Little Shop of Knowledge

Main Argument: All living beings have descended from common ancestors through the process of Natural Selection.

 

Introduction to Chapter IV:

2 Imaginary Examples

1. The first one is how wolved struggle for existence in an unchanging environment. Will wolves who become more adept at catching deer become more adept and create a different population of wolves (which may come to be called something else)?

2. The second illustration is about a hermaphrodite flower with stigma and ovary, interacting with bees. There is no stable environment since both are growing and changing. Bees & Flowers. Bees vs. Insects, flowers vs other flowers, cooperation may lead to codependency. 

 

Intercrossing:

(1) Individuals in closely related populations breeding with one another on the borders of their ranges.

(2) Individuals of different species breeding with one another.

(3) Hermaphroditic flowers on the same plant eschewing self-fertilization, crossing instead with other flowers. Isolaton -Species distributed over large areas subdivided by geographical borders that are the species is subdivided into several populations. “Islands”.-Wide range of conditions of life that gradually change but no barriers. 

2 competing things happen:

1. Organisms in different portions adapt to their respective conditions.

2. Interbreeding between groups. Can the differing ways of life that emerge between different groups become barriers to interbreeding? Reproduce isolation more intense change.

 

DIVERGENCE OF CHARACTER: Branching lines representing the production of several in incipient new species from existing ones. Dynamic image of the tree of life.

 

CHAPTER 4: Natural Selection

 

(1) How will the struggle for existence, discussed too briefly in the last chapter, act in regard to variation?

(2) Can the principle of selection apply in nature?

(3) Can it be thought improbable that variations useful in some way to each being should sometimes occur in the course of thousands of generations?

(4) If these variations occur, can we doubt that individuals having any advantage over others would have the best chance of surviving and reproducing?

(5) Since man can produce (and has produced) a great result by his methodological and unconscious means of selection, what may nature not produce?

(6) Can we wonder that nature’s productions should be far “truer” in character than man’s productions and should plainly bear the stamp of far higher workmanship?

(7) How does the lesser differentiate between varieties become augmented into the greater difference between species?

 

Natural Selection: Preservation of favorable variations and rejection of injurious variations. Polymorphic species: have variations neither useful nor injurious (unaffected by Natural Selection). Country undergoing physical change. Illustrations of the action of Natural Selection: Wolves. Pass new structure & habits progressively through time until a new wolf replaces or coexists with the parent form of wolf. Also, in different areas they would seek different means for surviving (e.g. Prey) so that 2 different “types” will adopt leading to 2 different kinds of wolves. If Natural Selection be true, it will banish the belief of continued creation of new organic beings, or of any great and sudden modification in their structure.