Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin

There are many important people thought history who have made a deep impact in the lives of everyone on earth. Charles Darwin is one of the few people who have accomplished this. Through out his life Darwin made many ideas that some would think unimaginable truth. He went against the church to follow his dreams and aspirations as a man. Through Darwin's hard work, adventures of the Beagle, and writings, society would not be where it is today scientifically or socially without his idea of survival of the fittest and evolution.

Charles Robert Darwin was a British scientist who laid the foundation of modern evolutionary theory with his views on life development through natural selection. He was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England, on February 12, 1809. After graduating from the elite school at Shrewsbury in 1825, Darwin attended the University of Edinburgh where he studied medicine. Yet after seeing surgery performed without using anesthetic, he soon lost interest in medicine and wanted other things. So in 1827 he dropped out and entered the University of Cambridge in preparation for becoming a clergyman of the Church of England. While there, Darwin met two important people in his life, Adam Sedgwick, a geologist, and John Stevens Henslow, a naturalist. He became very close with Henslow, and Henslow became a mentor figure for young Charles. In August 1831, at Henslow's recommendation, Darwin sailed as the unpaid naturalist on the HMS Beagle. (Barlow 56) The ship was to survey the east and west coasts of South America and continue to the Pacific islands to establish a chain of chronometric stations. Henslow suggested Darwin as both an acute observer and a companion for the aristocratic young captain, Robert FitzRoy. Robert Darwin first refused permission on grounds that it was dangerous and would not advance Charles in his career. Later his brother-in-law, Josiah Wedgwood II, changed his mind. Then on December 27, 1831 the HMS Beagle set out for a two-year adventure that Charles Darwin would never forget.(Barlow 60-67)

On the Beagle, Darwin would always boast and brag how this trip will be, "a second birth" (Keynes 34) . Yet Darwin was never a real sea person. On the Beagle he was always sea sick and spending time in a hammock to help his ailing stomach. Often, he would go ashore to search of life on the various islands they passed by. About 1,800 miles southwest of the Canary Islands the Beagle visited Sio Tiago, a volcanic island in the Cape Verde Islands. From the harbor Darwin saw a band of white rock extending horizontally at a height of about 45 feet above the base of the sea cliffs. The formation was calcareous and contained numerous shells, almost all of which could be found on the coast. Darwin reasoned that a stream of lava from the ancient volcanoes had flowed over what had been ancient seabed, baking it to form the hard white rock. The whole island had subsequently been heaved up to make the sea cliff from the white band downward. Darwin also realized that the island's surface had been formed by a succession of volcanic events, not a single dramatic one. He discovered an initial substance and the settling of the surface around the original craters. It built up from new lava spills from different craters, and further subsidence formed and built up over a long period of time. The data Darwin collected on the Beagle provided him with material for three books on South American geology. It seems his theories of continental change have been superseded by the theory of plate tectonics. Still his descriptions in letters to Henslow, which Henslow read before the Cambridge Philosophical Society and the Geological Society of London, made him a celebrity in scientific circles even before his return. Darwin's geologic findings were important for geology and to his scientific development. Many of the rocks he examined contained fossils. His constant exposure to the evidence of extinct species, and the similarity of many of them to living species allowed him to ponder the idea of evolution. Without the true exposure that the Beagle offered Darwin, he may have never been able to truly grasp his theory of evolution and natural selection. (Keynes 50-80)

When Darwin returned to England in 1836, he was welcomed by the scientific fraternity as a colleague and was promptly made a fellow of the Geological Society. The next year he was elected to its governing council. In 1838, Darwin was elected to the Athenaeum, the exclusive club for men distinguished in literature, art, or science, and in 1839, he was elected to the Royal Society. Darwin was also preparing his geology books and the analysis and publication by specialists of The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle. Also, privately Darwin had begun a remarkable series of notebooks in which he initiated a set of questions and answers about "the species problem."(Bowlby 92) He proceeded to collect facts about species through letters and discussions with breeders, gardeners, naturalists, and zookeepers. Darwin also had to collect all his data and express his ideas very solitarily because the careers of important scientist were at jeopardy if anyone found out about his ideas because the church and state would crush them. Darwin then noticed animals in fossils and how they compared to animals living today. He also noticed the variations on similar species to their geological surroundings. He had been disturbed by the fact that the birds and tortoises of the Galapagos Islands off the western coast of Ecuador tended to resemble species found on the nearby continent, while inhabitants of similar neighboring islands in the Galapagos had quite different animal populations. In London, Darwin learned that the finches he had brought from the Galapagos belonged to different species, not merely different varieties, as he had originally believed.(Barlow 145) He also learned that the mockingbirds were of three distinct species, and that the Galapagos tortoises represented at least two species. The tortoises, like many of the specimens from the archipelago, were native to the islands but to neither of the American continents. In March 1837 he confided in his notebook that species changed from one place to another or from one era to the next. He continued analyzing his data, searching for a mechanism for this process. Then in October 1838 Darwin read Thomas Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population. Malthus argued that population growth is geometric, while the food supply increases only arithmetically. Therefore the population increase is always checked by a limited food supply. Darwin recalled in his autobiography his realization that given the struggle for existence everywhere, "favorable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavorable ones to be destroyed . . .. The result