Tuesday, June 14, 2022

Creation Moment 6/15/2022 - "survival-of-the-fittest" Views Before Darwin

If thou hast done foolishly in lifting up thyself, or if thou hast thought evil, lay thine hand upon thy mouth. Proverbs 30:32

"Horticulturalist Patrick Matthew who put forward his own survival-of-the-fittest idea in an appendix to a somewhat recondite publication called Timber and Naval Arboriculture in 1831:
As Nature, in all her modifications of life, has a power of
increase far beyond what is needed to supply the place of what falls by Time’s decay, those individuals who possess not the requisite strength, swiftness, hardihood, or cunning, fall prematurely without reproducing — either a prey to their natural devourers, or sinking under disease, generally induced by want of nourishment, their place being occupied by the more perfect of their own kind, who are pressing on the means of subsistence
.
Matthew expressly stated that the conception of natural selection “came intuitively as a self-evident fact without the effort of concentrated thought.” 
It had not occurred to him that he had made a great discovery and he clearly saw his perceptions as everyday truisms for persons concerned with growing plants or rearing animals 
Such empirically observable phenomena required no special explanation, Matthew stated." EN&V