I have been researching great thinkers and how they have shaped the world. I have also been trying to show that the act of reading helps generate or even stimulate great ideas. Great thinkers do not operate in a vacuum, they build on the works of others and often extend original thinking and take the world beyond. Charles Darwin and British biologist Alfred Russel Wallace independently arrived at similar theories of natural selection in the mid-19th century after reading British pastor Thomas Malthus’ Essay on the Principle of Population.

Darwin defines natural selection as the “preservation of favorable variations and the rejection of detrimental variations”. So what does all this mean? Darwin further adds: “Variations neither useful nor harmful would not be affected by natural selection, and would remain as a fluctuating element, as perhaps we see in the so-called polymorphic species… Natural selection can only act by taking advantage of slight variations; never cannot take a leap, but must advance by taking the shortest steps”.

This book was not the easiest to read, and I found it quite “dry”. But, in my quest to find out where good ideas come from, I made the sacrifice and got over it. I have selected five ideas from On Natural Selection. For the five ideas below, how can you use them in different contexts to solve/understand today’s problems?

five good ideas

1. When a plant or an animal is placed in a new country among new competitors, even though the climate is exactly the same as that of its old home, the conditions of its life will generally change in an essential way. If we wanted to increase your average numbers in your new home, we would have to modify it in a different way than we would have done in your native country; because we should give it some advantage over a different set of competitors or enemies.
2. Individuals who have any advantage, however small, over others would have the best chance of surviving and procreating their species.
3. When a species, owing to very favorable circumstances, increases disproportionately in number over a small area, epidemics often occur.
4. The more diversified the descendants of any species become in structure, constitution, and habits, the more they are able to turn sixteen in many and very diverse places in the politics of nature, and so can increase in number.
5. Natural selection is working behind the scenes all the time all over the world whenever the opportunity arises. It works to improve each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life. You can’t see these slow changes, until after a long period of time, we see that life forms are now different than they were before.

We could take idea number two and look at it in the context of education. It is reasonable to assume that people with more education have a better chance of success than those with less education. Or, for that same idea, we could say, someone who has an idea and knows how to carry it out will be more successful than someone who has ideas but does nothing about them. Success in this context is not limited to financial success. Why not take one of the five ideas above and see what new ideas it can generate?

I recommend On natural selection because I’m sure you’ll come up with your own five ideas. This is not a book you would read for entertainment, but it will certainly stretch you.