Charles Darwin He was a natural scientist who revolutionized the world of science with his theory on The origin of species, the way in which the development of life on our planet was conceived. This theory was not only a scientific revolution, but also a theological one, displacing the Creationism Theory a new one appears Theory The Evolution.
Childhood and Youth of Charles Darwin
On February 12, 1809, born in Shrewsbury, England, Charles Robert Darwin, ranked 5th out of 6 siblings, sons of physician Robert Darwin and Susannah Wedwood. A wealthy family and not only because of the father’s profession, but because of his success in business. A family with a strong religious character, always torn between maternal Anglicanism and paternal Unitarianism.
with eight years Charles was already very curious and interested in the natural History, It was at this age that Charles began to collect his first specimens. In 1817 his mother died and the following year he joined, along with his brother, the Shrewsbury Anglican School.
He continued his studies until finishing them in 1825, a summer he would spend helping his father, as an apprentice, treating needy people in the area. After finishing the summer he would begin his studies at the Edinburgh University, along with his inseparable brother Erasmus.
It is noteworthy that Charles Darwin entered university very young, only 16 years old, but initially he enrolled in Medicine. However, it seems that his first experiences in the operating room were not exactly enriching (he could not stand it and had to leave both times).
In addition, as his “animus” for medicine grew, his fondness for animals, plants, and natural and biological matters seemed to increase. Medical classes soon bored him, although he showed great interest in taxidermy, classes he taught. John Edmondstonea freedman who had accompanied explorer Charles Waterton through the jungle in South America.
In his second year of university, he enters the Plinian Society, formed by a group of history students in continuous debates that always drifted towards materialism in its most radical form. While Charles Darwin carried out different research collaborations, such as the one he carried out with Robert Grant taking him to fjords of forth for the study of the anatomy and life cycle of the marine invertebrates of the fjord.
But Darwin was bored with the natural history course, the debates between Neptunism and Plutonism did not interest him in the least. Learned to classify plants and contributed to works to expand the collections of the university museum, at the time one of the most important in Europe.
But Darwin’s lack of interest in medicine was very evident, something that his father did not take very well, who, disgusted, sent him to the Christ’s College Cambridge, so that he could graduate with a degree in letters, an essential requirement to be ordained as a pastor of the Anglican church.
Far from his father’s pretensions, Darwin discovered in the new center the pleasures of horse riding and shooting. Thanks to his cousin William Fox, he became interested in beetle collectionvery fashionable in the society of the moment, coming to publish some discoveries in the Manual Illustratios of British entomology leave me alone Francis Stephens.
He began to associate with important scientific figures such as the professor of botany, Henslow, naturalists who viewed his work with scientific eyes, as a natural theology. Darwin passed his exams, graduating with an outstanding grade.
While he remained at the center and until the end of the course for the rest of the students, Darwin had time that he dedicated to reading, a reading that without knowing it, he would exert a great influence in your way of thinking. These works would be:
- Paley’s Natural Theology: A classic treatise where the biological adaptation of spices is revealed as irrefutable proof of a divine design.
- The introductory address to John Herschel’s Study of Natural Philosophy: It was a description of the ultimate goal of philosophy, the understanding of natural laws through inductive reasoning based on pure observation.
- Journey to the equinoctial regions of the New Continent of Humboldt.
All these stories led him to prepare a trip to Tenerife, along with his classmates, to study natural history in the tropics. While preparing for the trip, he studied geology under Adam Sedgwick, with whom he would go that summer to map the strata in Wales.
After a busy summer when he returned home he received the news where Henslow offered him a position as a naturalist for the captain Robert Fitzroy, his position was unpaid, something that did not matter to him since the mission was to map the coast of South America, a dream.
At first this trip, with an expected duration of two years, was not to the liking of Charles’s father, he considered it a waste of time, two years without doing anything, although he finally agreed.
Charles Darwin’s Beagle Voyage
The trip started on December 27, 1831 from the port of Davenport, the name of the ship HMS Beagle. The objective of this expedition led by Captain Fitzroy, was the topographic study of the southern territories, in Patagonia and the so-called Tierra del Fuego, following the coast of Chile, Peru and some Pacific islands, they also had to carry out a chain of chronometric measurements (measure time) around the world.
The trip was prepared for a duration of 5 years, a trip that took Darwin to cover the entire coast of South America and to be able to dedicate the last year to visit islands such as Galapagos, Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, Mauritius and the coast of South Africa.
Darwin’s job was to hunt down the greatest number of species, in order to add to the collection, but this activity that initially fascinated him soon ceased to interest him, there was another activity that caught his attention and that was scientific aspects of their collecting activity.
The geological study managed to turn Darwin into a true researcher, the need to reason led him to profound studiesaugmented by reading the first volume of Charles Lyell, on the Principles of Geology, author of the Theory of Current Causes. On the Island of Santiago, in Cape Verde, Darwin made his first geological reconnaissance on the ground and his conclusions convinced him even more of the reality in Lyell’s approach.
Observing the white rocks in Santiagohe was struck by the idea that the origin of these white rocks could be volcanic, which when sliding to the seabed, could have dragged seashells and corals, forming that type of white rock.
The first Darwin’s letters to Reverend Henslowso impressed him that some of them were read before the Cambridge Philosophical Society, where he soon aroused interest, that young man and what he related in his letters.
The consequences of this trip that ended on October 2, 1836were a lot of scientific achievements obtained by Charles Darwin.
- The Theory of the Formation of Coral Reefs by their growth on the edges and tops of slowly sinking islands.
- Geological structure of islands like Santa Elena
- Relationship between the fauna and flora of the Galapago Islands and the species of South America
- Differences between specimens of the same animal or plants collected on different islands, reasoning that questioned the theory of the stability of species.
- Evolution Thesis
traveling Darwin directly observed the nature. He focused his attention on the geographic distribution of wild species and on the fossils he collected during his research. Returning to England, he took all this as a starting point to investigate changes in species. It was the way for the elaboration of the theory of natural selection.
It should be clarified that the evolution theory was not an isolated product of the scientific genius of Darwin. Many other naturalistic researchers contributed to its development. But without a doubt the work of Darwin. The Origin of Species (1859), was the book that contributed the most to this great scientific advance.
Concepts: Natural Selection and Evolution of Species
The Darwin’s theory is known as the Theory of natural selection”. According to this theory, the species of today’s plants and animals descended from other species. species From the past.
This transformation is due to the fact that the species need adapt to conditions adverse of nature so as not to become extinct. To achieve this they transform very slowly for a long time. The species that manage to transform themselves to survive are the ones that succeed in the evolution process. Darwin considered that the evolutionary process was continuous, gradual and linear.
following this evolution theory, human beings must also descend from a species of the past. Darwin postulated that man had as an ancestor an animal similar to anthropoid apes (which resemble humans). Subsequent hominid fossil discoveries demonstrated the validity of the Darwinian theory of evolution.
Darwin made most of these discoveries on the expedition aboard the Beagle ship. This was a ship of the English navy that made three expeditions; On board the second was a young geologist, biologist and scientist named Charles Darwin. Charged with providing useful information on the land and species known during the trip, Darwin was 5 years aboard the Beagle, studying species from different parts of the planet. In those 5 years, Darwin spent just over three on land and almost two at sea on a route that took him around the world.
Controversial Theories of Charles Darwin
It should be noted that Darwin developed his theory more than 150 years ago and that, therefore, what today may seem normal to us, at the time was really difficult to believe, despite the fact that Darwin expressed his hypotheses with reliable evidence. And it is that Darwin’s theories not only distanced themselves from everything said so far, but also against popular and religious beliefs based on creationism.
Indeed, the publication The origin of species it was very controversial. The ideas creationists that defended that man had been “created” were deeply rooted in religious beliefs. Many rejected the Darwin’s theory because it opposed his conviction that God had created the human being, just as the Bible tells it.
Other works published by Darwin were: The variation of animals and plants under the action of domestication, Human descent and natural selection and Expression of emotions in man and animals. Charles Darwin died in 1882.
It goes without saying that today Darwin is one of the fathers of biology, who opened a new hypothesis and laid the foundations for subsequent research. Today the theory of natural selection and…