The Invisible Mentor

Posts Tagged ‘Origin of Species’

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This is what we talked about on The Invisible Mentor Blog this week: The Restorer by Amanda Stevens, Charles Darwin and Interview with Tracy Matthewman.

Mondays at the Salon

Recently I attended a workshop titled Going Beyond Google offered by SCIP (Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals) led by Sean Campbell of Cascade Insights. We have become so dependent on Google that we seldom look elsewhere to find information. This webinar was a great reminder to me about the hidden web, and I picked up some great tips that I’d like to share.

Going Beyond Google for Research

Booked on Tuesdays

As I was reading Amanda Stevens’ The Restorer, I kept on asking myself, “Why am I reading this, it’s going to give me bloody nightmares,” and in fact I had nightmares after I finished reading it. I completed the book and am looking forward to the second instalment which is coming out in November. Though this book is a work of fiction, it taught me lessons and made me think. We have rules that we live by, whether they are rules imposed on us, or rules we made for ourselves. But what happens, when the rules become outdated? Or only some of them work? What do you do then?

Review: Escape Reading Has its Place – Review of The Restorer by Amanda Stevens

Wisdom Wednesdays

For Charles Robert Darwin, an English naturalist, clergyman and professor of biology, John Stevens Henslow gave him his big break when he was recommended for the position of an unpaid naturalist aboard the HMS Beagle expedition to chart coastlines in South America and other areas of the Pacific. That one big break helped to chart Darwin’s life.

Charles Robert Darwin, Naturalist Who Presented the Origin of Species Theory 

Perspective Thursdays and Workshop Fridays

This week we featured Tracy Matthewman, Internet Marketer and Social Media Trainer. Mentors have played a critical role in Matthewman’s life, one suggested that she work less hours, which she did and decreased the amount of stress she faced in her life. Here are Part One and Part Two of Tracy Matthewman’s interview.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Image via Wikipedia

Take a moment and think about who gave you your big break? For Charles Robert Darwin, an English naturalist, clergyman and professor of biology, John Stevens Henslow gave him his big break when he was recommended for the position of an unpaid naturalist aboard the HMS Beagle expedition to chart coastlines in South America and other areas of the Pacific. That one big break given to Darwin helped to chart his life.

Name: Charles Robert Darwin

Birth Date: February 1809 – April 1882

Job Functions: English Naturalist

Fields: Natural History, Geology, Evolution

Known For: The Origin of Species

Charles Robert Darwin was born in the early 19^th century in Shrewsbury, England, the fifth child of Robert and Susannah Darwin. Both his father, and grandfather, Erasmus Darwin were prominent physicians. His mother, who was the daughter of the famous porcelain maker Josiah Wedgwood, died when Darwin was only eight.

Darwin showed an early interest in natural sciences, especially geology. When he was nine, Darwin attended Shrewsbury School but was not a very good student. In 1825, his father recommended that he study medicine at the University of Edinburg, but Darwin’s earlier failure to achieve academic distinction followed him there. “At Edinburgh, Darwin collected animals in tidal pools, trawled for oysters with Newhaven fishermen to obtain specimens, and made two small discoveries which he incorporated in papers read before the Plinian Society. He put forth no “strenuous effort” to learn medicine.”

His father then suggested that he study theology at the Christ’s College at the University of Cambridge in 1828. While at the University of Cambridge, instead of devoting time to clerical studies, Darwin often whiled the time away pursuing his passion for natural sciences. He “developed into an ardent entomologist, particularly devoted to collecting beetles; he had the satisfaction of seeing one of his rare specimens published in James Francis Stephens’ Illustration of British Insects.” Throughout young adulthood, Darwin enjoyed hunting, shooting, and specimen collection.

Darwin’s cousin, William Darwin Fox an entomologist, guided him, and introduced him to clergyman and biologist, John Stevens Henslow who became his tutor in mathematics and theology, and mentor in his personal studies in botany, geology, and zoology. Henslow advised Darwin to join an expedition and delay his appointment to the Church of England. This turned out to be solid advice for Darwin.

A few months after graduation, on December 27, 1831, when Darwin was 22, he embarked on an unpaid position, as part of an expedition team aboard the British survey ship HMS Beagle, headed for the coasts of South America, the Galapagos Islands, New Zealand and Tasmania. Originally, the expedition team was chartered for three years, but Darwin remained a part of the ship’s crew for five years. He was tasked with undertaking the geological, zoological, and botanical side of the official naval survey.

During the voyage from December 27, 1831 to October 2, 1836, Darwin spent 535 days at sea and roughly 1200 on land. On the expedition, he had the first volume of the English geologist’s, Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology, which directed his observations of the geological structure of Cape Verde Islands. But some of Darwin’s observations in South America did not fit with Lyell’s theories.

Darwin kept his field observations in notebooks with the specimens listed serially and their place and time of collection documented. His notes included details on flora, fauna, geological formation and ecology. In South America, Darwin paid attention to changes in the land brought about by earthquakes and volcanoes. On the 10 Galapagos islands Darwin observed and noted that the islands shared many species of flora and fauna in common, but each island also displayed distinct variations within the same group of organisms. Over the upcoming years and when he returned to England, Darwin pondered on the reasons for the variations.

Upon his return to England in 1836, Darwin organized his notes. He also became good friends with Lyell whose work, Principles of Geology helped to direct him; and Darwin later became good friends with botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker, and biologist Thomas Henry Huxley. Both Lyell and Hooker were extremely helpful and supportive to Darwin, and Huxley became known as “Darwin’s Bulldog” for his advocacy of Darwin’s theory of evolution. Lyell welcomed Darwin’s new research on coral reefs and encouraged him to publish other studies from his voyages.

Darwin was elected a fellow of the Geological Society in 1836, elected to the Athenaeum, the exclusive club for men distinguished in literature, art, or science in 1838, and became a member of the Royal Society in 1839. That same year, he published his Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by H.M.S. Beagle.

Darwin had delayed publishing any of his research for a few years as he looked for explanations for evolution to account for the variations in species he had noted on the expedition. In 1838, Darwin found what he was looking for in Thomas Malthus’s 1798 work, An Essay on the Principle of Population. In the essay, Malthus was concerned with overpopulation resulting in famine, and the possible competition for food which could ensue. Darwin surmised that in the struggle for existence, “favourable variations would tend to be preserved and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result would be the formation of new species. Here then I had at last a theory by which to work.”

He confided his theory to Lyell and Hooker who urged him to publish his views, but as a very detailed-oriented person, Darwin wanted to further work through his theory, and at the time he was only half-way through his book. In the summer of 1858, Darwin received an essay from Alfred Russell Wallace containing ideas that were very similar to his. Wallace, an English naturist writing from the East Indian Archipelago was asking Darwin to appraise his work. It turns out that Wallace had also read Malthus’ essay.

Once again, Darwin turned to his close friends Lyell and Hooker and submitted his dilemma. He wrote, “Your words have come true with a vengeance – that I should be forestalled.” His friends proposed that Darwin and Wallace collaborate and do a joint announcement. They publicly declared their hypothesis by submitting the paper, On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection to the Linnean Society.

On November 24, 1859, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life over 500 pages in length appeared. The entire first edition of 1,250 copies was sold out on the day of publication. There was public outcry, but Darwin already had friends like Thomas Henry Huxley, also known as “Darwin’s Bulldog” who fiercely defended his ideas of evolution. The Origin of Species “stimulated a general participation by intellectuals of varied casts and backgrounds, some of whom were poorly qualified to join the battle. Philosophers, theologians, biologists, geologists, anthropologists, sociologists, even politicians and men of letters, joined in the melee, with victors and vanquished almost indistinguishable.”

Interestingly enough, Darwin was not the first to propose that species could change over time. For instance, Robert Hooke postulated that fossils could be the remains of vanished ancient species; Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck held that species could evolve through the inheritance of acquired characteristics; and Darwin’s own grandfather Erasmus Darwin had suggested that species might be developing over time by passing changes on through reproduction.

After being a mediocre student all his life, Darwin found success when he focused on his strengths and passions. He kept notebooks, always documented his work, and had a network of people with whom he shared his ideas. And it’s also important to document your work because at any point in time people in different places share the same ideas.

Other Publications

Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by H.M.S. Beagle (1839)

The Voyage of the Beagle (1840)

The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs (1842)

A Monograph of the Cirripedia (1851, 1854)

The Descent of Man (London 1871)

The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872)

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Works Cited/Referenced

Encyclopedia of Population

Encyclopedia of World Biography

Macmillan Encyclopedia of Death and Dying

Encyclopedia of Science, Technology and Ethics

International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences

New Catholic Encyclopedia

World of Earth Science

Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology

Science and Its Times

UXL Encyclopedia of World Biography

Encyclopedia of European Social History

How to Read a Book, pp393-395

Quantum Leaps: 100 Scientists Who Changed the World, Jon Balchin

Books that Changed the World, Andrew Taylor

In what novel ways have you used information that you came across? What’s one concept that you discovered that has served you well? For me, it’s the creativity model presented in the Art of Thought by Graham Wallas. While conducting research on biomimicry, I came across information about a three-phase, 14-step process designed by Peter Floyd and Stephen R. Grossman that presents animal adaptations as models for problem solving. What got me excited was I had already decided that I was going to look at the idea of Evolution on this blog, which is one of the 50 ideas presented in 50 Big Ideas You Really Need to Know About by Ben Dupré, and here were two guys who are using Darwin’s three-step process for evolutionary change: extinction, mutation and selection. Floyd and Grossman have taken the three-steps and broken them down into a problem solving model. I thought that was simply brilliant, but I know that you can create a model that’s equally brilliant.

As presented by Ben Dupré, the idea of Evolution is a short read and only four pages in length. He talks about the origin of species, natural selection and the fifth ape.

“In the Origin, Charles Darwin succinctly summarizes natural selection as follows: ‘As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it very however slightly in any manner profitable, to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected . From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.’”

From the information presented in Dupré’s idea of evolution, I have extracted three great ideas that are very useful in a personal context:

1. In nature, resources such as food and mates are limited, so there will always be competition for access to them
2. Some people will be better equipped than others to prevail life’s struggles, and it is these individuals  that will live longer and produce more offspring
3. By minute and gradual changes over innumerable generations, animals and plants become better adapted to their surroundings; some species or kinds disappear, to be replaced  by others that have proved more successful for existence.

Possible Interpretation of These Ideas

• In flattened organizational structures, there are limited opportunities for promotions, therefore those expecting to excel must differentiate themselves and become more valuable to their clients, both internal and external
• The more skilled you become at problem solving, the better equipped you become at overcoming everyday challenges
• The more change resilient you are, and the more more receptive you are to ambiguity, the more longevity you’ll enjoy in the workplace
• Small and incremental changes lead to big changes in your life
• The more adaptable you are to change, the more success you’ll enjoy

As a professional, how can you use the idea of evolution to succeed in work and life? What changes can you make in your life to give you an edge?

Why evolution is one of the 50 ideas you really need to know about

Today you have to change or become extinct, so you have to mutate to be selected, in what ways can you change? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.

Photo and Video Credit: Apture