Darwin and the Tree of Life

One of the most enthralling components of Sophie’s World was the chapter about Charles Darwin and his book and theory on “Origins of the Species.” At first it was a bit surprising. “What is the scientific theory of evolution doing in a novel on philosophy?” Why would Jostein Gaarder devote, not just a paragraph or too, as he does for many other philosophers, but a whole chapter to a man and his theory that at first glance seem more science based than philosophy based.  But when you think about it Darwin’s theory of evolution had a profound effect not just in science, but in major philosophical questions and theories. The one focused hereupon will be the way in which Darwin changed our perception of life.

Before evolution, life was seen as something static, with a set form. As Gaarder notes both Plato’s theory of ideas and Aristotle’s view of life both rest on “immutability” of life (Gaarder 404). In other words life’s forms stay constant and in Plato’s case are based on eternal greater forms. But Darwin challenged all that. Darwin was not afraid to say that this is not what life is. In fact life is more complex, deeper, and wondrous than that. Life is ever changing.  To Darwin life emerged from “some hot little pool,” (417) and by the process of natural selection and minuscule changes grew into the huge variety of flora and fauna walking, flying, growing, and swimming the Earth today. In other words all life has descended from one tiny microbe that lived eons ago. As you can imagine, this created much conflict with his contemporaries, including the Church and fellow scientists.  Much of this should be attributed to the place in which Darwin’s theories leave the position of humans. Mankind is quite and utterly, insignificant. In the tree of life we are the canopy, some of the last twigs on the last branch. All the life before us the trunk, and splitting over time, has turned into the variety of animals known today. Where do we go from there? We are just passing by contributing what we can and fading away.

The Earth is 4.6 billion years old, according to modern thought, and as Sophie says after being told this by Alberto, “Wow!” (406), Now in Darwin’s time this was not known, the Church believed Earth to be 6,000 years old Darwin himself 300 million (406), needless to say this is a huge difference and with this comes a huge difference in the way man perceives himself. We are only not that different from animals, but we have hardly been around, and will hardly be around. We will die but as Faust says “Now records of my earthly day, No flights of eons can impair.”(421).

Each and every human leaves a mark. So perhaps, though thinking of Darwin and the vast past of life, we can take some comfort in the fact that our thoughts and what we do here will live on. We can perceive and make of life what we will, but one thing is certain, we must remember what Darwin has said, for it has forever changed the human view of existence.

Word Count: 531

Philosophy

Mr. Summers this is my blog for IB Philosophy 3rd period.
-Luke Grimmelbein