by Brian Post
Charles Darwin, the Evolutionary Revolutionary
Since the beginning of human civilization, man has struggled to understand his origin on earth. Ancient civilizations often developed religious stories of creation in an attempt to explain this mystery. Often a god or gods created both man and the earth, along with all other living and nonliving things. Scientists, however, have always searched for a more logical solution to this question. Earlier scientists like John Ray in the 17th century, and Comte de Buffon, Lamarck, and Darwin's grandfather Erasmus in the 18th century had already questioned the accepted ideas. The middle of the 19th century presented a very difficult time for Darwin to release his findings because "the belief on which all rested was that the biblical story of the Creation was history rather than biblical mythology" (Clark 5). Darwin still managed to provoke thought in his society about a more scientific origin of man. He had many theories that were revolutionary for the time, but "the keystone to Darwin's proposition was his belief in the infinity of variation" (Brent 447). As an addition to previous evolutionary work, "Darwin's contribution. . . was a massive array of evidence. . . and. . . a unifying hypothesis that explained how evolution had taken place" (Daniels 22). Charles Darwin, through his theory of Natural Selection and various writings, provided a logical and scientific basis for evolution that forever changed the outlook on mankind's origins.
Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England on February 12, 1809. He was the son of Robert Waring Darwin II and his wife Susannah Wedgewood. He was the grandson of the scientist Erasmus Darwin, a notable physician of the late eighteenth century, and also Josiah Wedgewood, whose pottery at Etruria became world-famous. His mother died when he was eight years old, and his older sisters Caroline Sarah, Marianne, and Susan Elizabeth took her place in his young life. He was taught a simple education at the nearby Shrewsbury School during his boyhood. As Darwin himself stated, "The school as a means of education to me was simply a blank" (Barlow 27). After this he traveled to Edinburgh College to study medicine, which was his father's desire. Edinburgh was a highly respected university, and it's reputation "In natural history and medicine. . . stood as high as any in the world" (Brent 35). At Edinburgh Darwin realized that becoming a doctor was not what he wanted. A final attempt at his education was made at Christ's College, Cambridge, in autumn of 1827. Darwin's father, realizing that Darwin would never be a man of medicine, wished for Darwin to become a clergyman. Darwin actually enjoyed the idea of becoming a simple country clergyman, but was not anxious to study the dogmas of the Church of England. During this period of his schooling he expanded his collecting to include all plants, insects, and geological specimens. Darwin's cousin William Darwin Fox, an entomologist, guided him in his collection efforts. Darwin did not enjoy his scholastic studies, and he felt that ". . . no pursuit at Cambridge was followed with nearly so much eagerness or gave me so much pleasure as collecting beetles" (Barlow 62). Cambridge served as a social center for Darwin, rather than an educational facility. He had many friends, and ". . . it was Cambridge that later stimulated some of his most vivid moments of nostalgia" (Brent 73). Darwin did not learn scientific theories from textbooks and lectures; instead, he enjoyed studying nature while taking solitary walks. His botany professor, John Stevens Henslow, who was instrumental in securing a place for Darwin on the surveying expedition of HMS Beagle to Patagonia, further encouraged the youth's scientific inclinations. Henslow received a letter from Captain Robert FitzRoy requesting a naturalist for a voyage to Tierra del Fuego and the East Indies. He sent this letter to Darwin, who he knew had substantial knowledge and interest in both Geology and Botany. Darwin, a now twenty-two-year-old college graduate, had no commitments in his life, and accepted the offer. His father was strongly opposed to the trip but was persuaded by Josiah Wedgewood, Darwin's grandfather, that it would be very suitable for a future clergyman. For Darwin this trip proved to be ". . . a voyage that awakened his innate scientific instincts and aroused that much devoted factor in his make-up: ambition" (Clark 4). Darwin met the Captain of the ship, Robert FitzRoy, in London and hastily agreed to both the plans for the journey and the ship itself.
Darwin's voyage on the HMS Beagle was the turning point in his understanding of evolution. The Beagle was a ". . . 10 gun, 235 ton, sloop-brig 90 feet long and of 24 foot, eight-inch beam that had been launched in May of 1820" (Clark 20). During this five-year expedition, Darwin and his shipmates would obtain intimate knowledge of the fauna, flora, and geology of many lands. Intimacy between people on the ship would hardly be a difficult task, because "Into this cramped space, in degrees of discomfort varying directly with their degrees of authority and importance, seventy-three men and one woman would eventually be packed" (Brent 124). Darwin regarded FitzRoy with solid respect, regardless of their many disagreements. The "Relations between Darwin and FitzRoy. . . were occasionally to be stormy, Darwin's innate liberalism clashing with FitzRoy's extreme conservatism" (Clark 19). The expedition's departure was delayed many times for different problems, including the restructuring of much of the ships wooden beams, but "Abruptly, on 27 December, two months behind schedule. . . the Beagle was on her way" (Brent 133). Under Captain Robert FitzRoy, the Beagle would visit Tenerife, the Cape Verde Islands, Brazil, Montevideo, Tierra del Fuego, Buenos Aires, Valparaiso, Chile, the Galapagos, Tahiti, New Zealand, and Tasmania. At Punta Alta, an area rich in fossils, Darwin discovered ". . . evidence enough that species had tramped their time upon the earth, then vanished" (Brent 156). He collected many specimens there, and like the rest of his collection, studied them very closely. In Tierra del Fuego, Darwin was highly interested in the primitive people and culture. The Fuegians were judged by Darwin to be ". . . the indicators of human degradation and. . . the mark by which human advancement might be measured" (Brent 162). By far the most interesting places to Darwin were the Galapagos Islands. On these islands were creatures unlike any seen before in any other part of the world. The finches, tortoises, and lizards held most of Darwin's interest during his stay in the Galapagos. He claimed to have tried riding the tortoises several times, but had difficulty staying upright on their backs. The fauna of the Galapagos also perked Darwin's curiosity. He noticed about the plants that "In the Galapagos, though separated from the mainland by some six-hundred miles of ocean, they were like those of America" (Brent 198). After his rather short stay in the Galapagos, the Beagle continued on to Tahiti. It arrived on the 15th of November, and Darwin immediately began a study of the inhabitants of the island. He had very little to learn otherwise, ". . . since the islands natural history was already well known" (Brent 201). Darwin had relatively tame visits in New Zealand and Australia, and crossed the Indian Ocean. The Beagle was homeward bound, and Darwin was relieved that his homesickness would soon be alleviated. Throughout the entire trip, Darwin suffered from seasickness. He and FitzRoy stayed on generally good terms, with the exception of a few minor quarrels and one major argument over the correctness of slavery. Darwin kept in good contact with Henslow, and sent him many specimens that had been collected. Darwin's voyage on the Beagle with Captain FitzRoy came to a close when the ship docked at Falmouth in England on October 2, 1836.
Upon his return to England, Darwin continued his research. He catalogued and observed his specimen collections and sent them to various British museums. In 1838, he finished the first of his many Transmutation Notebooks, which were written about his observations and experiences on the Beagle. By 1846 he had published several works on the geological and zoological discoveries of his voyage- works that placed him at once in the front rank of scientists. He developed a friendship with Sir Charles Lyell, and became secretary of the Geological Society. Darwin's geological expertise ". . . was eventually to lead him on to the question of questions" (Clark 30). On January 19, 1839, he married his cousin Emma Wedgewood in St. Peters, Maer. Emma was the prototype of the Victorian wife, and was Darwin's companion until the end. She was continually supportive, even though her beliefs clashed strongly with her husbands, and she ". . . clearly became the emotional base upon which Darwin rested his entire life" (Brent 316). From 1842 until he perished, he lived at Down House, Downe, Kent, a country gentleman among his gardens, conservatories, pigeons, and fowls. The practical knowledge he gained there, especially in variation and interbreeding, proved invaluable. Private means enabled him to devote himself to science, in spite of continuous ill-health. At Down House he addressed himself to the problem of the origin of species. During the summer of 1842, Darwin drafted out his first outline of evolutionary theory. The basis for this draft was Darwin's Transmutation Notebooks, a collection of his writings and observations from the Beagle. In 1844, this draft was expanded into a formal paper consisting of two parts. These embodied the principle of natural selection, the germ of the Darwinian Theory, but with typical caution he delayed publication of his hypothesis. He felt that his theories should "be presented to the world only when every detail was buttressed by evidence, when all the questions that he knew would be raised could be countered by satisfactory answers" (Clark 99). By 1856 Darwin started writing his greatest work, and when he needed to support this writing ". . . he simply tore out of the Notebooks whatever pages he needed for reference" (Brent 300). In 1858 Alfred Russel Wallace sent him a memoir of the Malay Archipelago, which, to Darwin's surprise, contained in essence the main ideas of his own theory of natural selection. Lyell and Joseph Hooker persuaded him to submit a paper of his own to the Linnean Society, based on his 1844 sketch, which would be read simultaneously with Wallace's to the Society. Neither Darwin nor Wallace was present on that historic occasion. Wallace's paper finally convinced Darwin to produce a work containing both his theories and evidence of their truth. He then set to work to condense his vast mass of notes, and put into shape his great work, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.
"The Origin of Species was published by John Murray on November 24, 1859, at fifteen shillings" (Clark 120). All printed copies were sold on the very first day. Writing the book took Darwin a total of ". . . thirteen months and ten days hard labor" (Barlow 122). The entire theory revolved around Natural Selection, or Survival of the Fittest, which Darwin himself defined as the "preservation of favorable individual differences and variations, and the destruction of those that are injurious" (Darwin 75). Notable scientists from all over the world studied and critiqued his work, and most could find nothing wrong with his claims. Geologists had recently revealed that the age of the earth was somewhere along the lines of billions of years. This further supported Darwin's theories, since evolution would require an incredible span of time to work within. The truth was evident that "if time is not limited, and if variation is indeed infinite, Darwin's theory could explain the entire biological past - from the one-celled organism all the way through man" (Daniels 24). Eventually the theory succeeded in obtaining recognition from almost all biologists of his time. Unfortunately, the religious hold on the thoughts of society was not to be easily swayed.
Darwin's revolutionary work, received throughout Europe with the deepest interest, was violently attacked because it did not agree with the account of creation given in the Book of Genesis. It was obvious that Darwin's work ". . . threw down the gauntlet in a way that could not be easily ignored" (Clark 124). Darwin knew he would shock some people but said "I see no good reason why the views given in this volume should shock the religious feelings of anyone" (Darwin 216). Darwin was persistent, but not haughty or superior, in his attitude about spreading his theory to society. It was obvious that "Whatever the doubts raised by religious believers or questioning scientists. . . the general line of Darwin's theory was gaining a firmer hold on the public imagination" (Clark 161). Darwin, still remaining religious himself, attempted to soften the blow to religion by editing his work. For example, "he attempted to placate the religious feelings that he had outraged by here and there adding the phrase 'by the Creator' " (Brent 426-7). He was pressured to reveal his thoughts on certain subjects, but he " skillfully avoided and sort of public commitment. . . whether on atheism, anarchy, or convention" (Brent 451). Even after the release of The Origin of Species, Darwin continued to work at a series of supplemental treatises, all of which provided support for his Origin of Species. He published The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex in 1871 and postulated that the human race descended from a hairy animal belonging to the great anthropoid group, and was related to the progenitors of the orangutan, chimpanzee, and gorilla. In this same work he also developed his important supplementary theory of sexual selection.
Darwin died after a long illness, and it was not realized until after his death that he had suffered from Chagas's disease, which he had contracted from an insect bite while in South America. He had a total of eight children, several of whom achieved great distinction during their lifetimes. Though not the sole creator of the evolution hypothesis, nor even the first to apply the concept of descent to plants and animals, he was the first thinker to gain for that theory a wide acceptance among biological experts. By adding to the crude evolutionism of Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, and others, his own specific idea of natural selection, Darwin supplied a sufficient cause and raised evolution from a hypothesis to a verifiable theory. As Darwin stated in his autobiography, "With such moderate abilities as I possess, it is truly surprising that thus I should have influenced to a considerable extent the beliefs of scientific men on some important points" (Barlow 145).
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