n has been paid tribute to, however Darwin's findings marked a revolution of thought and social upheaval unprecedented in Western consciousness challenging not only the scientific community, but the prominent religious institution as well. Another revolution in science of a lesser nature was !also spawned by Darwin, namely the remarkable simplicity with which his major work The Origin of the Species was written - straightforward English, anyone capable of a logical argument could follow it - also unprecedented in the scientific community (compare this to Isaac Newton's horribly complex work taking the scientific community years to interpret2). Evolutionary and revolutionary in more than one sense of each word. Every theory mentioned in the following reading, in fact falls back to Darwinism.DARWINIAN THEORY OF BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTIONModern conception of species and the idea of organic evolution had been part of Western consciousness since the mid-17th century (a la John Ray)3, but wide-range acceptance of this idea, beyond the bounds of the scientific community, did not arise until Darwin published his findings in 19584. Darwin first developed his theory of biological evolution in 1938, following his five-year circumglobal voyage in the southern tropics (as a naturalist) on the H.M.S. Beagle, and perusal of one Thomas Malthus' An Essay on the Principle of Population which proposed that environmental factors, such as famine and disease limited human population growth5. This had direct bearing on Darwin's theory of natural selection, furnishing him with an enhanced conceptualization of the "survival of the fittest" - the competition among individuals of the same species for limited resources - the "missing piece" to his puzzle6. For fear of contradicting his father's beliefs, Darwin did not publish his find!ings until he was virtually forced after Alfred Wallace sent him a short paper almos t identical to his own extensive works on the theory...
