ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES draft and final paper
Write a 4 – 5 page paper addressing one of the following two questions. These questions are meant to be starting points for an argument that you construct. Do not simply “answer” the questions. Instead, you should present an argument and support it with evidence. It will help you to write the essay if you can announce (to yourself or to the reader) the overall point or thesis that you are trying to make. Such a point should not be self-evident; you should be able to state an opposing point (the one that you are denying), which is not so obvious or silly that no one would be able to argue for it.
Please remember, also, that you are writing an essay, not a book report. We have all read the book under discussion and do not require a lengthy summary of its contents. What an essay does supply is some reminder of the contents in the context of an argument about those contents.
Your paper should be typed using MS Word (it should be a .doc or .docx file format), 12-point font, double-spaced, and carefully edited (as spelling and grammar are important components of a finished paper), with a cover-page and original title, a works cited page, and inline parenthetical documentation using MLA format. You are encouraged to make use of your notes from class and the Origin in answering the questions. However, do not use outside sources for this assignment. Your response should come out of a close reading of the Origin. When citing the Origin, please be sure to use MLA style.
CHOOSE ONE OF THE FOLLOWING TWO QUESTIONS TO ANSWER.
- One of the most important points regarding the chapter Struggle for Existence (Chapter III) concerns Darwin’s need to establish that a “struggle” of immense proportions occurs in the natural world, in the face of a world view that emphasized harmony and goodness. Discuss why this world view posed such a challenge to Darwin, and how he attempts to convince his readers of his point of view. Draw on several lines of argument and examples that Darwin uses in this chapter and the subsequent ones.
- Some people argue that the term “Natural Selection” is problematic because it implies a conscious agent doing the selection. Darwin even personifies Nature in various places throughout the Origin. Problems with the term led to Darwin to regret having used it; in a letter to Lyell in 1860, he wrote, “if I had to commence de novo, I would have used ‘natural preservation.’” Wallace preferred the phrase “survival of the fittest,” which he adopted from the philosopher Herbert Spencer. In fact, Wallace liked the phrase so much that he crossed out “natural selection” through much of his copy of the Origin and wrote “survival of the fittest” over it. Beginning with the fifth edition of the Origin in 1869, Darwin added the sentence, “But the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.” “Survival of the fittest” was even added to the title of Chapter IV. Do you feel that this new phrase more accurately conveys what Darwin was trying to express? Why or why not? Does the phrase make certain assumptions that are misleading?
