The common questions asked by the world: "where did we come from," "what is the meaning of life," these were the exact questions asked by Charles Darwin. Darwin looked at the world in a whole new way. He broke apart from the known life of religion and brought completely new views to the world. However, Darwin's theories of evolution had a large influence on the world in a controversial, and sometimes, in a harmful way, by taking the thoughts of evolution completely out of context.
While aboard his ship The Beagle in the 1930's, Darwin took note to the changes he saw in the many different species off the coast of the Galapagos, and developed a book entitled, The Origin of Species. He popularized the idea of "fit-of-the-fittest," a key description of natural selection. This is the basic idea that if an organism was not born with the ability to pass their traits on to future generations, then they were not meant to populate the world. Another well known theory that Darwin created is adaptation. We as humans, as well as every living creature evolved into what we are today through adaptation. The idea of adaptation is best described as changing to be able to use the environment lived in by that animal to it's advantage.
This broad theory of natural selection influenced those who disagreed with Darwin, and therefore looked deeper into religion for an accident answer. For those who agreed with this thought, like all ideas and philosophies, some can be taken to the extreme:
…used by German anthropologists and later Nazi theoreticians…it was believed, the unfit transmit their undesirable characteristics. A breeding program for human beings would see to it that the unfit did not transmit their undesirable characteristics. (Shermis)
This same thought is carried out today, however at a lower extent, CEO's of large corporations, the famous rags to riches stories. And those who are "unfit," those who are living off of welfare, and the...
No comments:
Post a Comment