Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin
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Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin, an English naturalist, is remembered for his popular seminal work, On the Origin of Species which he published over 150 years ago (Buss, 2009). His work is thought to have been influenced by Jean Baptiste Lamarck, a Biologist who first made proposals that humans must have evolved from relatively lower species and have gained adaptations over time (Scoville, 2012). Lamarck’s idea of vestigial structures is also believed to have made Darwin subscribe to the “use and disuse” philosophy after observing the long necks of giraffes. Thomas Malthus, an economist, inspired Darwin’s idea of “survival of the fittest”. Malthus observed that the population would decline or grow depending on the prevailing factors. The observation of the beak adaptations of the Galapagos finches was premised on Malthus’ explanation on population growth dynamics. Several other ideas and philosophies of individuals such as Comte de Buffon, Alfred Russel Wallace, Erasmus Darwin, Charles Lyell, James Hutton, and Georges Cuvier are thought to have influenced Darwin’s work (Scoville, 2012).
Darwin’s ideas have increasingly contributed to the field of evolutionary psychology. In 1859, towards the end of his classic treatise, he envisioned that the field of psychology would be based on new underpinnings: the evolutionary theory (Buss, 2009). Evolutionary psychology is largely indebted to the ideas of Darwin such as the theory of evolution, natural and sexual selection, survival of the fittest, the pace of evolutionary change, human mind evolution and the reasoning why humans have larger brains than other animals (BBC, 2012). Today, the field of evolutionary psychology is based on the ideas that evolutionary processes have shaped not only the body, but also the brain, how it works and the behaviors that are generated (Buss, 2009). These evolutionary changes are conceptualized as core psychological adaptations which are meant to solve problems for better survival. Evolutionary psychologists appreciate that psychological adaptations are activated in the existing environments which largely differ from the primitive environments in critical ways. In general, the thinking that psychological mechanisms provide adaptive ...