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The appearance of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859 marked a fundamental step in the study of evolutionary biology as well as the beginning of a protracted series of scientific, soc...

extraction is an important task in text mining. In this paper a novel, unsupervised, domain independent and language independent approach for automatic keyword extraction from single documents have been proposed. We have used the word intermediate distance vector and its mean value to extract keywords. We have compared our approach with results from the standard deviation of intermediate distances approach as standard and found that there is heavy overlapping between the results of both approaches with the advantage that our approach is faster, especially in case of long documents as it removes the need to compute the standard deviation of word intermediate distance vector. Two famous works viz. "Origin of Species" and "A Brief History of Time" to demonstrate the experimental results have been used. Experiments show that the proposed approach works almost as better as the standard deviation approach and the percentage overlap between top 30 extracted keywords is more than 50%.

The idea of evolution in natural history, which formed the basis for radical change not only in science but also in the thinking of modern humanity, was formulated and perceived in its integrity and perspective only in the ХІХ century. In the Earth sciences, this idea was first presented by the prominent English geologist Charles Lyell (1797-1875) in 1830-1833, and in the life sciences evolutionism won after the 1859 publication of the book by a young colleague and student of Ch. Lyell - Charles Darwin (1809-1882) - «On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection».

This essay argues that Charles Darwin's distinctive approach to studying distribution and diversity was shaped by his face-to-face interactions with maritime surveyors during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle (1831-1836). Introducing their hydrographic surveying methods into natural history enabled him to compare fossil and living marine organisms, to compare sedimentary rocks to present-day marine sediments, and to compare landscapes to submarine topology, thereby realizing Charles Lyell's fanciful ambition for a superior form of geology that might be practiced by an "amphibious being." Darwin's theories of continental uplift, coral reef formation, and the origin of species all depended on his amphibious natural history. This essay contributes to our understanding of theorizing in nineteenth-century natural history by illustrating that specific techniques of observing and collecting could themselves help to generate a particular theoretical orientation and, indeed, that such practical experiences were a more proximate source of Darwin's "Humboldtian" interest in distribution and diversity than Alexander von Humboldt's writings themselves. Darwin's debt to the hydrographers became obscured in two ways: through the "funneling" of credit produced by single-authorship publication in natural history and the "telescoping" of memory by which Darwin's new theories made him recall his former researches as though he had originally undertaken them for the very purpose of producing the later theory.

Although economies, business practices, and living standards have converged since WWII, corporate structures continue to differ among the advanced economies of the world. Looking at the diversity of corporate structures of large-sized firms around the world (and over time) would fascinate Charles Darwin. This work develops a critical review of the literature on political determinants of corporate governance through the Darwinian theory (including some Lamarckian aspects). As Darwin, in his work "On the Origin of Species", explicates the diversity of species of tortoises, finches, and iguanas of the Galapagos Islands, so Darwinism may contribute in understanding the origin and the persistence of corporate diversity. In particular, this article takes into account politics-driven variations, their inheritances, and the subsequent selection of advantageous "corporate" attributes.

In the Origin of Species (1859), Darwin argued that his revolutionary theory of evolution by natural selection represented a significant breakthrough in the understanding of instinctive behaviour. However, many aspects in the development of his thinking on behavioural phenomena indicate that the explanation of this particular organic feature was by no means an easy one, but that it posed an authentic challenge - something that Darwin himself always recognized. This paper explores Darwin's treatment of instincts within his theory of natural selection. Particular attention is given to elucidate how he tackled the difficulties of explaining instincts as evolving mental features. He had to explain and demonstrate its inheritance, variation, and gradual accumulation within populations. The historical and philosophical aspects of his theory are highlighted, as well as his study of the case in which the explanation of instincts represented a 'special difficulty'; that is, the sterile castes of social insects.

Darwin’s Origin of Species , Chapter 9. We have all read it. It is the one where Darwin points out the poor quality of the fossil record, how it does not sufficiently support his ideas. Biologists have also read it. For most scientists, Darwin’s words are their most lasting impression of the fossil record. Compounding matters, we have underscored and emphasized Darwin’s point for the past 150 years by routinely highlighting incompleteness and bias. And if bias was not good enough at scaring off the biologists, we have added megabias. Steven M. Holland Through my career, I have considered the nature of the fossil record, what we call bias, and how we respond to it. Tonight, I want to suggest that we take a different path. As a record of everything that has ever lived on earth, the fossil record is an imperfect and incomplete data set. We know this. However, all data sets are incomplete. For example, we often make a point in our classes about the rarity of fossilization, that only a tiny fraction of organisms that have lived are fossilized. This is true, but it is also true that only a tiny fraction of organisms alive today, much less over the history of earth, will ever be sequenced. We would never argue that all organisms or even that all species must be sequenced for molecular data to be useful. When we emphasize the rarity of fossilization, we hold the fossil record to an unfair standard. We could examine data sets from many other fields, and if we approached those data as we approach our own, we would find incompleteness and bias. Our exaggerated emphasis on the imperfection of the fossil record feeds the perception among scientists in general that the fossil record is an unusually poor data …

It is often assumed that direction and purpose in nature&mdash, teleology&mdash, is a dead relic of the past, a result of Charles Darwin&rsquo, s Origin of Species (1859) and Descent of Man (1871). But teleology has had a long and complex relationship with science. This paper will trace its general history with an emphasis upon the life sciences, especially biology. Particularly important is the fact that all teleology is not equal, strong (transcendent) teleology (designated Ts) should be distinguished from weak (purely descriptive and utilitarian) teleology (designated Tw). A working definition of teleology in its most meaningful aspects is then given. The challenges that Darwinism faced in dealing with purpose in nature are discussed, as is their proposed solution in the evolutionary synthesis, and the persistence of Ts following that synthesis is outlined and critiqued. Evidence of Ts persistence in the life sciences is presented with several relevant examples, and strong teleology is further differentiated by specific (Ts+) and nonspecific (Ts&minus, ) varieties. This essay concludes that Ts remains an ongoing and integral part of the life sciences and will likely remain so, even though it may be true but not verifiable empirically.

Quantifying the strength, sign, and origin of species interactions, along with their dependence on environmental context, is at the heart of prediction and understanding in ecological communities. Pairwise interaction models like Lotka-Volterra provide an important and flexible foundation, but notably absent is an explicit mechanism mediating interactions. Consumer-resource models incorporate mechanism, but describing competitive and mutualistic interactions is more ambiguous. Here, we bridge this gap by modeling a coarse-grained version of a species’ true, cellular metabolism to describe resource consumption via uptake and conversion into biomass, energy, and byproducts. This approach does not require detailed chemical reaction information, but it provides a more explicit description of underlying mechanisms than pairwise interaction or consumer-resource models. Using a model system, we find that when metabolic reactions require two distinct resources we recover Liebig’s Law and multiplicative co-limitation in particular limits of the intracellular reaction rates. In between these limits, we derive a more general phenomenological form for consumer growth rate, and we find corresponding rates of secondary metabolite production, allowing us to model competitive and non-competitive interactions (e.g., facilitation). Using the more general form, we show how secondary metabolite production can support coexistence even when two species compete for a shared resource, and we show how differences in metabolic rates change species’ abundances in equilibrium. Building on these findings, we make the case for incorporating coarse-grained metabolism to update the phenomenology we use to model species interactions.

EMBO Reports (2019) 20: e47620[OpenUrl][1][FREE Full Text][2] In 1966, the biologist George Simpson wrote: “The question ‘What is man?’ is probably the most profound that can be asked by man. […] The point I want to make now is that all attempts to answer that question before 1859 are worthless and that we will be better off if we ignore them completely” [1]. The year 1859 marks the publication of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species . Acknowledging the crucial importance of Darwin's breakthrough, should we now disregard all ideas and hypotheses about life and humans that scholars had advanced before Darwin published his book? No. The reason is that we may consider Darwin's evolution by natural selection as the evolution of cognition. Pre‐Darwinian attempts to understand the world had been an integral and important part of the human quest for knowledge, no matter how stumbling and erring. During the early stages of this evolution, humans were organised in small groups and tribes and each thought that they had an all‐encompassing knowledge about the world, which was … [1]: {openurl}?query=rft.jtitle%253DEMBO%2BReports%26rft_id%253Dinfo%253Adoi%252F10.15252%252Fembr.201847620%26rft_id%253Dinfo%253Apmid%252F30626581%26rft.genre%253Darticle%26rft_val_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Ajournal%26ctx_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ctx_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Actx [2]: /lookup/ijlink?linkType=FULL&journalCode=embor&resid=20/2/e47620&atom=%2Fembor%2F20%2F2%2Fe47620.atom

According to Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; the species that survives is the one that is best able to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself. The same analogy can apply to enterprises and their survival opportunities in the 21st century. In this digital era, it is of utmost importance for enterprises to adapt to the latest trends and technology advancements. With this book, we intend to prepare you with an emerging skill of building chatbots in the financial services domain, with a specific use case of an insurance agent (replicable to a bank assistant as well).

Nous avons eu recours à une analyse lexicométrique (effectuée à l’aide du logiciel Hyperbase) afin de capturer les variations des six éditions originales de The Origin of Species, de Charles Darwin, ainsi que celles des traductions françaises de la 1re, 3e, et 6e édition. Le corpus source se caractérise par une plus grande homogénéité que le corpus traduit, mais les spécificités relevées pointent vers des éléments saillants de la pensée darwinienne et de son évolution. Le corpus traduit, quant à lui, présente des variations qui reflètent le choix des traducteurs et qui soulignent que l’accès à la pensée de Darwin, pour le lecteur francophone, reste incomplet. Les avantages et les inconvénients de la méthode sont également discutés.

Джеймс Дуайт Дэна (1813–1895) — выдающийся геолог, минералог и биолог — относится к числу великих естествоиспытателей XIX в., чьи работы привели к пересмотру традиционных взглядов на происхождение и эволюцию Земли и Вселенной. Будучи глубоко религиозным человеком, Дэна должен был отстаивать ценность научного знания и его непротиворечивость данным Откровения, в частности — изложению творения мира в книге Бытия. Согласно Дэна, смерть в растительном и животном мире является неотъемлемым элементом системы живого, поддерживающим ее равновесие о обуславливающим взаимосвязь различных уровней организации жизни. Отрицая на первых порах эволюционную теорию, впоследствии ученый пришел к пониманию возможности развития видов, указывая на постоянное присутствие Промысла во всех природно-исторических процессах. Наиболее значимым вкладом Дж. Дэна в теорию эволюции следует считать принцип цефализации, согласно которому вектор эволюции направлен в сторону формирования высшей нервной системы и ее компартментализации в виде человеческого мозга — наиболее сложной известной на сегодняшний день природной системы. Принцип цефализации Дэна можно назвать одним из базовых принципов теистической эволюции, основной целью которой являлось появление существа, способного воспринять «дыхание жизни» (Быт 2:7) и быть образом и подобием Божиим (Быт 1:26–27), соединив в себе «земная и небесная». Дж. Дэна был одним из первых представителей теистического эволюционизма, чье научное и религиозное вдохновение не утеряло своей значимости и по сей день и может сегодня служить ориентиром для понимания религиозной ценности научного знания., James Dwight Dana (1813–1895) was an outstanding geologist, mineralogist and biologist, being one of the greatest natural scientists of the 19th century, whose works led to the changes of the traditional views towards the origin and evolution of the Earth and the Universe. As a deeply religious man, Dana was defending the importance of scientific knowledge and its concordance with the Revelation, including the narrative of the first chapters of Genesis. According to Dana, death in plants and animals is an integral part of the living system that sustains its equilibrium and provides interdependence of its different levels. After initial negative reaction to the evolution theory, he later changed his views and recognized the possibility of species transformation under the uninterrupted guidance of Providence and its continuous presence in all natural processes. The most important contribution to the evolution theory was the Dana’s principle of cephalization, which points out to the formation of high nervous system and human brain (the most complex natural system known today) as the main purpose of evolution. This principle can be viewed as one of the basic principles of theistic evolution that led to the appearance of a creature able to accept “the breath of life” (Gen. 2:7) and to be the image and the likeness of God (Gen. 1:26– 27), merging “the earthly and the heavenly”. J. D. Dana was one of the first representatives of theistic evolutionism, whose scientific and religious inspiration is still of value today and may serve as a reference point for the understanding of religious importance of scientific knowledge.

In 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte's army invaded Egypt, returning with many treasures including large numbers of Sacred Ibis mummies. The ancient Egyptians revered the ibis and mummified literally millions of them. The French naturalist Georges Cuvier used these mummies to challenge an emerging idea of the time, namely Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's theory of evolution. Cuvier detected no measurable differences between mummified Sacred Ibis and contemporary specimens of the same species. Consequently, he argued that this was evidence for the "fixity of species." The "Sacred Ibis debate" predates the so-called "Great Debate" between Cuvier and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species five decades later. Cuvier's views and his study had a profound influence on the scientific and public perception of evolution, setting back the acceptance of evolutionary theory in Europe for decades.

The evolution of eye loss in subterranean, deep sea, and nocturnal habitats has fascinated biologists since Darwin wrestled with it in On the Origin of Species. This phenomenon appears consistently throughout the animal kingdom, in groups as diverse as crustaceans, salamanders, gastropods, spiders, and the well-known Mexican cave fish, but the nature, extent, and evolutionary processes behind eye loss remain elusive. With the advantage of new imaging, molecular, and developmental tools, eye loss has once again become the subject of intense research focus. To advance our understanding of eye loss as a taxonomically widespread and repeated evolutionary trajectory, we organized a cross-disciplinary group of researchers working on the historic question, "how does eye loss evolve in the dark?." The resulting set of papers showcase new progress made in understanding eye loss from the diverse fields of molecular biology, phylogenetics, development, comparative anatomy, paleontology, ecology, and behavior in a wide range of study organisms and habitats. Through the integration of these approaches, methods, and results, common themes begin to emerge across the field. For the first time, we hope researchers can exploit this new synthesis to identify the broader challenges and key evolutionary questions surrounding eye evolution and so-called regressive evolution and collectively work to address them in future research.

This chapter is concerned with the history of scientific thought about cells—changes in how the cell has been defined, what have been taken to be its essential properties, and how it stands in relation to larger organisms as a whole (i.e., considerations of anatomy, physiology, and development). In addition, this chapter considers how the cell theory merged with the theory of evolution, following the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species in 1859. It then became relevant to ask how cells themselves have evolved, both as individual living units and as components of larger social aggregates. The discussion is limited roughly to the middle third of the nineteenth century (from 1838 to 1872 or so), ranging from the establishment of "the cell theory" of Schleiden and Schwann to Ernst Haeckel's speculations about the relationship between ontogeny and phylogeny, including an examination of Darwin's thoughts about the cell theory as expressed in his theory of pangenesis of the late 1860s.

A sample of 2232 committed churchgoers from a range of churches in the UK completed a questionnaire that included a measure of rejection of Darwinian evolution. Respondents with undergraduate or postgraduate qualifications had slightly lower odds of rejecting evolution than those without degrees, but whether qualifications were in non-biological science, biology or theology made little difference to the likelihood of rejection. Those who attended Anglican or Methodist (AM) churches were much less likely to reject evolution than those who attended Evangelical or Pentecostal (EP) churches, but the effect of education on reducing rejection was similar in both groups. Individual theological conservatism was strongly associated with rejection, but whereas liberals showed declining rejection with increased education, there was no such effect for conservatives. Frequent church attendance and Bible reading both predicted rejection, and the effect of Bible reading was most pronounced among AM churchgoers. Higher education of any kind may reduce the likelihood of rejection of evolution among many UK churchgoers, but theological conservatives from any tradition will tend to maintain their belief that Darwinian evolution does not explain the origin of species whatever their educational experience.

That the publication of the Origin of Species marked an epoch in the development of the natural sciences is well known to the layman. That the combination of the very words origin and species embodied an intellectual revolt and introduced a new intellectual temper is easily overlooked by the expert. The conceptions that had reigned in the philosophy of nature and knowledge for two thousand years, the conceptions that had become the familiar furniture of the mind, rested on the assumption of the superiority of the fixed and final; they rested upon treating change and origin as signs of defect and unreality. In laying hands upon the sacred ark of absolute permanency, in treating the forms that had been regarded as types of fixity and perfection as originating and passing away, the Origin of Species introduced a mode of thinking that in the end was bound to transform the logic of knowledge, and hence the treatment of morals, politics, and religion., Nóema, N. 9 (2018): Dal corpo vivente al corpo umano. Filosofia e biologia

El discurso biológico de Ayala se centra en estas tres cuestiones: 1) El hecho de la evolución. 2) Historia de la evolución. 3) Mecanismos del desarrollo y cambio evolutivos. El hecho determinante y cierto, según Ayala, es la evidencia de relaciones entre todos los organismos debidas a una común descendencia con modificaciones como lo han demostrado con abundancia la Paleontología, Anatomía comparada, Biogeografía, Embriología, Genética Molecular, Bioinformática y otras disciplinas biológicas que nos llevan a la afirmación de que el hecho de la evolución de los seres vivos tiene el mismo grado de certeza que poseen los hechos históricos y científicos ampliamente confirmados. Para Ayala, explicaciones acerca del origen del mundo, del hombre y de otras criaturas se encuentran en todas las culturas. Tras la publicación del Origen de las Especies de C. Darwin en 1859, se produce gran polémica en los medios científicos, culturales y religiosos, pero pasado un período de maduración, el darwinismo logra ser aceptado especialmente bajo las formas de Neo-darwinismo y Teoría Sintética. Otro asunto muy distinto son las diversas teorías y micro-teorías que se proponen para explicar los mecanismos de la evolución de los organismos vivos que presentan todavía profundas lagunas, deficiencias y controversias que han provocado la aparición de teorías alternativas. No obstante, el darwinismo moderno constituye un peldaño importante en la reconstrucción del sinuoso y complejo proceso evolutivo de la vida a través de millones de años acudiendo a una razonable explicación causal sin que esto atente contra ningún supuesto religioso.

The common ancestor and evolution by natural selection, concepts introduced by Charles Darwin, constitute the central core of biology research and education. However, students generally struggle to understand these concepts and commonly form misconceptions about them. To help teachers select the most revelant portions of Darwin's work, I suggest some sentences from On the Origin of Species and briefly discuss their implications. I also suggest a teaching strategy that uses history of science and curriculum crosscutting concepts (cause and effect) that constitute the framework to explain the evolutionary history of ratites (flightless birds) as described by Darwin, starting in the Jurassic, with the breakup of Gondwanaland, as first described by Alfred Wegener in The Origin of Continents and Oceans.

International audience; Animals make up only a small fraction of the eukaryotic tree of life, yet, from our vantage point as members of the animal kingdom, the evolution of the bewildering diversity of animal forms is endlessly fascinating. In the century following the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species, hypotheses regarding the evolution of the major branches of the animal kingdom — their relationships to each other and the evolution of their body plans — was based on a consideration of the morphological and developmental characteristics of the different animal groups. This morphology-based approach had many successes but important aspects of the evolutionary tree remained disputed. In the past three decades, molecular data, most obviously primary sequences of DNA and proteins, have provided an estimate of animal phylogeny largely independent of the morphological evolution we would ultimately like to understand. The molecular tree that has evolved over the past three decades has drastically altered our view of animal phylogeny and many aspects of the tree are no longer contentious. The focus of molecular studies on relationships between animal groups means, however, that the discipline has become somewhat divorced from the underlying biology and from the morphological characteristics whose evolution we aim to understand. Here, we consider what we currently know of animal phylogeny; what aspects we are still uncertain about and what our improved understanding of animal phylogeny can tell us about the evolution of the great diversity of animal life.

Animals have held an important place in written literature for thousands of years; hence animal fiction comes to mean a fictional work where an animal plays an integral part of the story to make it complete. In most works of literature throughout the ages, animals function only in service to humans. They represent their human counterpart symbolically in order to teach lessons or correct human weakness. This tendency of moral didacticism could be exemplified in Aesop’s Fables composed around the sixth century. With the Victorian era animals become more central in the human thoughts because of Darwin’s Origin of Species. During the twentieth century especially in the later part literal and figurative animals become particularly important in gender studies and women’s literature. In these works, however, the animals do not reflect the animals in themselves, but they are used to demonstrate some aspect of humanity. All of these texts are not animal-centric, since these texts are not interested in the animals in themselves but as subservient to the human master. Key words: Fiction, posthumanism, ‘animal turn’, animals.

Inspired by the power and influence that Charles Darwin attributed to heredity in On the Origin of Species (1859), Francis Galton developed a program of eugenics that he believed could shape Britain's progress as a nation by managing the evolutionary development of the British race. In Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development (1883), Galton summarizes this aim as “to learn how far history may have shown the practicability of supplanting inefficient human stock by better strains, and to consider whether it might not be our duty to do so by such efforts as may be reasonable, thus exerting ourselves to further the ends of evolution more rapidly and with less distress than if events were left to their own course” (1–2). While this project, Galton's life's work, was largely a process of analysis and the development of dictates that could be put in place to shape the reproduction of the nation, it was also a project of imagination; not only was Galton himself imagining a different future for Britain, but in promoting his program, he appealed to the imaginations of his readers in an attempt to get them to share his vision.

What is a species? What is speciation? These questions are not easy to answer. Yet, for those microbiologists studying environmental questions or dealing with clinical issues, the ability to name and recognize species, widely considered the fundamental units of ecology, can be useful as well as being fundamentally valuable. The speciation problem, the focus here, is more mechanistic and conceptual. What is the origin of species, and what evolutionary and ecological forces keep them separate once they begin to diverge?

References in Darwin's Origin of Species to competition between units of selection at and above the level of individual organisms are enumerated. In many cases these references clearly speak of natural selection and do not support the view that Darwin thought selection only occurred at the level of the individual organism. Darwin did see organismal selection as the main process by which varieties were created but he also espoused what is here termed community and varietal selection. He saw no essential difference between varieties and species and the references show that he also believed that selection could operate at the species level.

Spanish Abstract: Charles Darwin menciona las islas Galapagos en dos secciones de su libro El Origen de las Especies. En comparacion con otras fuentes de informacion, los datos recopilados en este archipielago no son los protagonistas de su gran obra. Este hecho contrasta con la historiografia contemporanea y la cultura popular que otorgan un papel central a estas islas en su pensamiento. Como y cuando Darwin resolvio el “Gran misterio de los misterios” y, en particular, el papel que desempeno su visita a las islas Galapagos en este sentido, se han convertido en objeto de una considerable leyenda en la historia de la ciencia. Este articulo se basa en un analisis de El Origen de las Especies para entender el rol que cumplieron las impresiones y los datos recopilados en las islas Galapagos en el desarrollo de la teoria de la seleccion natural. Esta informacion fue claramente una fuente importante de inspiracion, pero Darwin no descubrio la evolucion en las islas. Los ejemplares recolectados en Galapagos no fueron la clave singular de su teoria de la evolucion, tal como a menudo se lo presenta hoy en dia. Decadas de experimentacion sobre especies domesticas en Gran Bretana proporcionaron la mayor parte de la evidencia para el desarrollo de su teoria. English Abstract: Charles Darwin mentions the Galapagos Islands in two sections of his book The Origin of Species. Compared with other sources of information, data collected in this archipelago are not the leading character of his great work. This fact contrasts with contemporary historiography and popular culture, which bestow a central role on these islands in Darwin’s thinking. How and when Darwin solved the “great mystery of mysteries” and, in particular, the role played by his visit to the Galapagos Islands in this regard have become the subjects of a remarkable legend in the history of science. This article, which is based on an analysis of The Origin of Species, aims to understand the role played by the impressions and data collected in the Galapagos Islands in the development of the theory of natural selection. This information was clearly an important source of inspiration, but Darwin did not discover evolution on the islands. The specimens collected in the Galapagos were not the singular key to his theory of evolution as is often portrayed today. Decades of experimentation on domestic species in Britain provided most of the evidence for the development of his theory.

In 1859, when Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published and two years before Archaeopteryx was discovered, fossil bird tracks were described for the first time at the Eocene deposits in France (Desnoyers in Bull Soc Geol France 2:936–944, 1859).

Although a detailed analysis of Darwin’s lexicon inOn the Origin of Specieshas not been undertaken, critical literature claims that there are lexical signs of a teleological nature in the language used in this work. I intend to refute, through an analysis of the lexicon in Darwin’s work, the criticisms that claim a teleological subtext in Darwin’s language and that conceive said language to be a reflection of a teleological conception of nature. I will place special emphasis on the lexical material that Darwin uses in those paragraphs dedicated to the description of the function of Natural Selection.

In 1859, the English naturalist Charles Darwin explained in his book, entitled “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection”, how biological development transformed the earliest lifeforms on Earth into the rich panoply of life seen today. He summarized his findings in the following sentence: Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

From 1837, when he returned to England aboard the HMS Beagle, to 1860, just after publication of The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin kept detailed notes of each book he read or wanted to read. His notes and manuscripts provide information about decades of individual scientific practice. Previously, we trained topic models on the full texts of each reading, and applied information-theoretic measures to detect that changes in his reading patterns coincided with the boundaries of his three major intellectual projects in the period 1837–1860. In this new work we apply the reading model to five additional documents, four of them by Darwin: the first edition of The Origin of Species, two private essays stating intermediate forms of his theory in 1842 and 1844, a third essay of disputed dating, and Alfred Russel Wallace’s essay, which Darwin received in 1858. We address three historical inquiries, previously treated qualitatively: (1) the mythology of “Darwin’s Delay,” that despite completing an extensive draft in 1844, Darwin waited until 1859 to publish The Origin of Species due to external pressures; (2) the relationship between Darwin and Wallace’s contemporaneous theories, especially in light of their joint presentation; and (3) dating of the “Outline and Draft” which was rediscovered in 1975 and postulated first as an 1839 draft preceding the Sketch of 1842, then as an interstitial draft between the 1842 and 1844 essays.

Charles Darwin menciona las islas Galápagos en dos secciones de su libro El Origen de las Especies. En comparación con otras fuentes de información, los datos recopilados en este archipiélago no son los protagonistas de su gran obra. Este hecho contrasta con la historiografía contemporánea y la cultura popular que otorgan un papel central a estas islas en su pensamiento. Cómo y cuándo Darwin resolvió el “Gran misterio de los misterios” y, en particular, el papel que desempeñó su visita a las islas Galápagos en este sentido, se han convertido en objeto de una considerable leyenda en la historia de la ciencia. Este artículo se basa en un análisis de El Origen de las Especies para entender el rol que cumplieron las impresiones y los datos recopilados en las islas Galápagos en el desarrollo de la teoría de la selección natural. Esta información fue claramente una fuente importante de inspiración, pero Darwin no descubrió la evolución en las islas. Los ejemplares recolectados en Galápagos no fueron la clave singular de su teoría de la evolución, tal como a menudo se lo presenta hoy en día. Décadas de experimentación sobre especies domésticas en Gran Bretaña proporcionaron la mayor parte de la evidencia para el desarrollo de su teoría. Charles Darwin mentions the Galápagos Islands in two sections of his book The Origin of Species. Compared with other sources of information, data collected in this archipelago are not the leading character of his great work. This fact contrasts with contemporary historiography and popular culture, which bestow a central role on these islands in Darwin’s thinking. How and when Darwin solved the “great mystery of mysteries” and, in particular, the role played by his visit to the Galápagos Islands in this regard have become the subjects of a remarkable legend in the history of science. This article, which is based on an analysis of The Origin of Species, aims to understand the role played by the impressions and data collected in the Galapagos Islands in the development of the theory of natural selection. This information was clearly an important source of inspiration, but Darwin did not discover evolution on the islands. The specimens collected in the Galápagos were not the singular key to his theory of evolution as is often portrayed today. Decades of experimentation on domestic species in Britain provided most of the evidence for the development of his theory. O Charles Darwin menciona as ilhas Galápagos em duas seções do seu livro A Origem das Espécies. Em comparação com outras fontes de informação, os dados recopilados neste arquipélago não são os protagonistas de sua grande obra. Este fato contrasta com a historiografia contemporânea e a cultura popular que outorgam um papel central a estas ilhas em seu pensamento. Como e quando o Darwin resolveu o “Grande mistério dos mistérios” e, em particular, o papel que desempenhou sua visita às ilhas Galápagos neste sentido tornaram-se o objeto de uma considerável lenda na história da ciência. Este artigo está baseado em uma análise de A Origem das Espécies para entender o papel que cumpriram as impressões e os dados recopilados nas ilhas Galápagos no desenvolvimento da teoria da seleção natural. Esta informação foi claramente uma fonte importante de inspiração, mas o Darwin não descobriu a evolução nas ilhas. Os exemplares coletados em Galápagos não foram a chave singular da sua teoria da evolução, tal como frequentemente é apresentado hoje em dia. Décadas de experimentação sobre espécies domésticas na Grã-Bretanha proporcionaram a maior parte da evidência para o desenvolvimento da sua teoria.

Overwintering plants face a pronounced imbalance between light capture and use of that excitation for photosynthesis. In response, plants upregulate thermal dissipation, with concomitant reductions in photochemical efficiency, in a process characterized by a slow recovery upon warming. These sustained depressions of photochemical efficiency are termed winter photoinhibition (WPI) here. WPI has been extensively studied in conifers and in few overwintering crops, but other plant species have received less attention. Furthermore, the literature shows some controversies about the association of WPI with xanthophylls and the environmental conditions that control xanthophylls conversion. To overview current knowledge and identify knowledge gaps on WPI mechanisms, we performed a comprehensive meta-analysis of literature published over the period 1991-2011. All publications containing measurements of Fv/Fm for a cold period and a corresponding warm control were included in our final database of 190 studies on 162 species. WPI was estimated as the relative decrease in Fv/Fm. High WPI was always accompanied by a high (A + Z)/(V + A + Z). Activation of lasting WPI was directly related to air temperature, with a threshold of around 0°C. Tropical plants presented earlier (at a temperature of >0°C) and higher WPI than non-tropical plants. We conclude that (1) activation of a xanthophyll-dependent mechanism of WPI is a requisite for maintaining photosynthetic structures at sub-zero temperatures, while (2) absence (or low levels) of WPI is not necessarily related to low (A + Z)/(V + A + Z); and (3) the air temperature that triggers lasting WPI, and the maximum level of WPI, do not depend on plant growth habit or bioclimatic origin of species.

After more than one hundred fifty years of the publication of On the Origin of Species by Darwin, scientists are still arguing on the relative importance of mutation and natural selection, on the driving force of organismal evolution, on microevo- lution and macroevolution, etc. Such periodically repeated debates appeared to have introduced more chaos than musings. What happened and why? Have we really considered our views, opinions and arguments under the big picture of evolution before pos- ing the questions? Or are we talking past each other? We do need some reflections. While we believe that the current evolutionary theory is doing fine, perhaps a refinement or re-encapsulation of its knowledge framework can help promote a better understand- ing of the evolutionary science as a whole and blow off the mist over the big picture (Current Zoology 61 (1): 217-220, 2015 ). Keywords Mutation-driven evolution, Development-driven evolution, Macroevolution-driven evolution, Evo-Devo, Natural selection, Tool-kit genes, Hox genes Six years ago, scientists world-wide celebrated the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species; and this historic publication has become unquestionably "the most im- portant book of science ever written" (Wilson, 2009). Evolution as a thought has penetrated almost every as- pect of human exercises. Can Darwin now finally feel reassured? Probably not, given the mushrooming one upon another of criticisms and debates on the key tenets of evolutionary theory over the last ten years, including the very issue of natural selection which is the backbone of Darwin's and modern evolutionary theory. Then, have we really considered our views, opinions and ar- guments under the big picture of evolution before pos- ing the questions?

Partridge, Derek (2017): When did Darwin 'clearly conceive' his theory of evolution? Journal of Natural History 52 (1-2): 73-86, DOI: 10.1080/00222933.2017.1406168, URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00222933.2017.1406168

Wahrend Wallace sich den Weg in die Wissenschaft unter grosen Muhen hatte erkampfen mussen, konnte sich Charles Darwin (1809–1882), Sohn eines beguterten Arztes, auf jedwede Unterstutzung vonseiten seiner Familie verlassen. Bereits seine Mutter hatte die naturkundlichen Neigungen ihres Sohnes seit fruhester Kindheit unterstutzt, indem sie ihn auf den unterschiedlichen Bau der Bluten aufmerksam machte und ihm so die Grundzuge der Klassifikation beibrachte. Allerdings hatten diese Neigungen in Darwins Jugend eher den Charakter einer Spielerei: das Sammeln von Steinen und Kafern, das Beobachten von Vogeln, Pirschgange mit Gewehr und Hund fullten Darwins freie Zeit aus.

The geology of the Darwin Forest in central-western Argentina has been extensively studied since it was originally described by the author of On the Origin of Species. However, its role as a source and quarry of lithic raw materials throughout human history in the region has received less attention. In this paper, we evaluate the potential of the fossil trunks as knappableresources. Geological and archaeological surveys characterize the different features of human use in the Paramillos and Los Colorados geological formations. Petrographics and GIS analysis are also developed. Results show a strategic location of the sources related to Uspallata valley and Precordilleran sites (Agua de la Cueva). The favorable conditions related to accessibility, visibility as well as quality and abundance of these rawmaterials explain the extensive exploitation demonstrated in quarried trunks, and the corresponding incidence of primary debitage in surface areas. Fil: Cortegoso, Valeria. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Laboratorio de Paleoecología Humana; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza; Argentina Fil: Lucero Ferreyra, Gustavo Fernando. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Laboratorio de Paleoecología Humana; Argentina Fil: Castro, Silvina Celeste. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Laboratorio de Paleoecología Humana; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza; Argentina Fil: Winocur, Diego Alejandro. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Estudios Andinos ; Argentina

Our inquiry considers the origins of Evolutionary Economics by reintroducing a debate that took place in Russia in the 19th and early 20th century. Responses to Charles Darwin’s The origin of Species are considered, especially critiques stressing Darwin’s emphasis upon competition and struggle in natural selection, that can be traced directly to Thomas Robert Malthus. Considering challenging contributions made by several Russian scholars, we place special emphasis upon Peter Kropotkin’s focus on cooperation and “mutual aid” in natural selection and evolution. We then speculate upon the commonality found in the evolutionary views advanced by Kropotkin and his American contemporary, Thorstein Veblen.

FANTASIA E CIENCIA NA AMAZONIA: O MUNDO PERDIDO , DE ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE Resumo Em 1912 Arthur Conan Doyle publicou O mundo perdido, ingressando na ficcao cientifica, a partir das pesquisas cientificas realizadas pelos naturalistas, biologos e zoologos europeus que estiveram na Amazonia no seculo XIX. Nessa nova producao introduziu o Professor Challenger que se tornou personagem icone de uma serie de romances de ficcao cientificas que viriam a ser publicados a partir dessa obra. Maple White foi o nome dado a terra encontrada num plato na bacia Amazonica, onde habitavam seres pre-historicos e Arthur Conan Doyle recorreu como pressuposto para expor e discutir teorias cientificas vigentes naquele momento como, por exemplo, a origem das especies, de Charles Darwin. Desse modo, o objetivo desse trabalho e fazer um exame de O mundo Perdido a luz das descobertas cientificas daquele momento, assim como estudar as relacoes entre ciencia e ficcao, tendo a Amazonia com cenario desse romance. Palavras-chave: Arthur Conan Doyle; ficcao cientifica; Amazonia; literatura fantastica. FANTAZY AND SCIENCE IN THE AMAZON: THE LOST WORLD, BY ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE Keywords In 1912 Arthur Conan Doyle published The Lost World , joining in the science fiction, from the scientific research conducted by Europeans naturalists, biologists and zoologists who went to Amazon in the nineteenth century. In this new novel Arthur Conan Doyle introduced Professor Challenger who became icon character of a series of scientific fiction novels that will be published from this work. Maple White was the name given to the land found on a plateau in the Amazon basin, where lived prehistoric beings and Arthur Conan Doyle appealed for granted to expose and discuss current scientific theories at that time, for example, the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. Thus, the aim of this study is to make an examination of The Lost World under the light of scientific findings that moment, and to study the relationship between science and fiction, been Amazon as scenary of this novel. Keywords: Arthur Conan Doyle; science fiction; Amazon; fantasy literature.