What kinds of potential objections does Darwin refer to in the final paragraph of this selection? How do the objections that he expects to be raised against his work resemble those that were raised against Lyell's ideas?
Analyze Darwin's use of evidence to prove his points. How effectively do his examples support his argument?
MAKING CONNECTIONS
Elsewhere, Darwin reports that Thomas Malthus's "Essay on the Principle of Population" (p. 552) started him thinking about natural selection. How does Darwin draw on Malthus's ideas, especially concerning the competition for resources?
How does Darwin's view of the natural world compare with Hobbes's view of the state of nature (p. 94)?
How does the concept of natural selection compare with Ruth Benedict's assertions about character traits and culture (p. 112)? In what sense are cultures and societies "environments" that shape their members through natural selection? At what point does such an analogy break down?
How is Garrett Hardin's argument in "Lifeboat Ethics" (p. 582) consistent with the theory of natural selection? What role does overpopulation play in the "survival of the fittest"?
WRITING ABOUT THE TEXT
1. Some nineteenth-century commentators argued that the poor are not well-adapted to survive, that perhaps their poverty is a result of their poor adaptation. Does the theory of natural selection support this interpretation? Or is a society's tendency to support its poorer members an evolutionary advantage, increasing that society's ability to survive? Consider such questions in an essay on poverty and Darwinian theory.
Compare Darwin's use of the word "nature" with its uses by Rachel Carson (p. 328), William Paley (p. 311), and Barry Commoner (p. 344). How do subtle differences in the definition of this word lead to very different kinds of arguments?
Research the current controversy over teaching evolution in public schools and write an essay outlining the arguments posed by the advocates of the theory of "intelligent design." Is this theory compatible with the theory of natural selection? Why or why not?
rachel carson
The Obligation to Endure
[1962]
BEFORE SHE TOOK up the problem of chemical pesticides in Silent Spring, Rachel Carson (1907-1964) was already a respected scientist and a bestselling author. After earning a master's degree in zoology from Johns Hopkins University in 1932, she spent her early career as an aquatic biologist with the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries and its later incarnation as the Fish and Wildlife Service. In 1949, she rose to the position of chief editor of publications for the Fish and Wildlife Service and published three books about the ocean: Under the Sea-Wind (1941), The Sea Around Us (1951), and The Edge of the Sea (1955). The second of these books won the National Book Award and sold so many copies that Carson was able to give up her job and devote her time to writing.
With the publication of her most famous work, Silent Spring, Carson took on the unfamiliar role of social activist. The book began as a magazine article about the environmental impact of pesticides, especially of the compound dichlorodiphe- nyltrichloroethane, better known as DDT. During and after World War II, DDT had been used throughout the world to control insects, remove disease threats, and increase food production. Carson traced the poisonous effects of DDT and other pesticides through the ecosystem, beginning with plants and insects and moving to fish, birds, wildlife, domestic animals, and finally to people, for whom, Carson argued, DDT was a carcinogen.
When the book was published, the chemical pesticide industry launched a major counterstrike aimed at discrediting Carson. Despite their attack, the book became a phenomenal bestseller and caused millions of Americans to consider the effects of chemicals on their environment. Furthermore, it caused many to reevaluate their faith in technology, scientific progress, and the role of government in protecting their interests.
Carson died of breast cancer in 1964 before she could see the effect of her work on the world. In 1972, largely because of Silent Spring, the Environmental Protection Agency banned the use of DDT. In 1980, Carson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And in 1999, the Modern Library Editorial Board ranked Silent Spring as one of the most important nonfiction books of the twentieth century.
Carson's accomplishment in Silent Spring, the second chapter of which follows, goes beyond exposing the dangers of pesticides. The portrait that she created of a deeply interconnected natural world, where changes to one species have far-reaching, unforeseen consequences for the entire ecological system, struck a deep chord with her readers and even changed their perception of nature. Today, many consider the publication of Silent Spring to mark the beginning of the modern environmental movement.
Carson's claim about the dangers of chemicals is primarily supported by facts and statistics. She links together a series of historical and scientific facts to focus readers' attention on the negative consequences of using chemicals—chemicals previously viewed by many in only a positive light.
The history of life on earth has been a history of interaction between living things and their surroundings. To a large extent, the physical form and the habits of the earth's vegetation and its animal life have been molded by the environment. Considering the whole span of earthly time, the opposite effect, in which life actually modifies its surroundings, has been relatively slight. Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species—man—acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world.
During the past quarter century this power has not only increased to one of disturbing magnitude but it has changed in character. The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials. This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable; the chain of evil it initiates not only in the world that must support life but in living tissues is for the most part irreversible. In this now universal contamination of the environment, chemicals are the sinister and little-recognized partners of radiation in changing the very nature of the world—the very nature of its life. Strontium 90, released through nuclear explosions into the air, comes to earth in rain or drifts down as fallout, lodges in soil, enters into the grass or corn or wheat grown there, and in time takes up its abode in the bones of a human being, there to remain until his death. Similarly, chemicals sprayed on croplands or forests or gardens lie long in soil, entering into living organisms, passing from one to another in a chain of poisoning and death. Or they pass mysteriously by underground streams until they emerge and, through the alchemy of air and sunlight, combine into new forms that kill vegetation, sicken cattle, and work unknown harm on those who drink from once pure wells. As Albert Schweitzer1 has said, "Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation."
It took hundreds of millions of years to produce the life that now inhabits the earth—eons of time in which that developing and evolving and diversifying life reached a state of adjustment and balance with its surroundings. The environment, rigorously shaping and directing the life it supported, contained elements that were hostile as well as supporting. Certain rocks gave out dangerous radiation; even within the light of the sun, from which all life draws its energy, there were short-wave radiations with power to injure. Given time—time not in years but in millennia—life
1. Albert Schweitzer: German-Alsatian theologian, philosopher, music scholar, and physician (1875-1965), who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952 for his lifelong devotion to providing medical services in Africa.