Charles Darwin Character Analysis

[T]hese new studies suggest that Darwin did not know the strength of his own theory. He vastly underestimated the power of natural selection. Its action is neither rare nor slow. It leads to evolution daily and hourly, all around us, and we can watch.

The whole family tree of Darwin’s finches is marked by this kind of eccentric specialization, and each species has a beak to go with it. Robert Bowman, an evolutionist who studied the finches before the Grants, once drew a chart comparing the birds' beaks to different kinds of pliers. Cactus finches carry a heavy-duty lineman’s pliers. Other species carry analogues of the high-leverage diagonal pliers, the long chain-nose pliers, the parrot-head gripping pliers, the curved needle-nose pliers, and the straight needle-nose pliers.

Only varieties. If so, they would fit comfortably within the orthodox view of life. But what if they were something more than varieties? […] What if there were no limits to their divergence? What if they had diverged first into varieties, and then gone right on diverging into species. new species, each marooned on its own island?

“—If there is the slightest foundation for these remarks,” Darwin wrote, “the zoology of Archipelagoes—will be well worth examining; for such facts undermine the stability of Species.” Then, in a scribble that foreshadowed two decades of agonized caution, Darwin inserted a word: “would undermine the stability of Species.”

According to [Darwin’s] theory, even the slightest idiosyncrasies in the shape of an individual beak can sometimes make a difference in what that particular bird can eat. In this way the variation will matter to the bird its whole life—most of which, when it is not asleep, it spends eating. The shape of its particular beak will either help it live a little longer or cut its life a little shorter, so that, in Darwin's words, "the smallest grain in the balance, in the long run, must tell on which death shall fall, and which shall survive."

The fossil record is just too primitive a motion-picture camera to capture the fast-moving life. Rapid motion disappears like the whir of a hummingbird's wings. In such a record, the two wonder years of Darwin’s finches would disappear as surely as a wing-beat up and a wing-beat down, canceling out in the blur.

Half a millimeter can decide who lives and who dies. Since these slight variations are passed down from one generation to the next, the brood of a small beak and a medium beak would be likely to have intermediate beaks, equipment that would sometimes differ from their parents' not by one or two tenths of a millimeter but by whole millimeters, maybe by many millimeters. […] Daphne Major is not a forgiving place. A line of misfits should not last.

[…]

That is why the Grants are so puzzled now.

The conclusion is inescapable: the feature that makes the finches most interesting to us is also the feature that makes them most interesting to each other. When they are courting, head to head, making decisions that are fateful for the evolution of their lines, Darwin’s finches are studying the same thing as the finch watchers. They are looking at each other's beaks.

A “web of complex relations” binds all of the living things in any region, Darwin writes. Adding or subtracting even a single species causes waves of change that race through the web,” onwards in ever-increasing circles of complexity.” The simple act of adding cats to an English village would reduce the number of field mice. Killing mice would benefit the bumblebees, whose nests and honeycombs the mice often devour. Increasing the number of bumblebees would benefit the heartsease and red clover, which are fertilized almost exclusively by bumblebees. So adding cats to the village could end by adding flowers.

[T]hese new studies suggest that Darwin did not know the strength of his own theory. He vastly underestimated the power of natural selection. Its action is neither rare nor slow. It leads to evolution daily and hourly, all around us, and we can watch.

The whole family tree of Darwin’s finches is marked by this kind of eccentric specialization, and each species has a beak to go with it. Robert Bowman, an evolutionist who studied the finches before the Grants, once drew a chart comparing the birds' beaks to different kinds of pliers. Cactus finches carry a heavy-duty lineman’s pliers. Other species carry analogues of the high-leverage diagonal pliers, the long chain-nose pliers, the parrot-head gripping pliers, the curved needle-nose pliers, and the straight needle-nose pliers.

Only varieties. If so, they would fit comfortably within the orthodox view of life. But what if they were something more than varieties? […] What if there were no limits to their divergence? What if they had diverged first into varieties, and then gone right on diverging into species. new species, each marooned on its own island?

“—If there is the slightest foundation for these remarks,” Darwin wrote, “the zoology of Archipelagoes—will be well worth examining; for such facts undermine the stability of Species.” Then, in a scribble that foreshadowed two decades of agonized caution, Darwin inserted a word: “would undermine the stability of Species.”

According to [Darwin’s] theory, even the slightest idiosyncrasies in the shape of an individual beak can sometimes make a difference in what that particular bird can eat. In this way the variation will matter to the bird its whole life—most of which, when it is not asleep, it spends eating. The shape of its particular beak will either help it live a little longer or cut its life a little shorter, so that, in Darwin's words, "the smallest grain in the balance, in the long run, must tell on which death shall fall, and which shall survive."

The fossil record is just too primitive a motion-picture camera to capture the fast-moving life. Rapid motion disappears like the whir of a hummingbird's wings. In such a record, the two wonder years of Darwin’s finches would disappear as surely as a wing-beat up and a wing-beat down, canceling out in the blur.

Half a millimeter can decide who lives and who dies. Since these slight variations are passed down from one generation to the next, the brood of a small beak and a medium beak would be likely to have intermediate beaks, equipment that would sometimes differ from their parents' not by one or two tenths of a millimeter but by whole millimeters, maybe by many millimeters. […] Daphne Major is not a forgiving place. A line of misfits should not last.

[…]

That is why the Grants are so puzzled now.

The conclusion is inescapable: the feature that makes the finches most interesting to us is also the feature that makes them most interesting to each other. When they are courting, head to head, making decisions that are fateful for the evolution of their lines, Darwin’s finches are studying the same thing as the finch watchers. They are looking at each other's beaks.

A “web of complex relations” binds all of the living things in any region, Darwin writes. Adding or subtracting even a single species causes waves of change that race through the web,” onwards in ever-increasing circles of complexity.” The simple act of adding cats to an English village would reduce the number of field mice. Killing mice would benefit the bumblebees, whose nests and honeycombs the mice often devour. Increasing the number of bumblebees would benefit the heartsease and red clover, which are fertilized almost exclusively by bumblebees. So adding cats to the village could end by adding flowers.