Nature - autonomous learning

the ‘nature’ of geography 53in turn. According to one commentator, the publication of Darwin’s TheOrigin of Species‘caused a greater upheaval in [people’s] . . . thinking than anyother scientific advance since . . . the Renaissance’ (Mayr 1972: 987).Darwin (1809–82) wanted to explain the multitudinous variety of life onearth. Was it a divine invention, as natural theologians believed, or theproduct of something else? And were the differences within and betweenspecies permanent ones? Darwin’s answer to these questions had four mainsources of inspiration. First, his voyage aboard the Beagle in the early 1830shad led him to observe the striking differences, as much as the similarities,among plant, animal and insect species in different parts of the world.Second, his interest in pigeons led him to observe that breeders were ableto alter the physical characteristics of their birds over time through selectivereproduction.Third, Darwin was much influenced by the famous essayof Thomas Malthus (1798) on ‘the principle of population’. Malthusfamously argued that human populations always expand up to and beyondthe resource base available to them; for him this was a ‘natural law’. Finally,Darwin’s reading of Hutton and Lyell persuaded him that the history oflifeforms might be as long as that of landforms.From his expeditionary observations and his studies of pigeon-breedingDarwin derived the metaphor of ‘natural selection’; from Malthus’s workhe derived the idea of the ‘survival of the fittest’; and from Hutton andLyell he derived the idea of ‘deep time’ – the idea that change occurs slowlyover the longue durée. Darwin’s theory of biological evolution saw speciesas interacting with each and their wider environment. Over time, thosespecies best able to adapt to their conditions of existence are most likelyto survive and to produce offspring similarly well adapted.What Darwinshowed was that one need look no further than the interactions betweenorganic forms to explain species diversity. He also showed that, givenenough time, biology was plastic not permanent. In short, The Origin ofSpecies – a book published in numerous editions during the Victorian era– demonstrated that there was an order and direction at work in the naturalworld that could be inferred from empirical observation of species’characteristics. However, contra natural theology, this order and directionwas, in Darwin’s estimation, ‘blind’: it was the unplanned outcome ofcontinuous processes of competition and adaptation.Darwin’s book was about the non-human world, even though it was notlost on him that people are biological, as much as social, animals.‘SocialDarwinism’ was a set of diffuse yet very real beliefs that gained currency