According to Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, characteristics such as camouflage that help an animal to survive will tend to evolve in any population.

According to Charles Darwin's 1859 theory of natural selection, features such as camouflage evolved by providing individual animals with a reproductive advantage, enabling them to leave more offspring, on average, than other members of the same species.

With the publication of Darwin's theory of evolution in 1859, the concept of a " natural system " of taxonomy gained a theoretical basis, and the idea was born that groups used in a system of classification should represent branches on the evolutionary tree of life.

Darwin's daughter Henrietta ( Etty ) wrote to her father: " Is it fair that Lyell always calls your theory a modification of Lamarck's?

However, unlike Johnson, Hodge confined the term to exclude those like Asa Gray who combined Christian faith with support for Darwin's natural selection theory, before answering the question posed in the book's title by concluding: " It is Atheism.

This last aspect of Erewhon reveals the influence of Charles Darwin's evolution theory ; Butler had read On the Origin of Species soon after it was published in 1859.

: I regret that reviewers have in some cases been inclined to treat the chapters on Machines as an attempt to reduce Mr. Darwin's theory to an absurdity.

Haeckel promoted and popularized Charles Darwin's work in Germany and developed the controversial recapitulation theory (" ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny ") claiming that an individual organism's biological development, or ontogeny, parallels and summarizes its species ' evolutionary development, or phylogeny.

One of Haeckel's earliest proponents was Carl Gegenbaur at the University of Jena ( 1865 – 1873 ), during which both men were absorbing the impact of Darwin's theory.

Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was appealing to some economists, sociologists and political scientists ( most notably Walter Bagehot and William Graham Sumner ) who adapted and rationalized the invisible hand by incorporating the popular idea of the survival of the fittest.

Based on principles laid out by William Smith almost a hundred years before the publication of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, the principles of succession were developed independently of evolutionary thought.

" Darwin's theory of evolution challenges the teleological argument by postulating an alternative explanation to that of an intelligent designer — namely, evolution by natural selection.

* 1858 – Charles Darwin receives a paper from Alfred Russel Wallace that includes nearly identical conclusions about evolution as Darwin's own, prompting Darwin to publish his theory.

In natural philosophy he asserted Charles Darwin's theory of evolution unswervingly and set about to prove Darwin's hypothesis that humans arose in Africa.

# A scientific theory may not contain any theoretical terms ( an example of this is Darwin's original theory of evolution ).

* 1925 – Scopes Trial: John T. Scopes is indicted for teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

The concept of natural selection was originally developed in the absence of a valid theory of heredity ; at the time of Darwin's writing, nothing was known of modern genetics.

Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection undermined religious certainty and the idea of human uniqueness.

Social Darwinism is a social theory which holds that Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is a model, not only for the development of biological traits in a population, but also as an application for human social institutions — the existing social institutions being implicitly declared as normative.

The concept of natural selection was originally developed in the absence of a valid theory of heredity ; at the time of Darwin's writing, nothing was known of modern genetics.

Darwin's theory of natural selection as a mechanism of evolutionary change of organisms is utilized to describe the development of human societies and particularly the development of mental and physical traits of members of such societies.

While often seen as rejecting Darwin's theory of branching evolution for a more linear Lamarckian " biogenic law " of progressive evolution, this is not accurate: Haeckel used the Lamarckian picture to describe the ontogenic and phylogenic history of the individual species, but agreed with Darwin about the branching nature of all species from one, or a few, original ancestors.

The ecology and evolution of Darwin's Finches.

Lyell was also a friend of Darwin's closest colleagues, Hooker and Huxley, but unlike them he struggled to square his religious beliefs with evolution.

Lyell's acceptance of natural selection, Darwin's proposed mechanism for evolution, was equivocal, and came in the tenth edition of Principles.

In Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Dennett writes that evolution can account for the origin of morality.

Darwin's five theories of evolution.

Darwin's book did not address the question of human evolution, saying only that " Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history ".

The greatest change was the widespread acceptance of evolution as the mechanism of biological diversity and species formation, following the 1859 publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species.

Agassiz is remembered today for his theories on ice ages, and for his resistance to Charles Darwin's theories on evolution, which he kept up his entire life.

Groups opposing certain generally accepted scientific views on evolution, second-hand smoke, AIDS, and other politically contentious scientific matters argue that PC is responsible for the failure of their perspectives to receive a fair public hearing ; thus, in Lamarck's Signature: How Retrogenes are Changing Darwin's Natural Selection Paradigm, Assoc.

The second important process is the theory of evolution by Darwin in mid-century ( which decisively influenced the work of Ratzel, who had academic training as a zoologist and was a follower of Darwin's ideas ) which meant an important impetus in the development of Biogeography.

Reviewing the film for Scientific American, John Rennie says " The term is a curious throwback, because in modern biology almost no one relies solely on Darwin's original ideas ...

In the last chapter of Darwin's Black Box, Behe goes on to explain his view that irreducible complexity is evidence for intelligent design.

Darwin himself only ventured to propound his theories in a biological sense, and it is other thinkers and theorists who have applied Darwin's model to unequal endowments of human ambition.

Following Darwin's primary usage the term is often used to refer to both the evolutionary consequence of blind selection and to its mechanisms.

In his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, philosopher Daniel Dennett is especially critical of Gould's presentation of punctuated equilibrium.

" Thus punctuationism in general is consistent with Darwin's conception of evolution.

In the early 20th century, many anthropologists accepted and taught the belief that biologically distinct races were isomorphic with distinct linguistic, cultural, and social groups, while popularly applying that belief to the field of eugenics, in conjunction with a practice that is now called scientific racism. Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was co-opted by the budding eugenics movement to justify systematic population and racial planning in the early 20th century.

This plate is from Darwin's Descent of Man, with the male at top, female at bottom.

The Examiner review of 3 December 1859 commented, " Much of Mr. Darwin's volume is what ordinary readers would call ' tough reading ;' that is, writing which to comprehend requires concentrated attention and some preparation for the task.

Charles Darwin's theory of how evolution works (" By Means of Natural Selection ") is explicitly competitive (" survival of the fittest "), Malthusian (" struggle for existence "), even gladiatorial (" nature, red in tooth and claw ").

Darwin's explanation of how preferential survival of the slightest benefits can lead to advanced forms is the most important explanatory principle in biology, and extremely powerful in many other fields.

The Social Darwinists ' view is derived from Charles Darwin's interpretation of evolution by natural selection, which is explicitly competitive (" survival of the fittest "), Malthusian (" struggle for existence "), even gladiatorial (" red in tooth and claw "), and permeated by the Victorian laissez-faire ethos of Darwin and his disciples ( such as T. H. Huxley and Herbert Spencer ).