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25 It would not be late before nature's richness would be fully confirmed. Several voyages of discovery rendered a surprising amount of information about different species of plants and animals, fostering natural historian's efforts to systematize such profusion. The Swedish botanist Linnaeus developed the first such univer- sal system, although a century later the idea of a stable taxonomy was questioned by two leading travellers of the 18th century, the German geographer Alexander von Humboldt and the English geologist Charles Lyell. Something was missing. It was the English naturalist Charles Darwin, after a trip to the Galapagos Island, who discovered what it was, thus changing the prevailing human conception of nature for good. Yet, this huge novelty notwithstanding, nothing changed much in a socionatural relationship that remained marked by the human attempt to colonize and exploit the natural world. 2.4 Nature After Darwin If the buoyant and diverse natural world encountered overseas posed new ques- tions about the evolution of life on Earth, it was Malthus' (1980) ideas about eco- logical limits of given habitats that provided Charles Darwin with the answer he was looking for, namely, a mechanism able to explain such evolution. He argued that ecosystems can only support a limited amount of human population, due to the fixed fertility of every organism or landscape. Darwin (2008) asked himself by which means could the subsequent natural equilibrium be reached. He answered that those organisms better equipped to deal with their environmental conditions should drive out their competitors, while at the same time variations among indi- viduals of the same species become determinants of survival and, over time, evo- lution itself. The latter is then a product of natural selection. It follows that every creature on the planet, human beings included, share a common ancestor. Instead of seeing nature as a static entity operated by mechanical laws or as an assemblage of beings hierarchically fixed to each other, Darwin exposed a nature that—although governed by some universal laws—had a history of its own; a history in which chance and randomness also have a place. In fact, natural selection and eco- logical adaptation include occasional leaps and episodes of maladaptation, as can be expected from an order made up by myriads of creatures interacting in complex pat- terns in several different ecological scenarios over an incredibly long amount of time. Evolution is a process by which species adapt to their environment—sometimes by changing it, as is the case with human beings. As Darwin writes: I should premise that I use the term Struggle for Existence in a large and metaphori- cal sense, including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of the individual, but success in leaving progeny. Two canine animals in a time of dearth, maybe truly said to struggle with each other which shall get food and live. But a plant on the edge of a desert is said to struggle for life against the drought, though more properly it should be said to be dependent on the moisture (Darwin 2008: 51). 2.3 Nature Before Darwin