Darwin

Darwin showed that mankind was the result of a slow biological evolution. He was a biologist and natural scientist so his major ideas were that all plants and animals had evolved from earlier forms and that this process occurs through natural selection. He came up with two theories, one stating that all existing vegetable and animal forms were descended from earlier, more prehistoric forms by way of a biological evolution; secondly, that evolution was the result of natural selection.

Darwin had quite a few arguments in favor of biological evolution, which were a controversial topic because they contradicted the Creation story in the bible. Darwin thought about the artificial selection that humans use with their domestic animals and then came up with the idea that nature would do the same thing. The animals that were best suited to their habitat would survive and the others would die off leaving only the ones bets suited to the environment. The struggle for survival is often hardest among species that resemble each other the most and have to fight for the same food. Darwin thought that the more vicious the struggle, the faster the evolution of new species. However, this doesn't really mean that the ones who survive are better, he said this meant they are only better suited to their particular environment.

He demonstrated that finches on the Galapagos islands varied from island to island and the variations were closely linked to the way the finches found their food. Each finch was perfectly adapted to its own food intake.

Any change in that environment might result in different features favored by nature and other animals surviving. The "raw material" behind the evolution of life on earth was the frequent variation of individuals within the same species. In addition to this, the large number of offspring meant that only a small part of them survived. According to Darwin, the real driving force behind evolution was the natural selection in the struggle for survival.

Darwin returned man to nature because we evolved from animals and are subject to the same natural selection that oversees the rest of nature. However, Darwin also points out that because we do not know how life began, everyone is a part of the mystery of life. Darwin had no explanation of how evolution happened. Darwin suggested that maybe some "hot, little, primeval soup of elements somehow