Here we go with Biology; my best
forte of all and my original college major.
Darwin and Galton tied together make an interesting pair. Galton seemed to feed off of what Darwin was
saying very well. In Darwin’s discussion
he was talking about how primates are like humans. In Galton’s discussion he was talking about
breeding animals and humans with the best of their best to create a superior
race. Basically you can tie Darwin’s
theory of Natural Selection to both of these discussions.
Darwin, of course, was one of the
first people you first learn about being a Biology major since his theories are
still semi looked at throughout this study.
His Theory of Natural Selection is still widely looked at and supported
and used in today’s society. In this
document by Darwin he is talking about how as human beings look like and relate
to primates. As you read this you
starting thinking, “wow, really? How in the world is he coming up with this
stuff?”, but if you were to be around in his time you would realize that they
didn’t have any knowledge of DNA and genetic structure so he would not of been
able to see that primates are not really us, but inferior versions. Darwin developed his conclusions based off of
the ability of observation and the fact that we do look so much like primates
to the naked eye can be hugely misleading.
Also Darwin was around during the time of slavery therefore what sounds
racist to us was just the language and the opinion of that time. Racism was a term that did not exist yet and
Darwin relating primates to Native Americans and African Americans was just
natural and based off of a matter of observation once again. To explain what I mean I will point out that
an orangutan is red and Native Americans were referred to as “Red Skin” and Gorillas
and other primates, if you were to look at them, are black which, of course, if
you look at an African American they are black so you can see where you he is
coming to the conclusions that he is even if you do not believe in evolution.
Galton takes Darwin’s concept of
Natural Selection and talks about Heredity and traits. Basically, he is just talking about breeding
“the best of the best” to create the “Perfect” human race. He starts out by explaining the breeding
process. How you take a person or animal
that has certain traits you like and you breed them with another person or
animal that has other desirable traits that you like, but the first person or
animal didn’t have. You hope that if you
do this the babies will come out with all the positive traits of both parents,
but of course you are also playing with fire so you might very well get all the
negative traits of the parents instead.
Galton later explains that inbreeding is bad since it can cause
mutations or defects, but you can still get those even if you do not inbreed
since when you breed you have a 50/50 chance of getting the good or bad
traits. This is a controlled version of
Darwin’s Natural Selection theory. Now
out in the real world of Nature those who are weaker die off faster than those
who are strong therefore the stronger traits will be bred and passed down from
generation to generation.
As you can see they both know what
they are talking about. Even if you do
not agree with that they are talking about you have to admit that there is some
relevance. To deny these two had some
accurate points would mean that you are just being naïve to what is right in
front of you. Whether you want to admit it
or not Natural Selection exists and it is occurring everywhere around us and
now that our science has become more advanced we can just remove the best
traits from both parents to create the perfect child; a scary, but real concept
to think about.
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