Darwin & Malthus on the Theory of Natural Selection

This often quoted passage reflects the significance Darwin affords Malthus in formulating his theory of Natural Selection. What "struck" Darwin in Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) was Malthus's observation that in nature plants and animals produce far more offspring than can survive, and that Man too is capable of overproducing if left unchecked.

Malthus concluded that unless family size was regulated, man's misery of famine would become globally epidemic and eventually consume Man.

Malthus' view that poverty and famine were natural outcomes of population growth and food supply was not popular among social reformers who believed that with proper social structures, all ills of man could be eradicated.





Although Malthus thought famine and poverty natural outcomes, the ultimate reason for those outcomes was divine institution.

He believed that such natural outcomes were God's way of preventing man from being lazy.

Both Darwin and Wallace independantly arrived at similar theories of Natural Selection after reading Malthus. Unlike Malthus, they framed his principle in purely natural terms both in outcome and in ultimate reason. By so doing, they extended Malthus' logic further than Malthus himself could ever take it.

They realized that producing more offspring than can survive establishes a competitive environment among siblings, and that the variation among siblings would produce some individuals with a slightly greater chance of survival.


Source: Berkley University







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Understanding Shakespeare's sonnets (Warwick Uni)

About this Video

In the year of the 400th anniversary of their publication Professors Stanley Wells, CBE, and Jonathan Bate, CBE, talk to Paul Edmondson about the content and context of Shakespeare's collection of sonnets.







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A better life with Seneca

"All art is an imitation of nature"

Written by Seneca A Roman dramatist, philosopher, & politician (5 BC - 65 AD)

What's Stoicism?

It was one of the new philosophical movements of the Hellenistic period.

The name derives from the porch (stoa poikilê) in the Agora at Athens decorated with mural paintings, where the members of the school congregated, and their lectures were held.

Unlike ‘epicurean,’ the sense of the English adjective ‘stoical’ is not utterly misleading with regard to its philosophical origins.

The Stoics did, in fact, hold that emotions like fear or envy (or impassioned sexual attachments, or passionate love of anything whatsoever) either were, or arose from, false judgements and that the sage—a person who had attained moral and intellectual perfection—would not undergo them.

The later Stoics of Roman Imperial times, Seneca and Epictetus, emphasise the doctrines (already central to the early Stoics' teachings) that the sage is utterly immune to misfortune and that virtue is sufficient for happiness.

Our phrase ‘stoic calm’ perhaps encapsulates the general drift of these claims. It does not, however, hint at the even more radical ethical views which the Stoics defended, e.g. that only the sage is free while all others are slaves, or that all those who are morally vicious are equally so.


Though it seems clear that some Stoics took a kind of perverse joy in advocating views which seem so at odds with common sense, they did not do so simply to shock. Stoic ethics achieves a certain plausibility within the context of their physical theory and psychology, and within the framework of Greek ethical theory as that was handed down to them from Plato and Aristotle

Source: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/stoicism/










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Google celebrates Confucius' birthday with custom logo

Born in 551 BC, the influential Chinese philosopher Confucius was known for his intelligence and foresight. There is little chance, however, that even he could have predicted how the Western world would celebrate the 2560th anniversary of his birth: with a custom logo for search engine Google

Source: The Independent


Confucianism,+Buddhism,+Hinduism




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Leonardo da Vinci ( 15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519)

He was a scientist before there was science, an inventor whose ideas outstripped the technology of his time, and a famous artist who produced the most valuable and recognized painting in the world. Just what do we know about this celebrated Renaissance man of mystery?

Source: UnMuseum

Leonardo da Vinci was born April 15, 1452 in Anchiano, near Vinci, Italy, and died May 2, 1519 in Cloux, France. His father, Ser Piero, was a respected Florentine businessman. His mother, Caterina,was a peasant women. Ser Piero's parents did not consider Caterina a worthy catch, so Ser Piero and Caterina remained unmarried. Caterina later married someone of her own station.

Leonardo in Florence

At the age of fifteen, Leonardo da Vinci was apprenticed to the artist Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence. Leonardo worked there for fourteen years. Many pen and pencil works remain from this period, including technical sketches of pumps, weapons, and other mechanical objects. Leonardo started to get good commissions, including the Adoration of the Magi for the monastery of San Donato a Scopeto. But this, and other commissions, were left unfinished when he moved to Milan.

Leonardo in Milan

Leonardo managed to complete The Last Supperfor the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie, and the The Virgin of the Rocks for the Milanese Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception. But the twelve years Leonardo devoted to creating a monumental bronze statue of a horse were less successful

During this second period in Florence, Leonardo worked on many grand projects. These included plans for a canal to the sea, and a monumental mural in the central square. But the canal remained only a plan, and the mural was never completed. He did, however, complete the Mona Lisa during this time.

Art and science combined in his investigations of the human form, which (like everything else he did) was pursued to its limits. He performed dissections in the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, and provided a comprehensive account of the structure and function of the human body.

Source: 321 Books

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The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

Between 1825 and 1860, life in England underwent profound changes as a result of the Industrial Revolution.

In a country soon to be transformed by coal and steel production and its peripheral side effects of poverty and pollution, the luminous, sharply focused paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites provided a form of escape.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was formed in 1848 by William Holman Hunt (1827-1910), Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-82), and John Everett Millais (1829-96). They were later joined by others, including Ford Madox Brown (1821-93) and Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1833-98).

They initially signed their works with the initials PRB, causing much controversy and scandal. The champion of the movement, however, was writer and critic John Ruskin (1819-1900). who. in addition to promoting the Gothic style, helped to reinforce the group's sense of moral commitment and social awareness.

He envisaged art as a means of saving the human race and fulfilling the most important human aspirations. In contrast to the pretence and artifice of academic painting, Pre-Raphaelite art looked afresh at techniques used by artists before the time of Raphael.

Studying nature in detail to rediscover its inner meaning, the Brotherhood sought to communicate with the forgotten sources of spirituality. However, the early purity of spirit was later lost.


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Boticelli - The Birth of Venus

Alessandro Botticelli depicts the pagan goddess of love - Venus - as the harbinger of spring and owes his inspiration to the Classical ideals of ancient Greek art.

Source: Suite 101

His Biography

Sandro Botticelli or Il Botticello (March 1, 1445 – May 17, 1510)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boticelli


Source: Wikipedia

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