How did Darwin's theory of human evolution affect common people?
359880
I've frequently had the impression that the affect on common people, or at least their reactions since Origin of Species was published has been based less on their actual reading of the book or keeping up with current research and more about assuming they know what was actually written.  In other words, rather than going to the original source and attempting to understand it fully (either in order to accept it as working model or to attempt to refute it), much of both the defense of evolution and the refutation of evolution has been based on summaries of the work in other, frequently inaccurate or biased sources, especially news reports which were, hard as it may be to believe, frequntly even more sensational (and less honest) in the 19th Century than they are now.\n\nHowever, I suspect the vast majority of people just after Origin of Species was published went on with their lives just as they always had whether they accepted Darwin's conclusions or not.  Just as most people today manage to get by on a daily without needing to come to grips with the theory or accept or reject it.  \n\nI honestly don't think most people get up in the morning and start the day with one of two thoughts:\na)  I am the product of millions of years of evolution.\nb)  I am the product of thousands of years of decent from Adam and Eve.\n\nThere may be some people who do that, but they obviously have more time than me.  I'm usually worried about where the nearest source of caffeine is and whether the dog needs to be walked.  I worry about the evolution thing around noon.  :)
603237
Its not evolution, that is for sure. The evolutionist idea of natural selection is flawed from the beginning. The idea that we evolved into this superior human who have to deal with feelings of emotion, need large amounts of food and water to survive, require a male and female to reproduce and the list goes on. If natural selection is true then humans would have stopped long before now when we didn't need so much food and water; when we could split ourselves because there was no gender and no one had to think about taking care of a child. A human child is one of the most dependent offspring. Without the care of parents the child would die. This does not seem to fit the the theory of natural selection. Genesis 1:27 explains it good.
254303
No, the psychological phenomena are also in accordance with Darwin's theory. The theory of natural selection states that the fit variety shall survive, and the unfit shall become extinct.  Thus, only the psychologically compatible will be able to survive, and the psychologicaly distracted will be removed.  This is what happens.. the mentally ill don't develop enough in society, and are eliminated.  The result is a psychologically more compatible species of homo sapiens.
655475
Darwin was on his island, waiting around so he could prove something when he noticed that the finches were changing certain features to survive, so somehow he came up with the theory of evolution.\nIf that's what you mean.
46320
According to the theory of evolution, which is strongly supported scientifically, we are not decended from apes, monkeys or chimpanzees.  We do, however, share a common ancestor with them.  Humans evolved from that common ancestor to become what we are today, and the others evolved to become what they are today.  However, there are other viewpoints on this matter, which, though not scientifically supported, are in wide belief in many cultures.  These ideas are based on religious belief systems. These belief systems contend that humans have NOT evolved, and were created just as we are today by a diety or dieties.  Whether this is true or not, is a source of much debate.
946853
Darwin did just about everything, much more than just evolution. He also discovered how an atolls were formed. Gregor Mendel for genetics, Watsin and Crick for DNA, Coriolis, for the coriolis effect. If you really need to know this now, why not look it up yourself?
357308
Charles Darwin explored exactly that when he wrote about his Theory of Evolution. Read his works!
71356
Hi.\n\nThere's plenty of information over this topic in various search engines.\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=human+evolution&go=Go\nhttp://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=%2Bhuman+evolution\nhttp://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=%2Bhuman+evolution+wiki\nhttp://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=+site:dmoz.org+%2Bhuman+evolution\nhttp://answers.yahoo.com/search/search_result?p=human+evolution\nhttp://answers.google.com/answers/search?q=human+evolution&qtype=all&num=100&sort=qeprice%3AA%3AR%3Ad1\nhttp://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=+site:answers.com+%2Bhuman+evolution\nhttp://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=%2Bhuman+evolution+forum\nhttp://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=human+evolution
1135183
Good question.  I've read Mein Kempf it's a drudgery and disorganized in thought.  I think people assume that Darwinism eradicates the idea of a personal creator and voids life of value.  Do I think that Darwin would have applied his science the way Hitler did no ?  I think that Hitler used the works of Darwin to justify his actions  as he used many things to move his machine and further his campigns.  He professed a godly ordination for his actions and therefore a sense of entitlement.  I think Hitler like many took a work of science and used it to justify his actions.  I don't think the issue was humans being nothing but rather one set of humans being predisposed according to Hitler with those traits that made them "chosen".  The bible has been used by many to support that premise.  When on group exalts itself above all others as superior that's when you find the extremism of Hilter and the Third Reich.  In his campign Hitler didn't sell his propaganda exclusively by condemming Jews but by also exalting Aryans as the superior race.  Had he practiced the first and neglected the second his influence would not have been so far reaching and powerfull.  If he had exclusively come out with an expression of hatred toward other races it would have been seen for what it was more quickly, hate.  What he did instead was use Darwin's theory for evolution to justify exalting one race over the other which is not what the science implies.  He then comdemmed the book that gave value exclusively to the race he focused a large portion of his hatred on the Jews.  I think Darwinsim is a limited study of the human race but relavant in the entire picture.  I'm sure it wasn't that he saw them as animals as much as he saw himself as superior to them and therefore entitled to commit animal like atrocities.  I think the science of Evolution and moral objectivism are complatible. I also think they are higly volitile materials and need to be handled properly when mixing if you want a favorable result.
827000
You should read John Campbell's article "Rhetorical Analysis of Darwin's Origin". \n\nIts kind of what's been happening in scientific thought since the beginning of science. Theories aren't always necessary accepted for the weight of the scientific evidence alone. Sociopolitical and religious ideologies play a great role in the receptivity of ideas. I recently wrote a paper on the influence of Malthusian population thoeries and the Ideas of Progress influencing Darwin along with a misinterpretion of Newton's mechanistic philosophies that contribued to the accptance of Darwin's theory. \n\nRead also Michael Ruse's "Darwin and Design" or Peter Bowler's "Evolution: The History of an Idea" both talk about the great deal of rhetoric that went into the formulation of the theory. \n\nWhere one model, Mendel's model was able to make predictions, another model, which was purely theoretical (common descent still unproven) was accepted b/c it justified the Victorian's ideas regarding progress and the advancement of humankind, it also justified the population struggled described by Thomas Malthus. \n\nIt was similar to what happened with Johannes Kepler who in trying to convince the established scientific community of elliptical orbits and non uniform circular motion and his defense of Copernicus' heliocentrism, was largely ignored despite the fact his model was able to make accurate predictions, the same goes with the ancient Babylonians whose astronomy was able to make far better predictions than later Greek astronomy. The reasons for the rejection were mainly a result of the biases held by the established scientific community. It doesn't matter how truthful a particular theory may be or its ability to make accurate predictions, its about extrascientific factors and biases that allow for theories to be accepted or rejected. \n\nAnd a reply to the last part of the question, though Darwin may be accused of being the "god" of the atheists he at best was a "muddled theist" according to a letter Darwin wrote to J. Hooker regarding his theological stance. \n\nA good thorough read of primary sources is a good place to start when trying to understand the history of science. \n\n--my two cents :)
214059
human evolution, theory of the origins of the human species, Homo sapiens. Modern understanding of human origins is derived largely from the findings of paleontology, anthropology, and genetics, and involves the process of natural selection (see Darwinism). Although gaps in the fossil record due to differential preservation prevent the complete specification of the line of human descent, H. sapiens share clear anatomical, genetic, and historic relationships to other primates. Of all primates, humans bear particularly close affinity to other members of a group known as hominoids, or apes, which includes orangutans, gibbons, gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans. Humans and their immediate ancestors, known as hominids, are notable among hominoids for their bipedal locomotion, slow rate of maturation, large brain size, and, at least among the more recent hominids, the development of a relatively sophisticated capacity for language, tool use, and social activity.\nThe Evolutionary Tree\n\nHumans are mammals of the Primate order. The earliest primates evolved about 65 million years ago in the geological period known as the Paleocene epoch. They were small-brained, arboreal fruit eaters, similar to modern tree shrews. Primates of the Eocene epoch (55 to 38 million years ago) were similar and ancestral to contemporary tarsiers, lemurs, and tree shrews, and are classified as lower primates or prosimians. During the late Eocene, the higher primates, or anthropoids, developed from prosimian ancestors and, aided by continental drift, diverged into New World (or platyrrhine) and Old World (or catarrhine) monkeys. The branching of Old World monkeys and hominoids apparently occurred in the late Oligocene (38 to 25 million years ago) or early Miocene (25 to 8 million years ago), a time period poorly represented in the fossil record. The lesser apes (gibbons and siamangs) and other hominoid lines diverged about 20 million years ago, while the Asian great apes (the orangutan being the only surviving form) diverged from the African hominoids about 15 to 10 million years ago. Genetic evidence suggests that the ancestral lines of gorillas diverged about 8 million years ago and that chimpanzees and hominids diverged about 5 million years ago.\n\nHominid Evolution\n\nThe earliest known hominids are members of the genus Australopithecus, the earliest of which date to more than 4 million years ago. Unlike other primates, but like all hominids, australopithecines were bipedal. Their crania, however, were small and apelike, with an average cranial capacity of about 450 cc in the gracile species and 600 cc in the robust forms. Australopithecines that have been considered ancestral in the lineage leading to the human genus Homo include A. afarensis (an important skeleton of which is popularly known as Lucy) and A. africanus. The exact position of these and other early species on the hominid family tree continues to be disputed.\n\nThe first member of the genus Homo, a small gracile species known as H. habilis, was present in east Africa at least 2 million years ago. H. habilis was the first hominid to exhibit the marked expansion of the brain (with an average cranial capacity of about 750 cc) that would become a hallmark of subsequent hominid evolutionary history. By about 1.6 million years ago, H. habilis had evolved into a larger, more robust, and larger-brained species known as Homo erectus. Cranial capacities ranged from about 900 cc in early specimens to 1050 cc in later ones. H. erectus persisted for well over a million years and migrated off the African continent into Asia, Indonesia, and Europe.\n\nBetween 500,000 and 250,000 years ago, H. erectus evolved into H. sapiens. Transitional forms between H. erectus and H. sapiens are referred to as archaic H. sapiens. With the exception of H. sapiens neandertalensis (see Neanderthal man), no additional subspecies are recognized. Indeed, some scientists consider Neanderthal a separate species. Archaic H. sa
983838
Darwin never "withdrew" his theory, nice try.\n\nYou're right there were lots of storms and meteorites.  For all we know, life needed a couple of tries to get started.\n\nJust the fact that you are asking whether we came from monkeys or from goo, shows that you either have NO idea what evolution is about or are just trying to get a rise out of people.  You bore me.
180312
Fear of those who are different. I imagine it was a good survival strategy back in the tribal days, so those who had that fear were more likely to reproduce and pass on the trait. Now we're, more or less, stuck with it.
1133442
Actually, Darwin was a religious man who sought to understand the ways in which God did things.  The idea that evolution was created to replace God was not his own.
614441
Evolution happens to populations of organisms not individuals, and populations of humans across the globe are continually evolving. Evolution is a change in gene frequency in a breeding population over time - that's it. Of course you need a $100,000 lab to show most of it but it happens all the time. Many people see evolution only as 'speciation' - that's just one possible end point. Speciation might occur, for example, if enough gene frequencies change in a population so that the individuals look different or smell different from most, or a catastrophe geographically isolates one group - something divides them from others. The isolated group no longer breeds with once similar populations, the differences in gene frequencies between them accumulate. Over eons of time, at some point, this population may become a new species, no longer capable of breeding with its parent species; or it may become a subspecies - related but biologically isolated; or a sister species; or part of a circle species - there are many levels of relatedness. And then it happens again and again - populations continually dividing and changing - driven by an individual organism’s success at parenting fertile young. The genes that made a parent a success where they lived and who they lived with are passed on to the next generation. Genetically, we are what worked, when and where our parents made us. \n\nEvolution does not mean we are improving or getting better. Evolution has no bias about good or bad, and no direction; you either fit your environment well, move with it, change when it changes, or you die out. So evolution works quicker for organisms with short generation times and large populations (like insects or bacteria). It's no wonder that the insect and bacterial world is chock full of subspecies and sister species. Human evolution is a very ponderous affair because of our 25 year generational time. Ordinarily, it may take hundreds or thousands of generations to see some significant changes - there are many exception of course - but don't expect to see any differences between humans unless you look on a scale of millennia or more.
1181995
Humans and monkeys evolved from the same common ancestor.\nNow humans and monkeys are seperate species. \nComparisons between chimp and human DNA show the two species share 95 per cent of their genetic material.\nMonkeys aren't going to change into humans - this has nothing to do with Darwin's theory on human origins.
294275
No,people are same in those aspects.But they differ in attitudes and ideas.You can find that in Yahoo answers.Of course those factors can influence people,but it cannot make a different species.