Darwin called such a process artificial, as opposed to natural, selection, but from the flower’s point of view, this is a distinction without a difference: individual plants in which a trait desired by either bees...

In Paley’s famous illustration, the adaptation of all the parts of the watch to the function, or purpose, of showing the time, is held to be evidence that the watch was specially contrived to that...

When I see the moon on a clear night, I do say “blessed be” and I remind myself to be grateful to the universe that I happen to exist in such a lovely and wondrous...

…if an organised body is not in the situation and circumstances best adapted to its sustenance and propagation, then, in conceiving an indefinite variety among the individuals of that species, we must be assured, that,...

soup.” In this primeval soup, by infinite variations of lifeless growth and decay of substances during some billions of years, the way of life was ultimately reached, with its metabolism characterized by selective assimilation and...

This survival of the fittest implies multiplication of the fittest.{The phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ was not originated by Charles Darwin, though he discussed Spencer’s ‘excellent expression’ in a letter to Alfred Russel Wallace (Jul...

…and specimens like this confirmed there had been some kind of divine rule in the universe because no natural selection process was up to the task of creating something like him. This was some god’s,...

The starting point of Darwin’s theory of evolution is precisely the existence of those differences between individual members of a race or species which morphologists for the most part rightly neglect. The first condition necessary,...

Sexual conflict occurs when one mating partner has an opportunity to increase its fitness at a cost to the other partner. On a genetic level, most sexual conflicts are interlocus conflicts that mainly concern the...

First LawIn every animal which has not passed the limit of its development, a more frequent and continuous use of any organ gradually strengthens, develops and enlarges that organ, and gives it a power proportional...

The tendency to variation in living beings, which all admitted as a matter of fact; the selective influence of conditions, which no one could deny to be a matter of fact, when his attention was...

It is difficult to believe in the dreadful but quiet war lurking just below the serene facade of nature.

Evolution is the law of policies: Darwin said it, Socrates endorsed it, Cuvier proved it and established it for all time in his paper on ‘The Survival of the Fittest.’ These are illustrious names, this...

Evolution, thus, is merely contingent on certain processes articulated by Darwin: variation and selection. No longer is a fixed object transformed, as in transformational evolution, but an entirely new start is, so to speak, made...

The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many...

It is not the organs—that is, the character and form of the animal’s bodily parts—that have given rise to its habits and particular structures. It is the habits and manner of life and the conditions...

All organisms vary. It is in the highest degree improbable that any given variety should have exactly the same relations to surrounding conditions as the parent stock. In that case it is either better fitted...