The Origin of Species (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Charles Darwin [250]
14 (p. 77) It may: Here Darwin added the word “metaphorically” in the second edition.
15 (p. 79) What natural selection cannot do, is to modify the structure of one species, without giving it any advantage, for the good of another species: This passage is crucial in later interpretations of Darwin and in current debates about altruism. Darwin’s argument is that all modifications of structure caused by natural selection can only be in the interest of the organism that it “tends,” and although it is possible that modifications can be mutually beneficial between one organism and another, the aid to the other organism must be recognized as simply a byproduct of the needs of the first. All altruism, following this line of thinking, must be “reciprocal.” That is, whatever benefit one organism does for another is always compensated for by a return value—the flower offers its nectar to the bee, but in turn the bee pays back the gift many times by spreading the flower’s pollen and guaranteeing its survival and propagation.
16 (p. 80) Sexual Selection: This section presents in brief the argument Darwin made fully in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871).
17 (p. 111) the earth may have been as well peopled with many species of many genera, families, orders, and classes, as at the present day: At this point in the third edition Darwin inserted a long section entitled “On the Degree to which Organisation tends to advance.” It is a crucial section for an understanding of Darwin’s views on the idea that evolution always implies progress. Darwin’s theory quite specifically does not imply inevitable progress; in this section he states: “On my theory the present existence of lowly organized productions offers no difficulty; for natural selection includes no necessary and universal law of advancement or development—it only takes advantage of such variations as arise and are beneficial to each creature under its complex relations of life.” The chapter grew further with later editions, as Darwin responded to some of the strongest arguments against the theory of natural selection.
18 (p. 155) I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale: This passage, which many read as Darwin arguing that a bear could transform into a whale, was the object of much ridicule. In the second edition, Darwin omitted the sentence entirely.
19 (p. 158) It is scarcely possible to avoid comparing the eye to a telescope: In this passage, Darwin takes one of the major examples English theologian and advocate of natural theology William Paley (see note 27) uses to demonstrate that the astonishing delicacy and precision of adaptations testify to the designing mind of God, and turns Paley’s conclusion upside down. It is one of his most effective attacks on natural theology, performed without direct allusion to Paley. The comparison of the eye to the telescope, in Darwin’s hands, becomes evidence of the workings of natural selection; in Paley it is the firmest evidence that God is at work in the shaping of nature. Compare the way Paley begins the argument, in his Natural Theology (1802): “To some it may appear a difference sufficient to destroy all similitude between the eye and the telescope, that the one is a perceiving organ, the other an unperceiving instrument. The fact is that they are both instruments.”
20 (p. 168) Natural selection tends only to make each organic being as perfect as, or slightly more perfect than, the other inhabitants of the same country with which it has to struggle for existence. And we see that this is the degree