oday.While he did believe that the earth had gone through many changes, Lyell believed in asteady-state view of the earth where there are simply fluctuations about a mean. Hethought that the climate could someday become tropical everywhere, and animals such asreptiles would flourish. Darwin accepted Lyell's uniformitarian views in the book "Principles", but he did notagree with the steady-state view. For the earth and different species to evolve, there hadto be development and change. Darwin agreed that to understand the past, it wasnecessary to observe nature as it occurs today. To see the effects of variation in life, hedescribed animal breeding. The breeders selected the animals that were most fit for theirpurpose so they could reproduce and create more "successful" animals. He also believedthat instead of there being a "breeder" in nature, there was the struggle for existence - thecreatures who were most fit for their environment would be the individuals that wouldtend to survive, while the less fit would tend to die off. Darwin's theories of evolution and natural selection were influenced in part by ThomasMalthus and Charles Lyell. Darwin was satisfied with the idea of individual struggle, andhis reading of Malthus helped solidify his theory. Darwin was also a follower of Lyell.The uniformitarian view influenced Darwin to see things as they happen today(breeding), which could be seen in nature as an extremely slow natural process as naturalselection in the evolution of species....
