Darwin's Struggle - The Evolution of the Origin of Species

It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

--Charles Darwin, On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray. [1st edition] published November 24, 1859

Today on Cosmic Visions we commemorate the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s landmark book “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life” with the wonderful BBC documentary “Darwin's Struggle - The Evolution of the Origin of Species.”

This stunning documentary tells the little-known story of how Darwin came to write his great masterpiece.

On the Origin of Species, is a book which explains the wonderful variety of life as emerging out of death and the struggle of existence by means of a process he called Natural Selection.

Natural selection is the processes by which heritable traits that make it more likely for an organism to survive and successfully reproduce to become more common in a population over successive generations. It is a key mechanism of evolution.

In the twenty years he took to develop this brilliant idea into a revolutionary book, Darwin went through a personal struggle every bit as turbulent as that of the natural world he observed. Fortunately, he left us an extraordinary record of his brilliant insights, observations of nature, and touching expressions of love and affection for those around him.

Darwin also wrote frank accounts of family tragedies, physical illnesses and moments of self-doubt, as he laboured towards publication of the book that would change the way we see the world. The story is told with the benefit of Darwin's secret notes and correspondence, enhanced by natural history filming, powerful imagery from the time and contributions from leading contemporary biographers and scientists.

Author's Note: The complete works of Charles Darwin, including the first edition of On the Origin of Species, are available online for your reading pleasure.

Darwin's Struggle - The Evolution of the Origin of Species

The Voyage of Charles Darwin Episodes Two and Three

Tuesday November 24th, 2009 marks the hundred fiftieth anniversary of Charles Darwin’s publication of his master work “On the Origin of Species”. Today on Cosmic Visions we continue our commemoration of the bicentennial of Charles Darwin’s birth and his life and achievements by joining him on his historic five year voyage aboard the HMS Beagle with the second and third installments of the wonderful television series “The Voyage of Charles Darwin” produced by the BBC in 1978.

The Voyage of Charles Darwin - Episode 2


Watch The Voyage of Charles Darwin (Episode 2) in Educational | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

The Voyage of Charles Darwin - Episode 3


Watch The Voyage of Charles Darwin (Episode 3) in Educational | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

The Voyage of Charles Darwin - Episode 1

Tuesday November 24th, 2009 marks the hundred fiftieth anniversary of Charles Darwin’s publication of his master work “On the Origin of Species”. Today on Cosmic Visions we continue our year long celebration of the life and achievements of Charles Darwin by joining him on his historic five year voyage aboard the HMS Beagle in this wonderful television series produced by the BBC in 1978.

Darwin’s five year voyage aboard the HMS Beagle was an odyssey through time as well as space for it led Darwin to discover the principle mechanism that has shaped and sculpted every life form that has graced our world across the eons of life’s existence on our planet.

The Voyage of Charles Darwin - Episode 1


Watch The Voyage of Charles Darwin (Episode 1) in Educational | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

The Real Neanderthal Man

Today on Cosmic visions we will take a journey through time and visit Europe during the last ice age and encounter a remarkable group of people.

Some forty two thousand years ago, the only living humans in Europe made clothes, educated their young, made tools. But they were not us. Now twenty first century science can reveal exactly how they lived, the dangers they faced and the communities they made in the Neander valley of Germany.

In 1856, two workers found sixteen bones in a limestone quarry in the Neander Valley, east of Düsseldorf. It was originally thought the bones belonged to a cave bear, but they were subsequently found to be the remains of an early human quite distinct and different from our own species.

Now more than one hundred and fifty years after their discovery these bones along with recently discovered bone fragments associated with the original fossil finds reveal some remarkable details concerning the life of this individual.

And, with the aid of DNA samples recovered from the original fossils we are beginning to build a genetic library that will shed light on how closely related the Neanderthal species was to our own. This genetic research poses another outstanding possibility. Could we one day resurrect this individual and his contemporaries by cloning them?

These and other recent discoveries paint a totally different and more humane portrait concerning this man and his contemporaries. A portrait that highlights some remarkable facts concerning Neanderthal man’s tool manufacturing technology, his social organization and his spiritual beliefs.

What Darwin Didn't Know

A hundred and fifty years ago Charles Darwin published his master work on the origin of species. His explanation of the why there is so much diversity of life on Earth was so seductive, and so simple that it seems obvious today.

Anyone who is serious about science takes evolution for granted. But it's extraordinary that we do, because Darwin's theory was riddled with holes. It contained, as he freely admitted, much speculation and yet he had no doubt that future generations would complete his work and demonstrate the essential truth of his vision, and for a hundred and fifty years that is what scientist have been doing.

Now as we approach the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s seminal work “On the Origin of Species” on 24th November, 1859, twenty-first century science is providing the evidence to fill the holes in Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. The evolution of life on Earth is no longer a matter of speculation but a well supported fact.

What Darwin Didn't Know

Evolution - What about GOD?

Of all species, we alone attempt to explain who we are and how we came to be. This final show explores the struggle between science and religion. Through the personal stories of students and teachers, it offers the view that they are compatible.

Today join us on Cosmic Visions as we continue our year long celebration of the life and work of Charles Darwin and explore the conflict between Science and Faith with the last installment of the landmark PBS television series “Evolution” – What about God?

Evolution - What about GOD?

Evolution - The Mind’s Big Bang

How and when the human mind emerged is the most profound question facing science today. The appearance of human sentience has transformed the landscape of our planet and has propelled evolution into realms which transcend the very limitations of genetics. What forces contributed to this breakthrough? Where might the power of the human mind and intellect ultimately lead humanity?

The human mind has allowed the human species to transcend its physical limitations and has made humankind pioneers of a whole new form of evolution which is distinctly non-biological. This new realm of evolution is Cultural Evolution. It is this new dominion of evolution that has made us the most dominant life form on this planet and has set us on a trajectory that will one day take us out amongst the stars. What then? How will the human intellect continue to evolve amyst the starry ferment?

Today join us Cosmic Visions as we continue our year long celebration of the life and work of Charles Darwin and explore the origins of the human mind and human consciousness with the sixth installment of the landmark PBS television series “Evolution” – The Mind’s Big Bang.

Evolution - The Mind’s Big Bang

Evolution - The Sexual Revolution

The sexual revolution did not begin in the 1960s with flower power or with the slogan “make love and not war”. The vanguard of the sexual revolution weren’t the hippies who “wore flowers in their hair” that Scott McKenzie immortalized in his generational anthem, "San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair)". Rather sex can trace its humble beginnings to the true pioneers of the Sexual Revolution - the cyanobacteria and other eukaryotes at the dawn of evolutionary history.

The advent of sex may not have begun with the first micro orgasm but, it was no less earth moving.

With advent of sexual reproduction, some one and half billion years ago, life on Earth took a major evolutionary leap. Until then evolution was agonizingly slow. Before life stumbled on sex as a reproductive strategy new varieties of organisms could only arise from the accumulation of random mutations - the selection of a few typographical errors, letter by letter, in life’s genetic code. With the invention of sex, two organisms could now exchange whole paragraphs, pages and books of their DNA code, and thus evolution could proceed at a faster pace.

In evolutionary terms, sex is more important than life itself. Sex fuels evolutionary change by adding variation to the gene pool. The powerful urge to pass our genes on to the next generation has likely changed the face of human culture in ways we are only now beginning to fully understand.

Today on Cosmic Visions we continue our year long celebration of the life and work of the naturalist Charles Darwin and the epic story of life on Earth with the fifth installment of the landmark PBS television series “Evolution” – Why Sex.

Evolution – Why Sex

Evolution - red in tooth and claw

Today on Cosmic Visions we continue our year long celebration of the life and work of the naturalist Charles Darwin with the fourth episode of the landmark PBS television series “Evolution” - Evolutionary Arms Race.

When we consider the evolutionary history of life on Earth, the following famous adage comes to mind:


“Nature, red in tooth and claw”



I always wondered if it was indeed Charles Darwin himself who penned this famous phrase. A little research through the pages of Wikipedia and The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 3rd edition provided the answer.

Man...
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law --
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shrieked against his creed.
--Alfred, Lord Tennyson


These words were penned by the English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson in his poem “In Memoriam A.H.H.” and this quote comes from a group of cantos entitled, "In Memorium A.H.H." (1850). This quote comes from canto LVI, and the entire work written over a period of 17 years and completed in 1849. It is a requiem for the poet's Cambridge friend Arthur Henry Hallam, who died suddenly of a cerebral haemorrhage in Vienna in 1833, but it is also much more. It can be seen as reflective of Victorian society at the time, and the poem discusses many of the issues that were beginning to be questioned. It is the work in which Tennyson reaches his highest musical peaks and his poetic experience comes full circle. It is regarded as one of the greatest poems of the 19th century.


The original title of the poem was "The Way of the Soul", and this might give an idea of how the poem is an account of all Tennyson's thoughts and feelings as he copes with his grief over such a long period - including wrestling with the big scientific-philosophical questions of his day. It is perhaps because of this that the poem is still popular with and of interest to modern readers. Owing to its length and its arguable breadth of focus, the poem might not be thought an elegy or a dirge in the strictest formal sense.

In writing the poem, Tennyson was influenced by the ideas of evolution presented in Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation which had been published in 1844, and had caused a storm of controversy about the theological implications of impersonal nature functioning without direct divine intervention. The fundamentalist idea of unquestioning belief in revealed truth taken from a literal interpretation of the Bible was already in conflict with the findings of science, and Tennyson expressed the difficulties evolution raised for faith in "the truths that never can be proved".

Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;
That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,
I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world's altar-stairs
That slope thro' darkness up to God,
I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.


This poem was published before Charles Darwin made his theory public in 1859. However, the phrase "Nature, red in tooth and claw" in canto 56 quickly was adopted by others as a phrase that evokes the process of natural selection. It was and is used by both those opposed to and in favour of the theory of evolution.

“Nature, red in tooth and claw”

This famous quote has come to symbolise the very essence of the evolutionary struggle as outlined by Darwin’s theory of evolution by means of Natural Selection. But, is that all evolution is? Is it just an unending struggle for survival? How about cooperation? Does this play a role in evolution? Has the entire biosphere of our planet evolved into a super-organism as James Edward Lovelock outlined in his GAIA hypothesis?



Both survival of the fittest and cooperation are essential interactions between and within species and are both amongst the most powerful evolutionary forces on Earth, and understanding them may be a key to our own survival. Which aspect of our own human innate nature, raw competition or cooperation, prevails may determine our planet’s and our own long term future.

Evolution - Evolutionary Arms Race

Evolution - Extinction

Today on Cosmic Visions we continue our year long celebration of the life and work of the naturalist Charles Darwin with the third episode of the landmark PBS television series “Evolution” - Extinction.

Far more life forms have existed on Earth than grace the skies, oceans and land masses of our beautiful blue and green planet in our current epoch. Ninety-nine percent of all the creatures that have ever existed have gone extinct. What does fate have in store for the human species? What are our own evolutionary prospects?

As Carl Sagan wrote in his monumental book "Cosmos":


"The fossil record speaks to us unambiguously of creatures that once were present in enormous numbers and that have now vanished utterly.* Far more species have become extinct in the history of the Earth than exist today; they are the terminated experiments of evolution".

Natural selection has shaped and sculpted an incredible life form that appears to be able to adapt to life in every conceivable ecological niche. A life form that is on the verge in directing the course of its own evolutionary future and that of the other life forms that share this planet with us. And, that life form is us – Homo sapiens.

We are the pioneers of a whole new form of evolution which is distinctly non-biological. This new realm of evolution is Cultural Evolution. It is this new dominion of evolution that has made us the most dominant life form on this planet and has set us on a trajectory that will one day take us out amongst the stars or lead to our own demise.


Five mass extinctions have occurred since life began on Earth. Are humans causing the next mass extinction? And what does evolutionary theory predict for the world we will leave to our descendants?


We will explore these and further questions in future editions of Discovery-Enterprise.

Evolution - Extinction

Evolution - Great Transformations

Today on Cosmic Visions we continue our year long celebration of the life and work of the naturalist Charles Darwin with the second episode of the landmark PBS television series “Evolution” - Great Transformations.

What underlies the incredible diversity of life on Earth? How have complex life forms evolved? The journey from water to land, the return of land mammals to the sea and the emergence of humans all suggest that creatures past and present are members of a single tree of life.

Evolution - Great Transformations

Charles Darwin and his Dangerous Idea

Today marks the bicentennial of Charles Darwin’s birth. In order to mark the occasion of Darwin’s birth on 12th February, 1809 and the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s publication of “On the Origin of Species” on 24th November, 1859 today we are going to take a closer look at Darwin's idea on the origin of species. Some have even labelled Darwin's Theory of evolution by Natural Selection a "Dangerous Idea”.

Today’s video offering takes a closer look at this ''dangerous idea'' and explores why it matters more today than ever. Does it explain the past history and predict the future of life on Earth? Can it explain how life may have arisen on Earth and perhaps elsewhere in the Cosmos? This documentary interweaves the drama of Darwin's life with current documentary sequences, introducing the key concepts behind Darwin’s Theory of evolution.


Evolution - Darwin’s Dangerous Idea