Capítulo 1

1 Sobre a tendência das espécies de formar variedades; e sobre a perpetuação das variedades e espécies por meios naturais de seleção.

2 “The year which has passed has not, indeed, been marked by any of those striking discoveries which at once revolutionize, so to speak, the department of science on which they bear.”

3 Sobre a origem das espécies por meio de seleção natural, ou a preservação de raças favorecidas na luta pela vida.

4 “[…] the greatest biological revolution in the history of human thought.”

5 O templo da natureza.

6 “You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family.”

7 Zoonomia ou as leis da vida orgânica.

8 Ilustrações da entomologia britânica.

9 Teologia natural.

10 Narrativa pessoal de viagens às regiões equinociais da América.

11 Princípios de geologia.

12 “Many of these creatures so low in the scale of nature are most exquisite in their forms & rich colours. It creates a feeling of wonder that so much beauty should be apparently created for such little purpose.”

13 “I could not have believed how wide was the difference between savage and civilised man: it is greater than between a wild and domesticated animal.”

14 “[…] it is, that the different islands to a considerable extent are inhabited by a different set of beings. […] I never dreamed that islands, about 50 or 60 miles apart, and most of them in sight of each other, formed of precisely the same rocks, placed under a quite similar climate, rising to a nearly equal height, would have been differently tenanted.”

15 “[…] like a peacock admiring his tail.”

16 “[…] for such facts would undermine the stability of species.”

17 “A severe winter, or a scarcity of food, by destroying the weak and the unhealthy, has all the good effects of the most skilful selection. […] the weak and the unhealthy do not live to propagate their infirmities.”

18 Ensaio sobre o princípio da população.

19 Diário de pesquisas sobre história natural e geologia dos países visitados durante a viagem do H.M.S. Beagle ao redor do mundo, sob o comando do capitão FitzRoy, R.N.

20 “[...] like confessing a murder.”

21 Vestígios da história natural da criação.

22 “We have lost the joy of the Household, and the solace of our old age.”

23 Sobre a lei que regula a introdução de novas espécies.

24 Sobre a lei que regula a introdução de novas espécies.

25 “I can plainly see that we have thought much alike and to a certain extent have come to similar conclusions. […] This summer will make the twentieth year (!) since I opened my first note-book on the question how and in what way do species and varieties differ from each other. […] I do not suppose I shall go to press for two years.”

26 “[…] every day during the cold and succeeding hot fits had to lie down for several hours, during which time I had nothing to do but to think over any subjects then particularly interesting me.”

27 “Some year or so ago you recommended me to read a paper by Wallace in the ‘Annals’, which had interested you, and, as I was writing to him, I knew this would please him much, so I told him. He has today sent me the enclosed, and asked me to forward it to you. It seems to me well worth reading. Your words have come true with a vengeance – that I should be forestalled. You said this, when I explained to you here very briefly my views of ‘Natural Selection’ depending on the struggle for existence. I never saw a more striking coincidence; if Wallace had my MS. sketch written out in 1842, he could not have made a better short abstract! Even his terms now stand as heads of my chapters.”

28 “[…] and never shall I forget the impression it made upon me. Herein was contained a perfectly simple solution of all the difficulties which had been troubling me for months past. I hardly know whether I at first felt more vexed at the solution not having occurred to me than pleased that it had been found at all.”

29 “How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!”

30 “The dignity of man is at stake.”

31 “I fear you will not approve of your pupil in this case.”

32 “It will seem ‘an abomination’.”

33 “I have read your book with more pain than pleasure. Parts of it I admired greatly, parts I laughed at till my sides were almost sore; other parts I read with absolute sorrow, because I think them utterly false and grievously mischievous.”

34 “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.”

35 “With one fell sweep of the wand of truth, you have now scattered to the winds the pestilential vapours accumulated by ‘species-mongers’.”

36 Fatos e argumentos a favor de Darwin.

37 “I am sharpening my claws and beak in readiness.”

38 “I know not how or to whom to express fully my admiration of Darwin’s book. To him it would seem flattery, to others self-praise; but I do honestly believe that with however much patience I had worked up and experimented on the subject, I could never have approached the completeness of his book, its vast accumulation of evidence, its overwhelming argument, and its admirable tone and spirit. I really feel thankful that it has not been left to me to give the theory to the public. Mr. Darwin has created a new science and a new philosophy, and I believe that never has such a complete illustration of a new branch of human knowledge been due to the labours and researches of a single man. Never have such vast masses of widely scattered and hitherto utterly disconnected facts been combined into a system, and brought to bear upon the establishment of such a grand and new and simple philosophy!”

39 “Passages in your book, like that to which I have alluded (and there are others almost as bad), greatly shocked my moral taste.”

40 “[…] humanity, in my mind, would suffer a damage that might brutalize it, and sink the human race into a lower grade of degradation.”

41 “If you and I do all this, we shall meet in heaven.”

42 Sobre os vários meios pelos quais as orquídeas britânicas e estrangeiras são fertilizadas por insetos.

43 A descendência do homem e a seleção em relação ao sexo.

44 Evidências geológicas da antiguidade do homem com observações sobre as teorias da origem das espécies por variação.

45 “For his important researches in geology, zoology, and botanical physiology.”

46 “[...] si l’on avait des observations constantes qui prouvassent que c’est elle qui tourne, tous les hommes ensemble ne l’empêcheraient pas de tourner, et ne s’empêcheraient pas de tourner aussi avec elle.”

47 “There are many aspects of the universe that still cannot be explained satisfactorily by science; but ignorance only implies ignorance that may someday be conquered. To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.”

48 “Nothing makes sense in biology except in the light of evolution.”

Capítulo 2

1 Sobre a natureza das coisas.

2 Livro dos animais.

3 “Animals engage in a struggle for existence [and] for resources, to avoid being eaten and to breed. Environmental factors influence organisms to develop new characteristics to ensure survival, thus transforming into new species. Animals that survive to breed can pass on their successful characteristics to [their] offspring.”

4 Zoonomia; ou as leis da vida orgânica.

5 Filosofia zoológica; exposição de considerações relativas à história natural dos animais.

6 Vestígios da história natural da criação.

7 Ensaio sobre o princípio da população.

8 Sobre a origem das espécies por meio de seleção natural, ou a preservação de raças favorecidas na luta pela vida.

9 Experimentos em hibridação de plantas.

10 Genética e a origem das espécies.

11 Sistemática e a origem das espécies do ponto de vista de um zoólogo.

12 Evolução: a síntese moderna.

13 Ritmo e modo na evolução.

14 Variação e evolução em plantas.

15 Sociobiologia: a nova síntese.


Capítulo 3

1 “Hence, as more individuals are produced than can possibly survive, there must in every case be a struggle for existence, either one individual with another of the same species, or with the individuals of distinct species, or with the physical conditions of life.[…] Can it, then, be thought improbable, seeing that variations useful to man have undoubtedly occurred, that other variations useful in some way to each being in the great and complex battle of life, should sometimes occur in the course of thousands of generations? If such do occur, can we doubt (remembering that many more individuals are born than can possibly survive) that individuals having any advantage, however slight, over others, would have the best chance of surviving and of procreating their kind? On the other hand, we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed. This preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection.”

2 “[…] descent with modification through natural selection.”

3 “This form of selection depends, not on a struggle for existence in relation to other organic beings or to external conditions, but on a struggle between the individuals of one sex, generally the males, for the possession of the other sex. The result is not death to the unsuccessful competitor, but few or no offspring.”

4 “[…] nothing makes sense in biology except in the light of evolution.”

Capítulo 4

1 “I look at the natural geological record, as a history of the world imperfectly kept, and written in a changing dialect; of this history we possess the last volume alone, relating only to two or three countries. Of this volume, only here and there a short chapter has been preserved; and of each page, only here and there a few lines. Each word of the slowly-changing language, in which the history is supposed to be written, being more or less different in the interrupted succession of chapters, may represent the apparently abruptly changed forms of life, entombed in our consecutive, but widely separated formations.”

2 “To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.”

3 “Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case […].”

4 “One of the most remarkable features in our domesticated races is that we see in them adaptation, not indeed to the animal’s or plant’s own good, but to man’s use or fancy.”

5 “As man can produce, and certainly has produced, a great result by his methodical and unconscious means of selection, what may not natural selection effect?”

Capítulo 5

1 “[...] que ce n’est point la forme, soit du corps, soit de ses parties, qui donne lieu aux habitudes et à la manière de vivre des animauxs; mais que ce sont, au contraire, les habitudes, la manière de vivre, et toutes les autres circonstances influentes qui ont, avec le temps, constitué la forme du corps et des parties des animaux. Avec de nouvelles facultés ont été acquises, et peu à peu la nature est parvenue à former les animaux tels que nous les voyons actuellement.”

2 Filosofia zoológica; exposição de considerações relativas à história natural dos animais.

3 “Le but, au contraire, d’une classification des animaux, est de fournir, à l’aide de lignes de séparation tracées de distance en distance dans la série générale de ces êtres, des points de repos à notre imagination, afin que nous puissions plus aisément reconnoître chaque race déjà observée, saisir ses, rapports avec les autres animaux connus, et placer dans chaque cadre les nouvelles espèces que nous parviendrons à découvrir. Ce moyeu supplée à notre foiblesse, facilite nos études et nos connoissances, et son usage est pour nous d’une nécessité indispensable; mais j’ai déjà montré qu’il est un produit de l’art, et que, malgré les apparences contraires, il ne tient réellement rien de l’a nature.”

4 “Species are groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations, which are reproductively isolated from other such groups.”

5 “[…] from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.”

6 “This is a fitting coincidence, because Homo sapiens is now behaving in ways reminiscent of a spoiled teenager. Narcissistic and presupposing our own immortality, we mistreat the ecosystems that produced us and support us, mindless of the consequences.”

Capítulo 6

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