July 14, 2019
In Chapter 3 of The Sixth Extinction, Kolbert decides to involve the history of Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin; this is because Lyell had a major impact on Darwin's work and ideas throughout the voyage on the HMS Beagle ship. Charles Darwin's concept of Natural Selection evolved on the concept of extinction which Lyell believed to occur "at a very slow pace--so slow that, at any given time, in any given place, it would not be surprising were it to go unnoticed". However, Darwin believed that if anything, extinction had to occur more gradually if it were at the same pace as natural selection. Now connecting to the APES Theme: Humans alter natural systems and had an impact on the environment for millions of years is pretty accurate. This can be seen many ways down in history, according to page 60, " A 1622 account by a captain named Richard Whitbourne describes great auks being driven onto boats 'by hundreds at a time as if God had made the innocence of so poor a creature to become such an admirable instrument for sustenation of man'". The Great Auks as great as they were, were killed for general resources such as feathers, fishbait, fuel, etc.. Furthermore, we can see near the ending of the chapter that Kolbert is sort of angry at Charles Darwin for not even mentioning another factor besides Natural Selection, as humans are clearly responsible for most rapid extinction of the present. This is explained on page 69, "They had all been killed off by the same species, and all quite suddenly--in the case of the great auk and the Charles island tortoise over the course of Darwin's own lifetime". [R]Nonetheless, the Great Auks and the tortoises from the Galápagos extinctions are clear signs that Charles Lyell is very wrong on how fast extinction can occur if factors outside of Natural Systems alter things.
No comments:
Post a Comment