Charles Darwin: A Gentle Revolutionary
Charles Darwin’s Grandfather, Erasmus Darwin was a physician, and so was his father Robert Darwin. Charles thought that he also wanted to be a physician and went to school at Edinburgh University. He ended up thinking it was boring and was disgusted by the open cadavers. After realizing that being a physician wasn’t for him he and his father decided he would be a clergyman. He went to Cambridge University studying about Christianity and sciences. He started learning about biology, zoology, theology, and geology, collecting beetles was his passion and his loved seeing the many different types and difference between similar types. One day he found a new beetle and didn’t want to lose it so he popped it in his mouth, and he then had an acidy fluid on his tongue and spit it out, he lost the beetle.
He met many people while at Cambridge, but then he felt that it wasn’t for him and his pursuits for being a clergyman were gone. He met a man, Captain FitzRoy who was sailing to South America, he was a well-educated man and didn’t want to travel with people below him and invited Darwin to go with him. They ended up arguing every time they discussed something, but by the end they were friends. He then met Lamarck and Lyell who believed that life forms gradually grew up the “ladder of life” and became human beings being at the top. Darwin met many other people that had ideas on evolution, but he wanted to find out for himself.
He went many places including the Galapagos Islands and saw many animals, particularly birds. He this saw finches there and later when he went to Chile he compared the finches there with the ones in Galapagos. They were very similar with only some differences. He thought maybe that animals would be different due to the climate they lived in, but noticing that the finches were similar he decided that wasn’t entirely true. He stopped for a little while with his research and started a family, he was married and had children, he was now again in Cambridge. Darwin started up again and read an essay by Thomas Malthus. In the essay it stated that there was a “struggle for existence”. Darwin started thinking about this and realized that may be animals were fighting for resources and had to adapt to where they lived and what they did for survival and that’s why there were so many different variations for species.
Darwin didn’t have all of his ideas come together at once, he thought about it all for a long time and kept having different ideas or add-ons to his previous ideas. He had his own ideas and knew that not every scientist would believe his findings and opinions. He was also afraid that he would be judged by his research and didn’t publish them right away. It wasn’t until a friend Alfred Russel Wallace had similar findings did he realize he needed to get his ideas out there. Darwin consulted a couple people first before he told the world in his writing, then in the August of 1858 the Journal of the Proceedings of the LInnean Society of London published a paper by Darwin right by Wallace’s. He started writing one The Origin of Species, and on the first day sold out with 1250 copies.
Many Scientists didn’t agree with Darwin and some religions see him as an evil person, which isn’t true. Darwin’s ideas were finally accepted in the 1900s, but not by all. While Darwin fell away from religion for some different reasons he still believed in many things and was buried next to science icon, Isaac Newton.
No comments:
Post a Comment