Get the full ebook with Bonus Features for a Better Reading Experience on ebookmeta.

com

Sensor Data Understanding 1st Edition Marcin

Grzegorzek

https://ebookmeta.com/product/sensor-data-understanding-1st-
edition-marcin-grzegorzek/

OR CLICK HERE

DOWLOAD NOW

Download more ebook instantly today at https://ebookmeta.com

 Recommended digital products (PDF, EPUB, MOBI) that
you can download immediately if you are interested.

Selected Sensor Circuits: From Data Sheet to Simulation

Peter Baumann

https://ebookmeta.com/product/selected-sensor-circuits-from-data-
sheet-to-simulation-peter-baumann/

ebookmeta.com

Arduino in Science: Collecting, Displaying, and

Manipulating Sensor Data 1st Edition Richard J. Smythe

https://ebookmeta.com/product/arduino-in-science-collecting-
displaying-and-manipulating-sensor-data-1st-edition-richard-j-smythe/

ebookmeta.com

Distributed Sensor Networks Second Edition Sensor

Networking and Applications S. Sitharama Iyengar

https://ebookmeta.com/product/distributed-sensor-networks-second-
edition-sensor-networking-and-applications-s-sitharama-iyengar/

ebookmeta.com

Little Love Notes: A Short, Sweet, Curvy Girl/Hometown

Hero Instalove Romance (Dogwood Falls Book 4) 1st Edition
Carly Keene [Keene
https://ebookmeta.com/product/little-love-notes-a-short-sweet-curvy-
girl-hometown-hero-instalove-romance-dogwood-falls-book-4-1st-edition-
carly-keene-keene/
ebookmeta.com
Love in Chaos Curvy Women Wanted 28 1st Edition Sam
Crescent Crescent Sam

https://ebookmeta.com/product/love-in-chaos-curvy-women-wanted-28-1st-
edition-sam-crescent-crescent-sam/

ebookmeta.com

Energy versus Carbon Dioxide How can we save the world 59

Theses 1st Edition Stan

https://ebookmeta.com/product/energy-versus-carbon-dioxide-how-can-we-
save-the-world-59-theses-1st-edition-stan/

ebookmeta.com

Beyond Sputnik And The Space Race The Origins Of Global

Satellite Communications 1st Edition Hugh R Slotten

https://ebookmeta.com/product/beyond-sputnik-and-the-space-race-the-
origins-of-global-satellite-communications-1st-edition-hugh-r-slotten/

ebookmeta.com

Scala Programming A comprehensive beginner s guide to

Scala 2nd Edition William

https://ebookmeta.com/product/scala-programming-a-comprehensive-
beginner-s-guide-to-scala-2nd-edition-william/

ebookmeta.com

Can We Price Carbon American and Comparative Environmental

Policy Barry G. Rabe

https://ebookmeta.com/product/can-we-price-carbon-american-and-
comparative-environmental-policy-barry-g-rabe/

ebookmeta.com
Beginning Git and GitHub: A Comprehensive Guide to Version
Control, Project Management, and Teamwork for the New
Developer 1st Edition Mariot Tsitoara
https://ebookmeta.com/product/beginning-git-and-github-a-
comprehensive-guide-to-version-control-project-management-and-
teamwork-for-the-new-developer-1st-edition-mariot-tsitoara/
ebookmeta.com
Sensor Data Understanding

Marcin Grzegorzek

λογος
Sensor Data Understanding

Marcin Grzegorzek
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche

Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available
on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de .

c Copyright Logos Verlag Berlin GmbH 2017

All rights reserved.

ISBN 978-3-8325-4633-5

Logos Verlag Berlin GmbH

Comeniushof, Gubener Str. 47,
10243 Berlin
Tel.: +49 (0)30 42 85 10 90
Fax: +49 (0)30 42 85 10 92
INTERNET: http://www.logos-verlag.de
Contents

Preface V

I Introduction 1
1 Fundamental Concept 3
1.1 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2 Active and Assisted Living . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3 Digital Medicine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.4 Outline and Contribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

II Visual Scene Analysis 17

2 Large-Scale Multimedia Retrieval 19
2.1 Hierarchical Organisation of Semantic
Meanings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.2 Concept Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.2.1 Global versus Local Features . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.2.2 Feature Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.3 Event Retrieval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.3.1 Event Retrieval within Images/Shots . . . . . . . 32
2.3.2 Event Retrieval over Shot Sequences . . . . . . . 33
2.4 Conclusion and Future Trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.4.1 Reasoning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.4.2 Uncertainties in Concept Detection . . . . . . . . 35
2.4.3 Adaptive Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

I
3 Shape-Based Object Recognition 53
3.1 Problem Statement and Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3.2 Shape Representation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
3.2.1 Survey of Related Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
3.2.2 Coarse-grained Shape Representation . . . . . . . 57
3.2.3 Fine-grained Shape Representation . . . . . . . . 58
3.3 Shape Matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
3.3.1 Survey of Related Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
3.3.2 Shape Matching using Coarse-grained Features . . 63
3.3.3 Shape Matching using Fine-grained Features . . . 64
3.4 Experiments and Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
3.4.1 Shape Retrieval using Coarse-grained Features . . 65
3.4.2 Shape Retrieval using Fine-grained Features . . . 67
3.5 Conclusion and Future Trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

4 Moving Object Analysis for Video Interpretation 81

4.1 Object Tracking in 2D Video . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
4.1.1 Survey of Related Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . 82
4.1.2 Tracking-Learning-Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
4.1.3 Tracking in Omnidirectional Video . . . . . . . . . 90
4.1.4 Experiments and Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
4.2 3D Trajectory Extraction from 2D Video . . . . . . . . . 93
4.2.1 RJ-MCMC Particle Filtering . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
4.2.2 Convoy Detection in Crowded Video . . . . . . . 99
4.2.3 Experiments and Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
4.3 Conclusion and Future Trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

III Human Data Interpretation 111

5 Physical Activity Recognition 113
5.1 Atomic Activity Recognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
5.1.1 Survey of Related Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . 115
5.1.2 Codebook Approach for Classification . . . . . . . 118
5.1.3 Experiments and Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
5.2 Gait Recognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
5.2.1 Survey or Related Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . 130

II
 5.2.2 Spatiotemporal Representation of Gait . . . . . . 132
5.2.3 Experiments and Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
5.3 Conclusion and Future Trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

6 Cognitive Activity Recognition 157

6.1 Definition, Taxonomy, Impact on Health . . . . . . . . . 157
6.2 Sensing the Brain Activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
6.2.1 Electroencephalography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
6.2.2 Electrooculography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
6.2.3 Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging . . . . . 159
6.2.4 Functional Near-InfraRed Spectroscopy . . . . . . 159
6.3 Survey of Related Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
6.4 Electrooculography-Based Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
6.4.1 Cognitive Activity Recognition Method . . . . . . 161
6.4.2 Investigating Codewords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
6.5 Application and Validation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
6.5.1 Collecting a Dataset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
6.5.2 Implementation Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
6.5.3 Results for Cognitive Activity Recognition . . . . . 165
6.5.4 Results for Codewords Investigation . . . . . . . . 166
6.6 Conclusion and Future Trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

7 Emotion Recognition 173

7.1 Automatic Recognition of Emotions . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
7.1.1 Definition and Taxonomy of Emotions . . . . . . 174
7.1.2 Existing Techniques for Emotion Recognition . . . 180
7.1.3 Emotion Recognition Challenges . . . . . . . . . . 182
7.2 Multimodal Emotion Recognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
7.2.1 Arousal/Valence Estimation . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
7.2.2 Basic Emotion Recognition . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
7.3 Approaches Based on Physiological Data . . . . . . . . . 192
7.3.1 Stress Detection Using Hand-crafted Features . . 194
7.3.2 Codebook Approach for Feature Generation . . . . 196
7.3.3 Deep Neural Networks for Feature Generation . . 199
7.4 Conclusion and Future Trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204

III
IV Conclusion 211
8 Summary and Future Vision 213
8.1 Visual Scene Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
8.2 Human Data Interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
8.3 Data-Driven Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

List of Figures 223

List of Tables 227

IV
Preface

The rapid development in the area of sensor technology has been respon-
sible for a number of societal phenomena. For instance, the increased
availability of imaging sensors integrated into digital video cameras has
significantly stimulated the UGC (User Generated Content) movement be-
ginning from 2005. Another example is the groundbreaking innovation in
wearable technology leading to a societal phenomenon called Quantified
Self (QS), a community of people who use the capabilities of technical
devices to gain a profound understanding of collected self-related data.
Machine learning algorithms benefit a lot from the availability of such
huge volumes of digital data. For example, new technical solutions for
challenges caused by the demographic change (ageing society) can be
proposed in this way, especially in the context of healthcare systems in
industrialised countries. The decision making process is often supported
or even fully taken over by machine learning algorithms. We live in a data-
driven society and significantly contribute to this concept by voluntarily
generating terabytes of data everyday. This societal transformation cannot
be stopped anymore. Our objective should be to gain as much benefit from
this movement as possible by limiting possible risks connected to it.
The goal of this book is to present selected algorithms for Visual Scene
Analysis (VSA, processing UGC) as well as for Human Data Interpretation
(HDI, using data produced within the QS movement) and to expose a
joint methodological basis between these two scientific directions. While
VSA approaches have reached impressive robustness towards human-like
interpretation of visual sensor data, HDI methods are still of limited se-
mantic abstraction power. Using selected state-of-the-art examples, this
book shows the maturity of approaches towards closing the semantic gap
in both areas, VSA and HDI.
Another objective of this book is to sketch a scientific vision of a generic
platform for holistic human condition monitoring. Based on the data de-
livered by sensors integrated in wearables (time series) and, if available,

V
also images, the algorithms will continuously analyse humans’ physical,
cognitive, emotional and social states/activities. Integrated into a single
module for holistic human health monitoring, the software platform will
perform a long-term analysis of human data on a very large scale. In-
telligent algorithms will automatically detect “interesting events” in these
data. Both real-time data analysis and as cumulative assessments will
be possible with the platform. The conceptualisation and development of
these machine learning algorithms for the recognition of patterns in hu-
mans’ physiological and behavioural data will happen on different levels of
abstraction between the methodology and application.
This book is designated for an interdisciplinary audience who would
like to use machine learning techniques to solve problems from the areas
of visual scene analysis as well as human data interpretation. Ideally, the
book will provide helpful background and guidance to researchers, under-
graduate or graduate students, or practitioners who want to incorporate
the ideas into their own work. On the one hand, it aims to show the
technical feasibility of machine learning techniques towards automatic in-
terpretation of multimodal sensory data. On the other hand, it warns
society to carefully monitor the implications of the rapid developments in
this area.
I would like to thank all members of the Research Group for Pattern
Recognition at the University of Siegen for proofreading this book and
providing valuable discussions which helped me to improve it. My special
thanks goes to Zeyd Boukhers, Ahmad Delforouzi, Muhammad Hassan
Khan, Kristin Klaas, Lukas Köping, Frédéric Li, Przemyslaw Lagodziński,
Kimiaki Shirahama, and Cong Yang. Last but not least, I would like to
thank my family for being unfailingly supportive of this effort.

Marcin Grzegorzek

VI
 Part I

Introduction

1
Chapter 1

Fundamental Concept

Sensors are everywhere. By the early 2020s, their number will have already
exceeded one trillion [5]. This is driven by falling sensor costs and new
fabrication techniques enabling their significant miniaturisation. For exam-
ple, the startup company mCube (www.mcubemems.com) creates motion
sensors that are “smaller than a grain of sand” and envisions a world where
motion sensors are embedded in “everything that moves”.
The rapid development in the area of sensor technology has been re-
sponsible for a number of societal phenomena. For instance, the increased
availability of imaging sensors integrated into digital video cameras has
significantly stimulated the UGC (User Generated Content) movement be-
ginning from 20051 . Another example is the groundbreaking innovation in
wearable technology leading to a societal phenomenon called Quantified
Self (QS), a community of people who use the capabilities of technical
devices to gain a profound understanding of collected self-related data.
Huge and continuously increasing volumes of digital sensor data are
collected everyday. For example, in June 2016, YouTube users were up-
loading 400 hours of new video content to the platform per minute2 . How-
ever, the digital sensor data themselves do not provide the users with any
added value. They need to be semantically interpreted (understood) in a
particular application context to become useful.
The abstraction of digital sensor data towards their semantic under-
standing using automated algorithms is a challenging scientific problem.
The so called semantic gap, the lack of coincidence between automatically
extractable data features and human-perceivable semantic meanings [17],
1
A video-sharing platform www.youtube.com got launched in February 2005.
2
https://www.domo.com/blog/data-never-sleeps-4-0

3
must get bridged for this. A person’s everyday life requires an immense
amount of knowledge about the world. Much of this knowledge is sub-
jective and intuitive, and therefore difficult to articulate in a formal way.
Computers need to capture the same knowledge in order to behave in an
intelligent way. One of the key challenges in artificial intelligence is how
to get this informal knowledge into a computer [6]. In contrast to human
experts from a certain application area (e.g., medical doctors), computers
do not possess the context knowledge to interpret low-level digital data on
a high-level of semantic abstraction (e.g., early diagnosis in medicine) [7].
One of the approaches towards closing the semantic gap aims at inte-
grating knowledge bases called ontologies into the process of low-level data
analysis [19]. However, the ontology generation process has been auto-
mated up to a certain limited level only which makes this strategy very time
consuming. In addition, the integration of the high-level ontology-based
reasoning techniques into the low-level data analysis algorithms usually
requires the pattern recognition software to be customised towards the
context model (application ontology) currently used [2]. This hinders the
portability of such solutions across application domains [7].
Currently, the most widely investigated family of approaches aiming to
reach high-level interpretations from low-level digital data is called deep
learning [4, 6]. Generally, deep learning algorithms allow computers to
learn from experience and understand the world in terms of a hierarchy
of concepts, with each concept defined in terms of its relation to simpler
concepts. By gathering knowledge from experience, this approach avoids
the need for human operators to formally specify all of the knowledge that
the computer needs. The hierarchy of concepts allows the computer to
learn complicated concepts by building them out of simpler ones [7].
In this book, selected state-of-the-art approaches for Visual Scene
Analysis (Part II) and for Human Data Interpretation (Part III) all aiming
at reaching the highest possible level of semantic interpretation are pre-
sented and discussed. The author comprehensively contributed to most of
the scientific results described in this book.
This chapter is structured as follows. In Section 1.1, the book is moti-
vated on the application level and from the methodological point of view.
Afterwards, the two main applications addressed by this book and in its
author’s current research, namely Active and Assisted Living (Section 1.2)
as well as Digital Medicine (Section 1.3), are introduced. Section 1.4
presents an overall structural concept of the book identifying its author’s
contributions to the particular chapters.

4
Figure 1.1: The trend towards a digital society results in a huge volume
of sensor data generated everyday. These pieces of data improve the
performance of machine learning algorithms. In this way, new technical
solutions to challenges caused by the demographic change (ageing society)
can be proposed.

1.1 Motivation
The selection of applications (Active and Assisted Living as well as Digital
Medicine, see Figure 1.4) addressed in this book and in its author’s cur-
rent research is motivated by main phenomena of modern societies. On
the one hand, the demographic change leading to society ageing, along-
side the shortage of medical staff (especially in rural areas), critically chal-
lenges healthcare systems in industrialised countries in their conventional
form [7]. On the other hand, the trend towards a digital society (digitali-
sation) progresses with tremendous speed, so that more and more health-
related data is available in digital form. As large volumes of data improve
the performance of machine learning algorithms, new technical solutions
for problems caused by the demographic change (ageing society) can be
proposed (Figure 1.1).
From the methodological point of view, this book presents and reviews

5
Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Marxism and
Darwinism
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.

Title: Marxism and Darwinism

Evidence, speeches, and papers in its favour

Author: Anton Pannekoek

Translator: Nathan Weiser

Release date: November 11, 2023 [eBook #72095]

Language: English

Original publication: Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co, 1912

Credits: Tim Lindell, Donald Cummings, and the Online

Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
(This file was produced from images generously made
available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARXISM

AND DARWINISM ***
Marxism and Darwinism
BY

ANTON PANNEKOEK
Translated by Nathan Weiser.

CHICAGO
CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY
CO-OPERATIVE
 Copyright, 1912
By
Charles H. Kerr & Company
“SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST.”
In northern climes, the polar bear
Protects himself with fat and hair,
Where snow is deep and ice is stark,
And half the year is cold and dark,
He still survives a clime like that
By growing fur, by growing fat.
These traits, O bear, which thou transmittest
Prove the Survival of the Fittest.

To polar regions waste and wan,

Comes the encroaching race of man,
A puny, feeble, little bubber,
He has no fur, he has no blubber.
The scornful bear sat down at ease
To see the stranger starve and freeze—
But, lo! the stranger slew the bear,
And ate his fat and wore his hair;
These deeds, O Man, which thou committest
Prove the Survival of the Fittest.

In modern times the Millionaire

Protects himself as did the bear:
Where Poverty and Hunger are
He counts his bullion by the car:
Where thousands perish still he thrives—
The wealth, O Croesus, thou transmittest
Proves the Survival of the Fittest.

But, lo, some people odd and funny,

Some men without a cent of money—
The simple common human race
Chose to improve their dwelling place:
They had no use for millionaires,
They calmly said the world was theirs,
They were so wise, so strong, so many,
The Millionaires?—there wasn’t any.
These deeds, O Man, which thou committest
Prove the Survival of the Fittest.

—Mrs. Charlotte Stetson.

 CONTENTS.
PAGE.

I. Darwinism 7
II. Marxism 16
III. Marxism and the Class Struggle 19
IV. Darwinism and the Class Struggle 22
V. Darwinism Versus Socialism 27
VI. Natural Law and Social Theory 33
VII. The Sociability of Man 36
VIII. Tools, Thought and Language 42
IX. Animal Organs and Human Tools 50
X. Capitalism and Socialism 54
 MARXISM and DARWINISM

I. DARWINISM.
Two scientists can hardly be named who have, in the second half
of the 19th century, dominated the human mind to a greater degree
than Darwin and Marx. Their teachings revolutionized the conception
that the great masses had about the world. For decades their names
have been on the tongues of everybody, and their teachings have
become the central point of the mental struggles which accompany
the social struggles of today. The cause of this lies primarily in the
highly scientific contents of their teachings.
The scientific importance of Marxism as well as of Darwinism
consists in their following out the theory of evolution, the one upon
the domain of the organic world, of things animate; the other, upon
the domain of society. This theory of evolution, however, was in no
way new, it had its advocates before Darwin and Marx; the
philosopher, Hegel, made it even as the central point of his
philosophy. It is, therefore, necessary to observe closely what were
the achievements of Darwin and Marx in this domain.
The theory that plants and animals have developed one from
another is met with first in the nineteenth century. Formerly the
question, “Whence come all these thousands and hundreds of
thousands of different kinds of plants and animals that we know?”
was answered. “At the time of creation God created them all, each
after its kind.” This primitive theory was in conformity with the
experiences had and with the oldest information that could be got.
According to the information, all known plants and animals have
always been the same. Scientifically, this experience was thus
expressed, “All kinds are invariable because the parents transmit
their characteristics to their children.”
 There were, however, some peculiarities among plants and
animals which gradually forced a different conception to be
entertained. They so nicely let themselves be arranged into a system
which was first set up by the Swedish scientist Linnaeus. According
to this system, the animals are divided into main divisions; these
divisions are divided into classes, classes into orders, orders into
families, families into species, each of which contain a few kinds.
The more semblance there is in their characteristics, the nearer they
stand towards each other in this system, and the smaller is the group
to which they belong. All the animals classed as mammalian show
the same general characteristics in their bodily frame. The
herbivorous animals, and carnivorous animals, and monkeys, each
of which belongs to a different order, are again differentiated. Bears,
dogs, and cats, all of which are rapacious animals, have much more
in common in bodily form than they have with horses or monkeys.
This conformity is still more obvious when we examine varieties of
the same species; the cat, tiger and lion resemble each other in
many respects where they differ from dogs and bears. If we turn
from the class of mammals to other classes, such as birds or fishes,
we find greater differences than we find in the other class. There is
still, however, a slight resemblance in the formation of the body, the
skeleton and the nervous system are still there. These features first
disappear when we turn from this main division, which embraces all
the vertebrates, and go to the molluscs (soft bodied animals) or to
the polyps.
The entire animal world may thus be arranged into divisions and
subdivisions. Had every different kind of animal been created entirely
independent of all the others, there would be no reason why such
orders should exist. There would be no reason why there should not
be mammals having six paws. We would have to assume, then, that
at the time of creation, God had taken Linnaeus’ system as a plan
and created everything according to this plan. Happily we have
another way of accounting for it. The likeness in the construction of
the body may be due to a real family relationship. According to this
conception, the conformity of peculiarities show how near or remote
the relationship is; just as the resemblance of brothers and sisters is
greater than between remote relatives. The animal classes were,
therefore, not created individually, but descended one from another.
They form one trunk that started with simple foundations and which
has continually developed; the last and thin twigs are our present
existing kinds. All species of cats descend from a primitive cat, which
together with the primitive dog and the primitive bear, is the
descendant of some primitive type of rapacious animal. The primitive
rapacious animal, the primitive hoofed animal and the primitive
monkey have descended from some primitive mammal, etc.
This theory of descent was advocated by Lamarck and by
Geoffrey St. Hilaire. It did not, however, meet with general approval.
These naturalists could not prove the correctness of this theory and,
therefore, it remained only a hypothesis, a mere assumption. When
Darwin came, however, with his main book, The Origin of Species, it
struck like a thunderbolt; his theory of evolution was immediately
accepted as a strongly proved truth. Since then the theory of
evolution has become inseparable from Darwin’s name. Why so?
This was partly due to the fact that through experience ever more
material was accumulated which went to support this theory. Animals
were found which could not very well be placed into the classification
such as oviparous mammals (that is, animals which lay eggs and
nourish their offspring from their breast.—Translator), fishes having
lungs, and invertebrate animals. The theory of descent claimed that
these are simply the remnants of the transition between the main
groups. Excavations have revealed fossil remains which looked
different from animals living now. These remains have partly proved
to be the primitive forms of our animals, and that the primitive
animals have gradually developed to existing ones. Then the theory
of cells was formed; every plant, every animal, consists of millions of
cells and has been developed by incessant division and
differentiation of single cells. Having gone so far, the thought that the
highest organisms have descended from primitive beings having but
a single cell, could not appear as strange.
All these new experiences could not, however, raise the theory to
a strongly proved truth. The best proof for the correctness of this
theory would have been to have an actual transformation from one
animal kind to another take place before our eyes, so that we could
observe it. But this is impossible. How then is it at all possible to
prove that animal forms are really changing into new forms? This
can be done by showing the cause, the propelling force of such
development. This Darwin did. Darwin discovered the mechanism of
animal development, and in doing so he showed that under certain
conditions some animal-kinds will necessarily develop into other
animal-kinds. We will now make clear this mechanism.
Its main foundation is the nature of transmission, the fact that
parents transmit their peculiarities to children, but that at the same
time the children diverge from their parents in some respects and
also differ from each other. It is for this reason that animals of the
same kind are not all alike, but differ in all directions from the
average type. Without this so-called variation it would be wholly
impossible for one animal species to develop into another. All that is
necessary for the formation of a new species is that the divergence
from the central type become greater and that it goes on in the same
direction until this divergence has become so great that the new
animal no longer resembles the one from which it descended. But
where is that force that could call forth the ever growing variation in
the same direction?
Lamarck declared that this was owing to the usage and much
exercise of certain organs; that, owing to the continuous exercise of
certain organs, these become ever more perfected. Just as the
muscles of men’s legs get strong from running much, in the same
way the lion acquired its powerful paws and the hare its speedy legs.
In the same way the giraffes got their long necks because in order to
reach the tree leaves, which they ate, their necks were stretched so
that a short-necked animal developed to the long-necked giraffe. To
many this explanation was incredible and it could not account for the
fact that the frog should have such a green color which served him
as a good protecting color.
To solve the same question, Darwin turned to another line of
experience. The animal breeder and the gardener are able to raise
artificially new races and varieties. When a gardener wants to raise
from a certain plant a variety having large blossoms, all he has to do
is to kill before maturity all those plants having small blossoms and
preserve those having large ones. If he repeats this for a few years
in succession, the blossoms will be ever larger, because each new
generation resembles its predecessor, and our gardener, having
always picked out the largest of the large for the purpose of
propagation, succeeds in raising a plant with very large blossoms.
Through such action, done sometimes deliberately and sometimes
accidentally, people have raised a great number of races of our
domesticated animals which differ from their original form much
more than the wild kinds differ from each other.
If we should ask an animal-breeder to raise a long-necked animal
from a short-necked one, it would not appear to him an impossibility.
All he would have to do would be to choose those having partly
longer necks, have them inter-bred, kill the young ones having
narrow necks and again have the long-necked inter-breed. If he
repeated this at every new generation the result would be that the
neck would ever become longer and we would get an animal
resembling the giraffe.
This result is achieved because there is a definite will with a
definite object, which, to raise a certain variety, chooses certain
animals. In nature there is no such will, and all the deviations must
again be straightened out by interbreeding, so that it is impossible for
an animal to keep on departing from the original stock and keep
going in the same direction until it becomes an entirely different
species. Where, then, is that power in nature that chooses the
animals just as the breeder does?
Darwin pondered this problem long before he found its solution in
the “struggle for existence.” In this theory we have a reflex of the
productive system of the time in which Darwin lived; because it was
the capitalist competitive struggle which served him as a picture for
the struggle for existence prevailing in nature. It was not through his
own observation that this solution presented itself to him. It came to
him by his reading the works of the economist Malthus. Malthus tried
to explain that in our bourgeois world there is so much misery and
starvation and privation because population increases much more
rapidly than the existing means of subsistence. There is not enough
food for all; people must, therefore, struggle with each other for their
existence, and many must go down in this struggle. By this theory
capitalist competition as well as the misery existing were declared as
an unavoidable natural law. In his autobiography Darwin declares
that it was Malthus’ book which made him think about the struggle
for existence.
“In October, 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my
systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on
population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for
existence which everywhere goes on from long continuous
observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me
that under these circumstances favorable variations would tend to be
preserved, and unfavorable ones to be destroyed. The result of this
would be the formation of new species. Here, then, I had at last got a
theory by which to work.”
It is a fact that the increase in the birth of animals is greater than
the existing food permits of sustaining. There is no exception to the
rule that all organic beings tend to increase so rapidly that our earth
would be overrun very soon by the offspring of a single pair, were
these not destroyed. It is for this reason that a struggle for existence
must arise. Every animal tries to live, does its best to eat, and seeks
to avoid being eaten by others. With its particular peculiarities and
weapons it struggles against the entire antagonistic world, against
animals, cold, heat, dryness, inundations, and other natural
occurrences that may threaten to destroy it. Above all, it struggles
with the animals of its own kind, who live in the same way, have the
same peculiarities, use the same weapons and live by the same
nourishment. This struggle is not a direct one; the hare does not
struggle directly with the hare, nor the lion with the lion—unless it is
a struggle for the female—but it is a struggle for existence, a race, a
competitive struggle. All of them can not reach a grown-up age; most
of them are destroyed, and only those who win the race remain. But
which are the ones to win in the race? Those which, through their
peculiarities, through their bodily structures are best able to find food
or to escape an enemy; in other words, those which are best
adapted to existing conditions will survive. “Because there are ever
more individuals born than can remain alive, the struggle as to which
shall remain alive must start again and that creature that has some
advantage over the others will survive, but as these diverging
peculiarities are transmitted to the new generations, nature itself
does the choosing, and a new generation will arise having changed
peculiarities.”
Here we have another application for the origin of the giraffe.
When grass does not grow in some places, the animals must nourish
themselves on tree leaves, and all those whose necks are too short
to reach these leaves must perish. In nature itself there is selection,
and nature selects only those having long necks. In conformity with
the selection done by the animal breeder, Darwin called this process
“natural selection.”
This process must necessarily produce new species. Because too
many are born of a certain species, more than the existing food
supply can sustain, they are forever trying to spread over a larger
area. In order to procure their food, those living in the woods go to
the plain, those living on the soil go into the water, and those living
on the ground climb on trees. Under these new conditions
divergence is necessary. These divergencies are increased, and
from the old species a new one develops. This continuous
movement of existing species branching out into new relations
results in these thousands of different animals changing still more.
While the Darwinian theory explains thus the general descent of
the animals, their transmutation and formation out of primitive
beings, it explains, at the same time, the wonderful conformity
throughout nature. Formerly this wonderful conformity could only be
explained through the wise superintending care of God. Now,
however, this natural descent is clearly understood. For this
conformity is nothing else than the adaptation to the means of life.
Every animal and every plant is exactly adapted to existing
circumstances, for all those whose build is less conformable are less
adapted and are exterminated in the struggle for existence. The
green-frog, having descended from the brown-frog, must preserve its
protecting color, for all those that deviate from this color are sooner
found by the enemies and destroyed or find greater difficulty in
obtaining their food and must perish.
 It was thus that Darwin showed us, for the first time, that new
species continually formed out of old ones. The theory of descent,
which until then was merely a presumptive inference of many
phenomena that could not be explained well in any other way,
gained the certainty of an absolute inference of definite forces that
could be proved. In this lies the main reason that this theory had so
quickly dominated the scientific discussions and public attention.
 II. MARXISM.
If we turn to Marxism we immediately see a great conformity with
Darwinism. As with Darwin, the scientific importance of Marx’s work
consists in this, that he discovered the propelling force, the cause of
social development. He did not have to prove that such a
development was taking place; every one knew that from the most
primitive times new social forms ever supplanted older, but the
causes and aims of this development were unknown.
In his theory Marx started with the information at hand in his time.
The great political revolution that gave Europe the aspect it had, the
French Revolution, was known to everyone to have been a struggle
for supremacy, waged by the bourgeois against nobility and royalty.
After this struggle new class struggles originated. The struggle
carried on in England by the manufacturing capitalists against the
landowners dominated politics; at the same time the working class
revolted against the bourgeoisie. What were all these classes?
Wherein did they differ from each other? Marx proved that these
class distinctions were owing to the various functions each one
played in the productive process. It is in the productive process that
classes have their origin, and it is this process which determines to
what class one belongs. Production is nothing else than the social
labor process by which men obtain their means of subsistence from
nature. It is the production of the material necessities of life that
forms the main structure of society and that determines the political
relations and social struggles.
The methods of production have continuously changed with the
progress of time. Whence came these changes? The manner of
labor and the productive relationship depend upon the tools with
which people work, upon the development of technique and upon the
means of production in general. Because in the Middle Ages people
worked with crude tools, while now they work on gigantic machinery,
we had at that time small trade and feudalism, while now we have
capitalism; it is also for this reason that at that time the feudal nobility
and the small bourgeoisie were the most important classes, while
now it is the bourgeoisie and the proletarians which are the classes.
It is the development of tools, of these technical aids which men
direct, which is the main cause, the propelling force of all social
development. It is self-understood that the people are ever trying to
improve these tools so that their labor be easier and more
productive, and the practice they acquire in using these tools, leads
their thoughts upon further improvements. Owing to this
development, a slow or quick progress of technique takes place,
which at the same time changes the social forms of labor. This leads
to new class relations, new social institutions and new classes. At
the same time social, i. e., political struggles arise. Those classes
predominating under the old process of production try to preserve
artificially their institutions, while the rising classes try to promote the
new process of production; and by waging the class struggles
against the ruling class and by conquering them they pave the way
for the further unhindered development of technique.
Thus the Marxian theory disclosed the propelling force and the
mechanism of social development. In doing this it has proved that
history is not something irregular, and that the various social systems
are not the result of chance or haphazard events, but that there is a
regular development in a definite direction. In doing this it was also
proved that social development does not cease with our system,
because technique continually develops.
Thus, both teachings, the teachings of Darwin and of Marx, the
one in the domain of the organic world and the other upon the field of
human society, raised the theory of evolution to a positive science. In
doing this they made the theory of evolution acceptable to the
masses as the basic conception of social and biological
development.