- This article is about Darwinism as a philosophical concept; see evolution for the page
on biological evolution; modern evolutionary synthesis for neo-Darwinism;
and also evolution (disambiguation).
Darwinism is a term for the underlying theory in those ideas of Charles Darwin
concerning evolution and natural selection.
Discussions of Darwinism usually focus on evolution by natural selection, but sometimes Darwinism is taken to mean
evolution more broadly, or other ideas not directly associated with the work of Darwin.
Other Usages of the Term
The term Darwinism is often used by promotors of creationism to describe
evolution, notably by leading members of the intelligent design movement.[1] In this usage, the term has connotations of atheism. For example, in
Charles Hodge's book What Is Darwinism?, Hodge answers the question posed in the
book's title by concluding: "It is Atheism."[2][3][4] Creationists use the term Darwinism, often pejoratively, to imply that the theory has been
held as true only by Darwin and a core group of his followers, who they cast as dogmatic and
inflexible in their belief.[5] Casting evolution as a doctrine or belief bolsters religiously motivated political arguments to
mandate equal time for the teaching of creationism in public schools.
However, Darwinism is also used neutrally within the scientific community to distinguish modern evolutionary theories
from those first proposed by Darwin, as well as by historians to differentiate it from other evolutionary theories from around
the same period. For example, Darwinism may be used to refer to Darwin's proposed mechanism of natural selection, in comparison to more recent theories such as genetic drift and gene flow. It may also refer specifically to the role
of Charles Darwin as opposed to others in the history of evolutionary
thought — particularly contrasting Darwin's results with those of earlier theories such as Lamarckism or later ones such as the modern synthesis.
A notable example of a scientist who uses the term in a positive sense is Richard
Dawkins[citation needed].
Classical Darwinism
In the 19th century context in which Darwin's Origin of Species was
first received, "Darwinism" came to stand for an entire range of evolutionary (and often revolutionary) philosophies about both
biology and society. One of the more prominent approaches was that summed in the phrase "survival of the fittest" by the philosopher Herbert
Spencer, which was later taken to be emblematic of Darwinism even though Spencer's own understanding of evolution was more
Lamarckian than Darwinian, and predated the publication of Darwin's theory. What we now call "Social Darwinism" was, in its day, synonymous with "Darwinism" — the application of Darwinian
principles of "struggle" to society, usually in support of anti-philanthropic political
agendas. Another interpretation, one notably favored by Darwin's half-cousin Francis
Galton, was that Darwinism implied that because natural selection was apparently no longer working on "civilized" people
it was possible for "inferior" strains of people (who would normally be filtered out of the gene pool) to overwhelm the
"superior" strains, and corrective measures would have to be undertaken — the foundation of eugenics.
In Darwin's day there was no rigid definition of the term "Darwinism", and it was used by opponents and proponents of Darwin's
biological theory alike to mean whatever they wanted it to in a larger context. The ideas had international influence, and
Ernst Haeckel developed what was known as Darwinismus in Germany, although, like Spencer Haeckel's "Darwinism" had only a rough resemblance to the theory of Charles
Darwin, and was not centered around natural selection at all.
While the reaction against Darwin's ideas is nowadays often thought to have been widespread immediately, in 1886
Wallace went on a lecture tour across the United States, starting in New York and
going via Boston, Washington, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska to California, lecturing on what he called Darwinism without any
problems.[6]
Darwinism as selectionism
To distinguish themselves from the very loose meaning of "Darwinism" prevalent in the 19th century, those who advocated
evolution by natural selection after the death of Darwin became known as neo-Darwinists. August Weismann was the most
prominent member of this school, and further articulated that neo-Darwinism referred to evolution specifically by forms of
"selection" (natural selection, including sexual selection), and that it was articulated around the idea that the hereditary
material of an organism was not modified by the further development of the organism. Neo-Darwinism poised itself against
neo-Lamarckism, also popular at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, which argued that bodily
modifications acquired during the lifetime of the organism could be hereditarily passed on to the next generation. Weismann's
neo-Darwinism, on the other hand, argued that all of an organism's hereditary material was kept in its germ plasm, which existed separately from the rest of the organism's development.
Neo-Darwinism was not terribly popular in the scientific community, as most biologists felt that the complete segregation of
development and heredity actions seems unlikely or unwarranted. After the development of the modern evolutionary synthesis in the 1930s, however, the selection theory became
increasingly popular amongst biologists, and codified the more modern definition of Darwinism which we have today.
Darwinian processes
In a modern definition of the term, a Darwinian process requires the following schema:
- Self-replication/Inheritance: Some
number of entities must be capable of producing copies of themselves, and those copies must also be capable of reproduction. The
new copies must inherit the traits of old ones. Sometimes the different variations are recombined in sexual reproduction.
- Variation: There must be a range of different traits in the population of
entities, and there must be a mechanism for introducing new variations into the population.
- Selection: Inherited traits must somehow affect the ability of the entities to
reproduce themselves, either by survival (natural selection), or by ability to produce offspring by finding partners
(sexual selection).
If the entity or organism survives to reproduce, the process restarts. Sometimes, in stricter formulations, it is required
that variation and selection act on different entities, variation on the replicator
(genotype) and selection on the interactor
(phenotype).
Darwinism asserts that any system given these conditions, by whatever means, evolution is likely to occur. That is, over time,
the entities will accumulate complex traits that favor their reproduction. This is called Universal
Darwinism, a term coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene[citation needed] .
Most obviously, this can refer to biological evolution. However, it has other potential spheres, the best known of which is
the meme, a concept of inheritance and modification of ideas introduced by Richard Dawkins in
The Selfish Gene and further refined by researchers such as Richard Brodie and
Susan Blackmore. It has been disputed if this was a Darwinian process, since it is
unproven that memes undergo random mutations. However, it is noted many times in discussions of Universal Darwinism that the
variation within a population need not be random. In fact Richard Dawkins states that
the fact that Darwinian evoulution can occur "even if" the mutation/variation is random or directed to a degree away from the
direction of the selection pressure.
Perhaps surprisingly Darwinian theories have been proposed as explanations of the origin of the universe we live in.
Lee Smolin's theory Cosmological natural selection
explains the selection of a universe with the correct fundamental physical parameters to support complex matter such as stars and
ourselves. Wojciech Zurek's theory of Quantum
darwinism explains the selection of the our classical macroscopic world from underlying quantum processes.
Another example to illustrate are computer systems (PCs). Taking the software as
the replicator and the whole system as the interactor, it could be seen as a Darwinian system, however, the code does not change
randomly, but is directionally changed or rewritten from scratch; also systems do not reproduce.
Daniel Dennett (1995) in Darwin's
Dangerous Idea argues for Universal Darwinism.
References
- ^ Johnson, Phillip E.. What is Darwinism?. Retrieved on 2007-01-04.
- ^ Matthew, Ropp. Charles Hodge and His Objection
to Darwinism. Retrieved on 2007-01-04.
- ^ Hodge, Charles. What is Darwinism?. Retrieved on 2007-01-04.
- ^ Hodge, Charles (1874). What is Darwinism?. Scribner, Armstrong, and Company. OCLC 11489956.
- ^ From the Beagle to
the School Board: God Goes Back to School, Morris Sullivan, Impact Press, Spring
2005.
- ^ Evolution and
Wonder - Understanding Charles Darwin - Speaking of Faith® from American Public Media. Retrieved on 2007-07-27.
See also
External links
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