Charles Darwin

Summary

The very essence of instinct is that it's followed independently of reason.

Charles Darwin (1809 - 1882) was an English naturalist renowned for his documentation of Evolution and for his theory of its operation, known as Darwinism. His evolutionary theories, propounded chiefly in two works On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection and The Descent of Man have had a profound influence on subsequent scientific thought.

He (independently of Alfred Russel Wallace) proposed a theory of Evolution by Natural Selection (see Biological Basis of Biodanza).

His work was also influential in the area of Psychosomatic Medicine and Aggression through his work The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (see Psychological Aspects of Biodanza).

Ideas

• Species are related to each other by Common Descent, with the changes from their Common Ancestors being caused by the survival and reproduction of advantageous genetic variants.
• Overpopulation and the resulting shortage of food create the pressure that causes organisms that have advantageous genetic variants to produce a greater number of surviving offspring than those that do not have these variants.
• Man and apes are descended from a common primate ancestor.
• Secondary sexual characteristics have evolved as part of a complex set of reproductive behaviours.
• Darwin was famous for his theory of evolution by Natural Selection.
• He believed that at some important human behaviors were systems that evolved to serve certain functions, eg. the emotion of fear developed to mobilize the animal to deal with dangers.
• Darwin believed that humans evolved from animals and that our emotions were a legacy of our animal prehistory.
• See Evolution of Evolutionary Theory for more detail.