logo
Published on Visualizing Ecology (http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecowinter)

shaun libman

   “The framework of bones being the same in the hand of a man, wing of a bat, fin of the porpoise, and leg of the horse, -- the same number of vertebrae forming the neck of the giraffe and of the elephant, -- and innumerable other such facts, at once explain themselves on the theory of descent with slow and slight successive modifications.”

Charles Darwin presents some of his most easily identified with evidence in this passage.  This would have been able to immediately bring more understanding to an early reader of this document. While Darwin’s ideas are vastly complicated, what I find most intriguing is that they are also organized and exemplified in some simple facts, which draw one easily to Darwin’s same conclusion and allow someone who may have been a skeptic to begin to believe in Darwin’s ideas.

The idea that two seemingly separate animals are so related, that the bones in a human hand, a wing of a bat and the fin of the Porpoise have the same frame work, concretely build the idea that these animals must somehow be connected.  Darwin also points out that embryos of air-breathing animals have a similar breathing mechanism to a fish. Facts like this seem to effortlessly begin to prove his points. I can assume that Darwin was extremely deliberate in everything he said. His ideas prove to be presented very clearly and with much strategy.

I also conclude that people of different backgrounds, especially relevant to the readers of this book after it was first published, would have successfully found understanding and indentified truth in the reading of this passage. Even though I believe Darwin’s argument are convincing I still do not know how quickly people where convinced of Darwin’s theories and it is possible if not definite that there are still skeptics of the ideas that Darwin outlined in this reading.

‹ Stephanie Scott [0]Cody Cohan › [0]

Source URL:
http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecowinter/visecowinter/shaun-libman