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Darwinism

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I. Darwinism

A. What is it?

Darwinism is a theory of biological evolution developed by Charles Darwin and others, stating that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual's ability to compete, survive, and reproduce.

B. Types of Darwinism

a. Social Darwinism - it is a modern name given to various theories of society that emerged in the United Kingdom, North America, and Western Europe in the 1870s, and which are claimed to have applied biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology and politics. Social Darwinists generally argue that the strong should see their wealth and power increase while the weak should see their wealth and power decrease.

b. Neo-Darwinism - is the "modern synthesis" of Darwinian evolution through natural selection with Mendelian genetics, the latter being a set of primary tenets specifying that evolution involves the transmission of characteristics from parent to child through the mechanism of genetic transfer, rather than the "blending process" of pre-Mendelian evolutionary science.

c. Neural Darwinism – is a large scale theory of brain function by Gerald Edelman, was initially published in 1978, in a book called The Mindful Brain. Edelman was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1972 for his work in immunology showing how the population of lymphocytes capable of binding to a foreign antigen is increased by differential clonal multiplication following antigen discovery. Essentially, this proved that the human body is capable of creating complex adaptive systems as a result of local events with feedback. d. Universal Darwinism - refers to a variety of approaches that extend the theory of Darwinism beyond its original domain of biological evolution on Earth.

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