Charles Darwin

British scientist, who laid the foundation of modern evolutionary theory with his concept of the development of all forms of life through the slow-working process of natural selection. His work has been of major influence on the life and Earth sciences and on modern thought in general.

Born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, on February 12, 1809, Darwin was the fifth child of a wealthy and sophisticated family. His maternal grandfather was the successful china and pottery entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood; his paternal grandfather was the well-known 18th-century doctor, poet, and savant Erasmus Darwin. His father was a successful provincial physician with a dominant personality; his mother died when Charles was only eight, after which time he was looked after by his elder sisters. Known as a rather ordinary student, Darwin left Shrewsbury School in 1825 and went to the University of Edinburgh to study medicine. Finding himself squeamish at the sight of human blood and suffering, Darwin left Edinburgh and went to the University of Cambridge, in preparation for a life as a Church of England clergyman, which he thought would best allow him to pursue his increasing interest in natural history. At Cambridge he came under the influence of two figures: Adam Sedgwick, a geologist, and John Stevens Henslow, a botanist. Henslow not only helped build Darwin’s self-confidence but also taught his student to be a meticulous and painstaking observer of natural phenomena and collector of specimens. After graduating from Cambridge in 1831, the 22-year-old Darwin was taken aboard the English survey ship HMS Beagle, largely on Henslow’s recommendation, as an unpaid naturalist on a scientific expedition round the world. This voyage, which began on December 27, 1831, determined Darwin’s whole future career.

Voyage of the Beagle

 The Beagle, under the command of Captain Robert Fitzroy, a strict disciplinarian of aristocratic stock and fundamentalist religious beliefs, was originally scheduled to spend a year or two primarily charting the coastal waters of South America. In the event, it was gone for five years and circumnavigated the globe. Almost four of those years were spent on the east and west coasts of South America, and Darwin was able to leave the ship for two extended periods on the mainland. In September 1835 the Beagle headed west for Australia, returning to England via the Cape of Good Hope. Darwin’s job as naturalist gave him the opportunity to observe a variety of geological formations in different continents and islands along the way, as well as a vast array of fossils and living organisms. In his geological observations, Darwin was most impressed by the effect that natural forces have on shaping the Earth’s surface.

At the time, most geologists adhered to the so-called catastrophe theory that the Earth had experienced a succession of creations of animal and plant life, and that each creation had been destroyed by a sudden catastrophe, such as an upheaval or convulsion of the Earth’s surface (see Geology: History of Geological Thought: 18th and 19th Centuries). According to one prominent version of this theory, the most recent catastrophe was the Flood of Noah, as recorded in the Bible. It wiped away all land animals except those taken into the ark (plants and fishes presented a problem); the rest were visible only as fossils. According to the catastrophists, species of plants and animals were individually created and immutable, that is, unchangeable for all time.

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The catastrophist viewpoint (but not the immutability of species) was challenged by the British geologist Sir Charles Lyell in his three-volume work Principles of Geology (1830-1833). Lyell maintained that the Earth’s surface is undergoing constant change, the result of natural forces operating uniformly since the Creation (which he argued was millions of years ago).

Darwin was given the first volume of Lyell’s work just before he left England, and the subsequent volumes were sent to him in South America. Lyell’s uniformitarian principles provided him with exactly the framework he needed for his own geological observations. Lyell argued that active geological change was ...

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