OPPapers.com

Darwin's Long Argument

“One Long Argument” by Charles Darwin

Survival of the Fittest and/or Struggle for Existence
In “Origin of Species”, Darwin begins by explaining the meaning of some important phrases and words. First of all, he mentions the phrase, “Survival of the Fittest”. This phrase “Survival of the Fittest”, is a phrase used to explain the concept of survival and competition. The basic idea behind “Survival of the fittest” is that by the means of natural selection (which will be discussed later on) species adapt and change with the help of “best suited mutations” becoming dominant. This phrase is also sometimes referred to as “Struggle for Existence”. This term is to be used in a metaphorical way, as in, dependence of one being in another. Another (less important) meaning of Struggle for Existence is the “life of the individual”. According to Darwin, there are limited amounts of resources and organisms often produce more offspring than can survive in the given limited resources. Therefore, in order to win the struggle for existence, organisms compete with each other. Darwin calculated that the Atlantic cod lays approximately five million eggs per year. Many of those eggs laid, fail the struggle for existence and therefore, the fittest of all of them survives and reproduce them further. Have we ever wondered why the oceans aren’t overloaded with Atlantic Cods? In the book, The Origin of Species, Darwin argues that an organism usually completes with “other members of its own species”. This is because they all require same “ecological needs”. This leads into the analysis of Darwin’s mechanism of evolution called Natural Selection.
Natural Selection
Darwin refers to a “process in which unfavourable heritable traits become less common in the population and also conversely, natural selection is a process by which favourable heritable traits become more common”. This process occurs in successive generations of a population of reproducing organisms and this occurs due to...