📺 Crash Course: Darwin’s Theory of Evolution
The Crash Course history of science series has a great episode on the development, meaning and influence of Darwin’s (and Wallace’s) theory of evolution by natural selection. Alfred Wallace was essentially a co-discoverer of one of the major drivers of evolutionary change, but Darwin published first, so he typically gets all of the credit. Well he did also write a classic of scientific literature elaborating and defending this theory On The Origin of Species. Check it out.
I loved watching this video because I have’ talked about Darwin in a while and this refreshed my memory about what he did in his time. Like going to South America and learning about the art of natural selection. I also liked how Green also brought up the topic of survival of the fittest, meaning only the strongest mammal will survive.
I founnd it really interesting that darwins theory of evolution was so accepted when It was released, especially since there is a large amount of people today who dont believe in it. I wonder how It would have been received had Darwin talked about human evolution in his theory?
Evolution is a topic that has always interested me. Darwin looking at fossils and connecting the dots to them being ancestors of current-day species definitely opened some doors to how we look at organisms today. His view on the relationship of different regions and how species vary on demographics also intrigues me.
This crash course was helpful and made things more clear for me, I was always a little confused on Darwins theory but after this video and the past article I read it is all more clear. I wonder where science would be today if we did not have Darwins theory.
I love the natural selection catchphrase “survival of the fittest” but I think that Darwin should have changed it to “most adapted” or something of the sort to avoid several misconceptions about natural selection. When I think of the phrase “survival of the fittest” I think of something or someone that is super strong and/or in shape. However, being super-strong and in shape does not necessarily mean that you will survive.
I enjoyed this because i remember learning about the different species of finch when i was younger and this video made it clearer and went into further depth of the topic.