Before & after 19th century emergence of biology to replace natural history.

Environment shapes organic life as living creatures affect the conditions of water, energy air and land as the surrounding environment.

 "Darwinism...we mean evolution by (means of) natural selection"

 Darwin replaced earlier belief with at least five theories the last of which is natural selection.

pp. 36-37.

  Examples:

1    fossils of trilobites
2    finches (mocking birds) , tortoises, pines
3    manatees, sea turtles, mangrove forests
4    Mt. St. Helens, White Pine Forest succession to beech & maple hardwoods
5    bacterial and insect resistance 

1) -- abundant genetic variation every generation;

2) -- limited survival of the offspring who reproduce.

 "mechanism of adaptive change"

harmony and adaptability of the organic world 68

 Is it "an essentially mechanical explanation." ?

"Yes, in that it is a material and physical examination of natural change and variation and is not metaphysical.
He accounts for variation in terms of "survival of the fortunate."
 

Darwin's ideas about ethology, ecology, & evolution form the heart of the modern biological synthesis that he derived in part from Paley, Lyell, and Malthus.

Malthus
 

Differentiation of characteristics in breeding populations and their offspring arises from:

All individuals convey variation +
reproductive success to selection from among the survivors +
abundant offspring not all variants are "hardy" in that they reproduce =

New generations with variations about the norms that are evident in the parent organisms.

p. 69.

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Population thinking: is the capacity to think about fungus, animals, bacteria, and plants as not types of fixed (unchanging) kinds of creatures, but as a set of potentially breeding individuals such that interbreeding or even asexual reproduction conveys dvantages and disadvantages on the subsequent descendents of a breeding pair or reproductive individual. Thus fertility replaces the belief that like produces like as a focal point of comprehending how living organisms convey traits from parents to children and grand children.
 

Analog to animal and plant breeders is:

• artificial selection to natural selection
  
• humans select humans do not select
  
• "breeding pairs" are selected vs. Differential survival rates of varied and numerous offspring.

key elements	meaning	examples
ethology,	animal behavior	learning, instinct & mating
ecology, &	animal or plant interdependency	who & what eat one another
evolution	animal, fungus, or plant descent	common ancestry
Environs shape life:	The mouth parts of adapted creatures are selected for by surviving on widely available food sources.
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	Literate
	There is no definitive answer to whether or not Darwin was externally influenced by his times (zeitgeist) and what he read, or was he influenced internally by his method of evaluating evidence he collected by contrasting and comparing his findings with practitioners and writers. 69. After 1833-36 voyage he was, with some help of ornithologist John Gould in 1837, a determined "evolutionist" .... Gould upon reviewing the mocking birds Darwin had gathered from different islands in the Galapagos concluded that there were three different species where Darwin had originally conjectured there were only one species with three varieties.   What this meant was he had altered the status of human beings in the worldview of creation, natural history and biological thought.  July, 1837, in Darwin's worldview nature and human order were altered: Static becomes dynamic and one consequence was that humans were placed "into the stream of animal evolution." Nature no longer needed a creator who intervened to inspire new forms of evolution. Ernst Mayr One Long Argument (1991) Cambridge: Harvard U. Press. pages: 36. 37. 54-60. 69.

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