Darwin on the Struggle for Existence

Abstract

The theory of evolution, developed by the British naturalist Charles Darwin (180982) by the late 1830s and presented to the general public in 1859 in his book The Origin of Species, was a pathbreaking scientific accomplishment. Primarily through The Origin, the influence of Darwin on modern man's view of the world and his impact on human affairs are comparable to those of Galileo, Adam Smith, Marx, or Freud. The notion of evolution itself was not novel, but it was Darwin who for thefirst time gave a scientifically coherent account of the processes by which evolution is brought about. Darwin's explanation, derived without access to the insights provided by modern genetics, is most concisely stated in the full title of his book: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. The key to the evolutionand preservation-of living organisms was the pressure they constantly experience to be well adapted to their environment; individuals who best meet that criterion have a greater chance of survival than those less well adapted. The natural occurrence of variations within species provides for change: if a variation offers a selective advantage, it will be favored through differential survival and reproductive success. Darwin repeatedly gave credit for this core idea to social science. As he put it in Chapter 3 of The Origin: 'It is the doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms. But if Darwin generalized the Malthusian argument, he also shifted its focus. Indeed, man and his evolution do notfigure in The Origin. In part, perhaps, Darwin wished to avoid the subject so as to make his book less controversial. More importantly, he also realized that adaptive pressures can elicit responses from humans that may make natural selection operate quite differently on them than on plants and animals. In the latter case, after all, 'there can be no artificial increase of food, and no prudential restraint from marriage. ' Thus Darwin offers scant support to later, mechanistic applications of his observations and deductions to the interpretation of social change, known as Social Darwinism.'' Darwin's theory, much more than sociobiology today, also leaves an important role for cultural, as distinct from genetic, processes of adaptation and change. When Darwin claimed that A struggle for existence inevitably follows