Question

How many generations did Darwin think it would take for a new species to arise? Did more recent scholars agree with this? Was Darwin right, too optimistic, or too pessimistic? Give one example from each article to illustrate your argument. What was the ONE most interesting thing you learned from the articles this week? Why?

Answer 1

In his book “Origin of Species” Darwin estimated that it takes a period of ten to fourteen thousand generations for the evolution of new species.
The fundamentalist and conservative Christian and Muslim scholars continue to oppose the Darwin's theory of evolution. However, the theory has been widely accepted and approved by most of the scientific organizations and there is a huge majority of scientific scholars who are continuously working on finding more evidence to support the Darwin’s theory.
Until recently, majority of scholars believed that new species take about more than ten thousand generations to arise. However a new study raises doubts about the Darwin’s estimations.
A new study was conducted in Galapagos Islands on the Finches (collection of birds studied by Darwin for formulating his theory of natural selection) to reveal how new species can evolve in less than two generations and this is the most interesting thing I learnt from the articles.

Darwin was too pessimistic for two reasons:
Firstly, his theory of natural selection suggests the existence of mechanism based on the notion of survival of the fittest implying that those who are weak and do not fit will die.

Secondly, he was too pessimist to believe that the evolution is a gradual process and it would take not less than ten thousand generations for a species to arise. He didn't mention any hopes that the estimated time period for emergence of new species might be less in exceptional cases.