Charles Darwin's Theory Of Sexual Selection

Charles Darwin’s theorising about evolution through his theory of natural selection heavily contributed to the development of population thinking in biological enquiry, which would eventually replace essentialism as a dominant mode of enquiry. That one approach was replaced by another suggests that these epistemologies are incompatible, however the mechanism of Darwin’s theory of sexual selection suggests otherwise. Essentialist conceptions of the sexes pervade Darwin’s theory and correspondence with other biological researchers, and an analysis of these demonstrates not only the existence of essentialism, but the necessity of it to Darwin’s theory. Darwin’s commitment to an essentialist conception of the sexes further indicate the necessity

Essentialism and population thinking are generally conceived of as mutually exclusive ways of theorising in the biological sciences, particularly in evolutionary biology. These methods of theorising have been described as so fundamentally different that they have been deemed epistemically incompatible by definition (Mayr, 1975, pp. 326-327). Broadly, essentialism is the belief that things or types have necessary and sufficient conditions, or essences, which define the type and render it fundamentally distinct from other types (Sober, 1980, p. 332). Essentialism can be taxonomic and define essences typologically by using an archetype or transcendent, fixed ideas about the type, or essentialism can be explanatory and define essences by using the properties and functions of individuals within the type (Walsh, 2006, pp. 431-432). While copious variation in definitions of essentialism exists, this variation consists largely in how the essences themselves are defined. That types have essences is the

326; Walsh, 2006, p. 431). Darwin’s contribution to the biological sciences is framed in terms of the mechanism he developed to account for how organisms evolve and in doing so provided an account of the changes that occur in large groups of organisms over time; Darwin replaced essentialism with population thinking in his biology, and was the first to do so (Mayr, 1975, p. 326). Darwin applied population thinking to biology specifically by formulating his theory of natural selection as a mechanism to account for change in groups of individuals over time (Darwin, 1859, pp. 102-103). His theory of natural selection synthesised three observations regarding groups of organisms in nature: that variation exists in nature, that traits are heritable and that variation in traits yield reproductive quantity differences (Darwin, 1859, p. 86). Accepting these foundational principles, Darwin asserts that it is possible for groups of organisms to change and diversify over time in a systematic way and uses this to argue against the independent creation of species with defining essences, instead bringing attention to a continuum in nature and similarities in populations (Darwin, 1859, pp. 128-129). Darwin’s tree of life as presented in On the Origin of Species by Means of