1918: Neo-Darwinism - The book of science

Neo-Darwinism
On being
Populations
Commentary

Ronald Fisher, John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, Sewall Wright, Theodosius Dobzhansky evolution

Neo-Darwinism

Darwin’s natural selection
was a difficult pill to swallow.
The reasons it works
weren’t discovered until later.
Mendelian genetics, genetic
mutation, survivability, sexual
preference, and geographic isolation
can give reproductive advantages
to help a population of creatures
compete and adapt
and help explain
the origin of species.

On being

On being near enough to others.
On being able to help your own.
On being a little different.
On being selective.
On being helped.
On being lucky.
On being numerous.
On being sexually active.
On being of the same species.
On being sensible enough to fit in.

Populations

As an individual with a bad long-term memory,
I find it difficult to imagine evolution of populations.
But evolution works for only populations,
isolated ones, over reaches of time too vast for me.
Doesn’t one theory of capitalism claim
self-interest benefits everyone in the long run?
Cutthroats and pickpockets, robber barons and other
monopolists, embezzlers, pyramid schemers,
pimps and drug dealers, lying salesmen,
factory farmers who feed antibiotics to their hogs,
and companies that add toxins to baby formulas
have taught us that self-interest is often not enlightened.
What did Whitman mean in his Song of Myself
“every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you”?

Athough it is unrelated to Neo-Darwinism, I highly recommend J. B. S. Haldane’s essay “On Being the Right Size,” which describes relations between the sizes and the biological systems of organisms.

The history of evolution, since it deals with our own origin as well as the origin of all life on Earth, has been subject to much prejudice, and has been confused by many poorly-justified notions, but these scientists—Fisher, Haldane, Wright, Dobzhansky, and others—studied evolution and genetics mathematically and found that Mendel’s laws of inheritance when applied to populations permitted the perpetuation of natural variations and Darwin’s natural selection as a driver of evolution.