It wasn't until the younger Darwin was back in England and read Thomas Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population (which proposed that increases in food supply could never keep up with population growth for mathematical reasons) that the idea began to percolate through his mind that life is a perpetual struggle and that natural selection was the means by which some species prospered while others failed. Specifically what Darwin saw was that all organisms competed for resources, and those that had some innate advantage would prosper and pass on that advantage to their offspring. By such means would species continuously improve.
直到年輕的達爾文回到英格蘭并讀到托馬斯·馬爾薩斯的《人口論》（認為呈算術級增長的食物供給永遠也滿足不了呈幾何級增長的人口）之后，進化論的觀念才開始在他的心中萌生。他意識到，生命是一個持續不斷的競爭的過程，自然選擇決定了某些物種繁榮，某些物種衰敗。說得具體一些，達爾文觀察到，所有的生物都為了爭奪資源而相互競爭，那些天生具有優勢的生物才會繁榮昌盛，并且將這種優勢遺傳給他們的后代。通過這種方式，物種持續不斷地得到了改進。
It seems an awfully simple idea — it is an awfully simple idea — but it explained a great deal, and Darwin was prepared to devote his life to it. "How stupid of me not to have thought of it!" T. H. Huxley cried upon reading On the Origin of Species. It is a view that has been echoed ever since.
這似乎是一種再簡單不過的看法——這確實也是一個十分簡單的看法，但是它解釋了太多的問題，而達爾文準備將他的一生奉獻給這種理論。在閱讀《物種起源》時，T.H.赫胥黎曾喊著說：“我怎么這么愚蠢，竟然沒有想到這一點！”從那以后，這種感嘆聲就一直不絕于耳。
Interestingly, Darwin didn't use the phrase "survival of the fittest" in any of his work (though he did express his admiration for it). The expression was coined five years after the publication of On the Origin of Species by Herbert Spencer in Principles of Biology in 1864. Nor did he employ the word evolution in print until the sixth edition of Origin (by which time its use had become too widespread to resist), preferring instead "descent with modification." Nor, above all, were his conclusions in any way inspired by his noticing, during his time in the Galapagos Islands, an interesting diversity in the beaks of finches.
有趣的是，在他的所有著作里，達爾文并沒有使用“最適應者生存”這個詞（雖然他確實對這個詞由衷地贊賞）。它是1864年由赫伯特·斯賓塞在他的《生物學原理》一書里創造的，那是在《物種起源》發表5年以后。達爾文也沒有使用“進化”這個詞（那時這個詞已經用得很廣泛，有極大的誘惑力），而是代之以“后代漸變”。直到《物種起源》第6次印刷的時候，他才開始使用這個詞。尤其重要的是，他的結論也絕不是他在加拉帕戈斯群島期間注意到那里的效舌鶇的嘴多種多樣，受到了啟發才得出來的。
來源:可可英語 http://www.ccdyzl.cn/Article/201905/584635.shtml
評論
打印
