If you know something about evolution, but not enough, you may think it has something to do with “the survival of the species.” I hate to break it to you, but this idea makes absolutely no sense. To understand why we have to go back to the basics. From the standpoint of evolution, living beings do essentially two things: survive, and reproduce. When they reproduce, part of their genes is replicated and transmitted forward to their descendants, making the availability of the traits determined by these genes more prevalent in the population. By the same token, when living beings fail to survive and reproduce, the prevalence of their traits is reduced. However, as the replication process is not perfect, new traits appear from time to time, creating different beings that may branch out from the existing ones. If the beings in one of these branches are similar enough to each other, and considerably different from other beings, we call them a “species.” This is the origin of “species.”
The selfish employee
The selfish employee
The selfish employee
If you know something about evolution, but not enough, you may think it has something to do with “the survival of the species.” I hate to break it to you, but this idea makes absolutely no sense. To understand why we have to go back to the basics. From the standpoint of evolution, living beings do essentially two things: survive, and reproduce. When they reproduce, part of their genes is replicated and transmitted forward to their descendants, making the availability of the traits determined by these genes more prevalent in the population. By the same token, when living beings fail to survive and reproduce, the prevalence of their traits is reduced. However, as the replication process is not perfect, new traits appear from time to time, creating different beings that may branch out from the existing ones. If the beings in one of these branches are similar enough to each other, and considerably different from other beings, we call them a “species.” This is the origin of “species.”