Another Charles Darwin Essay

7/28/2019 Another Charles Darwin Essay

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Charles Darwin

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. 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. After graduating from Cambridge in 1831, the 22-year-old

Darwin wastaken aboard the English survey ship HMS Beagle, mainly because of

Henslow's

recommendation, as an unpaid naturalist on an expedition around the

world.

When the voyage began, Darwin didn't believe that species change

through

time, but he did believe in two prevailing ideas of the time. The first

theory

was that the earth was 6,000 years old and had remained unchanged

except for the

effects of floods and other catastropes. The second was that organisms

were

designed especially for certain habitats and appeared on the earth in

their

present form.

After reading the works of a noted geologist, Darwin began to

change his

ideas. He saw evidence that the earth was much older than 6,000 years.

In South

America, he was witness to an earthquake that lifted the land several

feet. He

realized that mountains could be built by the action of an earthquake

over

millions of years. He found fossils of marine mammals high up on

mountains, and

realized that rocks must have been lifted from the ocean.

Darwin also studied plants and animals. On the GalapagosIslands, he

found animals that resembled animals on the South American continent,

but not

exactly the same. He understood that they must have come to the islands

from the

mainland, and then adapted into new species. He also observed the plant

and

animal life of South America, oceanic islands, and the Far East. He

noted many


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examples that proved that animals in similar environments didn't always

look the

same. For example, the emus of Australia and the rheas of South America

are two

very distinct species, but they live in the same basic kind of habitat.

Darwin

thought about this, and asked himself the question, if animals were

formed for a

specific habitat, why would different species be found in habitats that

are so

similar?

After leaving the HMS Beagle and returning to England in 1836,

Darwin

began recording his ideas about changeability of species in his

Notebooks on the

Transmutation of Species. Darwin's explanation for how organisms

evolved was

brought into sharp focus after he read An Essay on the Principle of

Population

by the British economist Thomas Robert Malthus, who explained how human

populations remain in balance. Malthus argued that any increase in theavailability of food for human survival couldn't match the rate of

population

growth. Therefore, the population had to be checked by natural

limitations such

as famine and disease, or by actions such as war.

After studying Malthus's essay, Darwin immediately applied his

principles to plant and animal life, and by 1838 he had arrived at his

first

idea of the theory of evolution through natural selection. For the next

twenty

years, he worked on his theory and other natural history projects. In

1839, he

married his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood, and soon after moved to a

small estate,

Down House, outside of London. There he and his wife had ten children,

three of

which died during infancy.

Darwin's theory was first announced in 1858 in a paper presented

at the

same time as one by a young naturalist named Alfred Russel Wallace.

Friends

arranged for the two men to present a paper together before the

Linnaean Society

of London. On November 24, 1859, an abstract of Darwin's theory was

published

under the long title of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural

Selection,or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Darwin's

complete theory was published later in 1859, in On the Origin of

Species.

Commonly referred to as "The book that shook the world," the Origin

sold out on

the first day of publication and subsequently went through six editions.

In this book, Darwin presented his idea that species evolve from

a more


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primitive species through the process known as natural selection, which

works

spontaneously in nature. Darwin pointed out in his account of how

natural

selection occurs, known as Darwinism, that not all individuals undergo

changes

and that some changes make the particular animal better suited to

particular

environmental conditions. He pointed out that most species produce more

eggs and

offspring than ever reach maturity. He theorized that well-adapted

animals of a

species have a better chance of reaching maturity and producing

offspring tha

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Another Charles Darwin Essay