Darwin can clarify it for you.
http://www.visionlearning.com/library/module_viewer.php?mid=111
Although we properly credit Darwin with being the founding father of evolutionary theory, one of his own great gifts was being able to spot a good idea and synthesize information from many fields of knowledge. Darwin's success was due, in part, to having learned from others, just as the great physicist Isaac Newton claimed to have stood "on the shoulders of giants." Thus, to develop the concept of evolution by natural selection Darwin did not have to invent the idea that animals and plants were adapted to their environment, because that was already recognized in the late 1700s. He did not have to buck the Biblical story of a seven-day creation because the father of modern geology, Charles Lyell, had already shown that the earth's history extended over at least millions of years, not the thousands implied by the Bible. Darwin did not even have to come up with the idea of natural selection by himself - it was inspired by someone else! Another Englishman, Thomas Malthus, who was a clergyman and an economist, wrote Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798. Malthus argued (from an economic standpoint) that human population growth, if it were not reigned in by disease, starvation, war, and other factors, would naturally expand beyond our capacity to produce the food we need to sustain it. In other words, societies of people also are locked in a "struggle for existence." In his autobiography, Charles Darwin acknowledges this thought as the beginnings of natural selection.
Quote:"In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long- continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The results of this would be the formation of a new species. Here, then I had at last got a theory by which to work."
Charles Darwin, 1876
Now...about this
Quote:hi Pauligirl,
Apparently you agree with ros that a new species doesn't start with one member. So how does it start with many?
Do a hundred or so that were born as species X suddenly have a midlife crisis and change to species Y overnight?
I would think that if you had read some of the prior posts and links, you see that it's a rather slow process when left to nature. I suggest you read Evolution for Beginners, since you seem to have some problems with the basic ideas:
http://www.evolution.mbdojo.com/evolution-for-beginners.html
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