Darwin's Theory Of Natural Selection: Chapter Summary Of Chapters

Summary: Chapter One The most consistent aspect about life is that change is always occurring; it is the one thing that we can count on. This seems to be the main theme throughout chapter one. The Chapter opens up with a story about the 2011 earthquake that caused catastrophic damage to Japan and makes the point that when something dramatic occurs in nature, we often tend to think of it as a momentary lapse of normalcy within the environment and that things will go back to their normal stable stage. However, these horrific natural disasters are the norm, and we should view them in that way. While there are other ways to make this point other than referring to natural disasters, the opening of chapter one unmistakably makes the point that change is the only constant we can count on. With the theme of “change” on the horizon, we began to read about Charles Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection. Darwin speculated that species came from a simple form and became more complex over time. According to Darwin, if the earth had, indeed, been around for millions of years, then there was no reason to think that the complex species that roam the earth today simply appeared in their current form. Darwin believed that natural selection explained how creatures starting as simple organisms changed into the complex species that are living today. His theory was

Since the evolution of a species and its adaptive behaviors takes many generations for significant change to occur, there is the risk that a species’ environment will change rapidly as is the case with a natural disaster. When the environment is altered in a drastic way very quickly, there is no time for the species to adapt and, thus, may go into extinction. These abrupt changes may not allow for the time needed in order for natural selection to