qualities that helped them survive. Darwin calls this process “natural selection.”
As Darwin sees it, you can’t rank one surviving species as higher than another on some kind of ladder of improvement. Each new species simply finds a unique way to survive in a changing world.
When Darwin publishes his work, many conservative Christians are outraged by the ways Darwin’s account differs from the account of creation described in the Bible.
"Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work
worthy the interposition of a deity.
More humble, and I believe truer,
to consider him created from animals."
From: Notebook, 1838
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