A valuable lesson from 'The Origin of Species'

By Shin Chul-ho

It was about four months ago that I finished reading “The Origin of Species” by Charles Darwin.

I've read many books about evolution but was still empty because I had not yet read “The Origin of Species,” which is the basis of all books on the subject. I took the thick book that I bought 10 years ago, covered with dust, off the shelf and began to read. I spent hours reading, particularly because I had to search for many, many animals and plants on Google that I was not aware of. I am so grateful to Google for providing me with detailed explanations with pictures.

The great book gave me an opportunity to broaden and enrich my knowledge of evolution. Above all, I thought a lot about two things.

First, it comes home to me that when organisms stop being modified, they die out. Of course, some species called living fossils still exist, almost maintaining their original forms for more than 100 million years.

But the number of those species is very small. Species have evolved in the manner in which offspring with slightly better genes caused by modification become more adaptable to and dominant in the environment. Evolution, in this sense, is an endless modification towards perfection.

This principle of species evolution has been exactly applied to past history and will be exactly applied to future history as well. Let's compare Samsung Electronics Co. and Sony. Sony, which was justifiably proud of its superior technology, was completely defeated by Samsung Electronics Co. Samsung Electronics Co. has continued to modify itself by means of swift decision-making to cope with the ecosystem of the market while Sony has been trapped in slow modification.

The latter has been gradually expelled from the market. This phenomenon is the same with individuals. Some people continue to improve their ability by always learning something useful and stand out as time passes by, while others who do not do so gradually edge away from the center of society. The saying, “When you stop learning, you become old,” is not only true in brain science but also in evolution.

When “The Origin of Species” was published, the level of science between Korea and Europe was very wide. “The Origin of Species” was published in 1859. Darwin had a vast knowledge of modern science such as geological periods, the structural differences between the human eye and the octopus eye, taxonomy, the differences of animals’ distribution according to continents, and so on.

In Korea, Jung Yak-jeon, a scholar of the realist school of Confucianism, authored “Jasaneobo in 1814. It is the simple study of 155 kinds of fish and seaweed. “The Origin of Species” came into the world 45 years later than “Jasaneobo” but, considering that the speed of scientific advances at the time was not as fast as today, it may be safely said that they were contemporaneous with the other.

Then, why is the gap level between the two books so huge in the depth and breadth of research? At that time, the scientific level of East Asia lagged far behind that of Europe. However, I don't think that Asians are not as intelligent as Europeans. As Goethe mentioned, when China was an ancient civilization, Europeans lived in forests. It only means that a nation or a continent has adopted new civilizations, combined them with its own and become more advanced.

The important thing is to pursue ceaseless modification in better ways. It is because doing so promises a nation, a company and an individual a better future. Taking a retrospective look at human history, the collapse of flourishing countries began the moment they stopped modifying themselves.

The fact that failing to modify means dying out is a valuable lesson I learnt from “The Origin of Species,” along with a deep understanding of evolution.

The writer is an elementary school teacher outside of Seoul. His email address is heemy123@hanmail.net.