I looked forward to this class because I knew it would stretch my thinking. It hasn't disappointed. It's been good to dig into Darwinian theory this week because, frankly, I had never really explored it. (I went to a Christian private school.) Isn't that kind of sad that I've dismissed something I've never examined?
The main thrust of Darwin's theory is that "humanity gradually evolved over time by natural selection through chance (genetic mutation) and necessity from less developed life forms" (207). Darwin proposed that the mechanism for this change was "natural selection under conditions of scarcity" (205) and this was confirmed by Watson and Crick's 1954 "[discovery] of the structure of DNA" (206).
Other key points of the theory is that the universe is "15 billion years old", everything originated from one single source of nonliving matter, and that life developed from simpler life forms to more complex (206).
There is a large amount of circumstantial evidence to support the theory: "the fossil record"..."embryonic replication"..."vestigial organs"...and "biochemical characteristics" (207).
I'm a little light on the commentary tonight and that's intentional. I don't want to make the same mistake I made with Nietzsche last week: Tonight I'm just laying out the basic ideas of the theory. I have the rest of the week to reflect.
WORK CITED
Pojman, Louis P. Who Are We? New York: Oxford, 2006.
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