Darwin and evolution

1859

On the Origin of Species (or, more completely, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life)^[3] is a work of scientific literature by Charles Darwin that is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology. It was published on 24 November 1859.^[4]

Great talk here- I particularly like the ending

Not Survival of the fittest but Survival of the luckiest

How would you survive a comet?

Dinosaurs existed on Earth for about 165 million years, appearing during the Triassic period and becoming extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period, approximately 66 million years ago. If all of Earth's history were compressed into a single year, dinosaurs would have appeared on January 1 and become extinct by the third week of September. The exact duration of their existence and the pace of their extinction remain subjects of scientific debate, with some evidence suggesting that some dinosaur species may have survived for a few hundred thousand years after the K-Pg boundary event.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Paleontology/comments/wcfxoo/how_long_did_it_take_for_all_the_large_dinosaurs/

Also why it only took Darwin’s ideas 15 years to be accepted- dinosaurs.

The first complete dinosaur skeleton ever found was Scelidosaurus harrisonii, discovered in 1858 in west Dorset, England. This skeleton, found by James Harrison, was the first to be identified as a complete dinosaur

Another early complete dinosaur skeleton was Hadrosaurus foulkii, discovered in 1858 in New Jersey, which was the most complete dinosaur skeleton at the time of its discovery and was mounted for display in 1868

from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200827101819.htm

“Survival of the fittest” Charles Darwin, the more able? the better equipped?

Fit fitness but also do your clothes fit? Does the ring fit your finger?

“If the shoe fits…”

Not survival of the healthiest or strongest, but the one who fits their environment

Douglas Adams on evolution

“And we have always been, because we’re toolmakers, because we take from our environment the stuff that we need to do what we want to do and it’s always been very successful for us …

I’ll tell you what’s happened. It’s as if we’ve actually kind of put the sort of “pause” button on our own process of evolution, because we have put a buffer around us, which consists of—you know—medicine and education and buildings, and all these kinds of things that protect us from the normal environmental pressures. And, it’s our ability to make tools that enables us to do this. Now, generally speaking, what drives speciation, is that a small group of animals gets separated out from the main body by population pressure, some geographical upheaval or whatever. So imagine, a small bunch suddenly finds itself stranded in a slightly colder environment. Then you know, over a small number of generations that those genes that favour a thicker coat will come to the fore and you come back a few generations later, and the animals got a thicker coat. Man, because we are able to make tools, we arrive in a new environment where it’s much colder, and we don’t have to wait for that process. Because we see an animal that’s already got a thicker coat and we say we’ll have it off him. (Laughter.) And so we’ve kind of taken control of our environment, and that’s all very well, but we need to be able to sort of rise above that process. We have to rise above that vision and see a higher vision—and understand the effect we’re actually having.

Now imagine—if you will—an early man, and let’s just sort of see how this mindset comes about. He’s standing, surveying his world at the end of the day. And he looks at it and thinks, “This is a very wonderful world that I find myself in. This is pretty good. I mean, look, here I am, behind me are the mountains, and the mountains are great because there are caves in the mountains where I can shelter, either from the weather or from bears that occasionally come and try to attack me. And I can shelter there, so that’s great. And in front of me there is the forest, and the forest is full of nuts and berries and trees, and they feed me, and they’re delicious and they sort of keep me going. And here’s a stream going through which has got fish running through it, and the water is delicious, and I drink the water, and everything’s fantastic.

“Now this world is a fantastically good world for me.” And, part of how we come to take command of our world, to take command of our environment, to make these tools that are actually able to do this, is we ask ourselves questions about it the whole time. So this man starts to ask himself questions. “This world,” he says, “well, who … so, so who made it?” Now, of course he thinks that, because he makes things himself, so he’s looking for someone who will have made this world. He says, “So, who would have made this world? Well, it must be something a little bit like me. Obviously much much bigger, (laughter) and necessarily invisible, (laughter) but he would have made it. Now, why did he make it?”

Now, we always ask ourselves “why” because we look for intention around us, because we always do something with intention. You know, we boil an egg in order to eat it. So, we look at the rocks and we look at the trees, and we wonder what intention is here, even though it doesn’t have intention. So we think, what did this person who made this world intend it for. And this is the point where you think, “Well, it fits me very well. (Laughter.) You know, the caves and the forests, and the stream, and the mammoths. He must have made it for me! I mean, there’s no other conclusion you can come to.”

And it’s rather like a puddle waking up one morning—I know they don’t normally do this, but allow me, I’m a science fiction writer. (Laughter.) A puddle wakes up one morning and thinks, “This is a very interesting world I find myself in. It fits me very neatly. In fact, it fits me so neatly, I mean, really precise, isn’t it? (Laughter.) It must have been made to have me in it!” And the sun rises, and he’s continuing to narrate the story about this hole being made to have him in it. And the sun rises, and gradually the puddle is shrinking and shrinking and shrinking, and by the time the puddle ceases to exist, it’s still thinking, it’s still trapped in this idea, that the hole was there for it. And if we think that the world is here for us, we will continue to destroy it in the way that we’ve been destroying it, because we think we can do no harm.”

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