Karter Schlegel
Section 4
Darwinism
Charles
Darwin was born on February 12, 1809 and passed away on April 19th,
1882. He was the second son of a society doctor (Robert Waring Darwin). His
mother died when he was only 8 years old and was then taken care of by his
sisters and father. His father ended up sending Darwin to study medicine at
Edinburgh in 1825 and there he learned about the sciences studying plants and
rocks. With his mentor Robert Edmond Grant, a disciple of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck,
he began to collect sea slugs to try and understand the origins of more complex
creatures. However, in 1828 his father switched him from Edinburgh to Cambridge
for a more religious college.
Three years later he got the opportunity to travel
around the world and conduct research on the HMS Beagle leaving England on
December 27th, 1831. Through his voyage he discovered and noted
fossils and how they mimic certain animals of modern times one of them
resembling a giant sloth creature (the Megatherium). The discovery of these
fossils led him to think of how and why these animals died out and for what
reason some of them are still here today although with them being changed from
what they used to be.
In 1834 he received word that to keep the population
from rising in England the poor were sent to workhouses and kept from the
opposite gender. With this information Darwin coined the term natural selection
which is the process that results in the adaptation of an organism to its
specific environment. Finally, in 1835
he visited the Galapagos islands where he discovered the different types of
finches but did not realize it at the time thinking they were different species
entirely. The following year Darwin returned to London and in 1837 John Gould,
an ornithologist, realized that the finches on the Galapagos were all the same
species and further led Darwin to think more about evolution.
It was not
until two decades later that he published On the Origin of Species (1859)
detailing how evolution happens and how natural selection fits in with this. The
reason why he did not publish earlier was that he feared that many of his ideas
would be censored at the time and he would be ostracized. In 1862 he published
another book, The Various Contrivances by which British
and Foreign Orchids are Fertilized by Insects, to support the
previous about orchids and how they were cross pollinated and how changing one
thing led to a new subspecies of the orchid in later variations.
Later Darwin was challenged on how the modern human
was a descendant of “Old World monkeys”. As a result, he published the books The
Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex
in 1871. In The Descent of Man Darwin explained the origins of
humans and how civilizations came to be. In Selection in Relation to Sex discusses
how feathers on a hummingbird are used to attract female mates. This natural phenomenon
was called sexual selection and Darwin related it to humans as well.
By this time Darwin had secluded himself into a laboratory
to experiment and write all these books and with his second to last book The
Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) explains how that
facial expressions show both humans and animals thoughts. This helps further relate
and support Darwin's theory of evolution and how humans are related to their ape
ancestors. Darwin ended up writing his autobiography between 1876 and 1881 with
it being meant for his family more then the public. Following this in 1881 he
published his last book The Formation of Vegetable Mould, Through the Action
of Worms. A year later he would suffer from a seizure then a heart attack and
passed away leaving all his work behind.
Sources:
BBCnews. “Theory of Evolution: How Did Darwin Come up with It? - BBC News.” YouTube, YouTube, 30 Nov. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOk_0mUT_JU.
Charles Darwin. 15 Apr. 2021, www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-Darwin.
“John Gould.” Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., www.britannica.com/biography/John-Gould.
National Geographic Society. “Charles Darwin.” National Geographic Society, 22 Aug. 2019, www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/charles-darwin/.
OpenMind. “Charles Darwin and Evolution.” YouTube, YouTube, 11 Feb. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0B6os-6uuc.
Responded Questions: Feb 9, Feb 18, Feb 25, March 4, March 23, March 30, Apr 6, Apr 15, Apr 20, Apr 22
A little more attention to the philosophical impact of evolution by natural selection, and on his late autobiographical reflections, would have been nice. It would have been good stuff to have linked to.
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