(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
 . . . . . . . . . .



White to move and mate in two #593 - On the Origin of Species [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2024-11-26  

On Nov 24, 1859, Charles Darwin's monumental work "On the Origin of Species" was published and it shook the world.

Darwin's book introduced the scientific theory that the diversity of life arose by common descent from earlier ancestors and that species evolve over the course of generations through a process of 'natural selection'. No hand of God needed to individually create each species and their variations.

From the introduction of this most famous book -

As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.

"On the Origin of Species" ends with this glorious poetic statement — 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. The full book is accessible at www.gutenberg.org/… Of course, given the current state of affairs, many of us wonder whether humanity is actually evolving or is it devolving. Now let’s use the skills of our species, honed by evolution, to solve today’s puzzle composed in 1859 (!) by noted American chess composer and puzzle writer Samuel Loyd (1841 - 1911). P.S.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://dailykos.com/stories/2024/11/26/2288718/-White-to-move-and-mate-in-two-593-On-the-Origin-of-Species?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/