Page 21 - RD (English) - Sample

the orIgIn of SpecIeS 13

same species. Individuals with advantageous traits live longer and pro-
duce more offspring than those without them. When these more adept
individuals reproduce, they pass on their advantageous traits to their
offspring; concomittantly, the less adept fail to pass on their less advan-
tageous traits because they often fail to survive long enough to repro-
duce, or they manage to produce significantly fewer offspring than
more favored individuals. Gradually, the species comes to contain only
individuals with the advantageous traits; those traits that disadvantage
the species become extinct. This process of “natural selection” causes
a species to develop in particular directions and can eventually lead to
the development of a new species.
To support the idea of natural selection, Darwin relied heavily, in
his research, on the artificial breeding of plants and animals. We only
have to look around the agricultural world to see how breeding for spe-
cific traits can appear to change one species almost entirely. Breeding
dogs has resulted in both Great Danes and poodles, with every con-
ceivable variety in between. Darwin was himself an expert breeder of
pigeons and argued that if man can cause sweeping changes in a spe-
cies through artificial selection after only a few generations, then nature
must have been able to accomplish incredible feats after eons. He felt it
was conceivable that anything could happen through natural selection,
including that humans and all other species could gradually develop
from previously existing species, which themselves had evolved from
other species, which had developed in their ancient histories from the
simplest of microbes.

The Downfall of Darwinism
Darwin’s theory is undoubtedly simple and elegant. But is it true? This,
of course, was the central question during Darwin’s lifetime, and it
remains the central question to this day. Considering the enormous
impact Darwin’s theory has had over the last 150 years, many people
may be surprised to learn that within decades of its being proposed
scientists had come to see that it was obviously not true. Today, virtu-
ally no serious scientist believes in Darwin’s theory as he proposed it.