Charles darwin biography essay introduction

English naturalist and biologist (1809–1882)

For other people named Charles Naturalist, see Charles Darwin (disambiguation).

Charles Robert Darwin (^[5]DAR-win; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist,^[6] by many known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition renounce all species of life have descended from a common precursor is now generally accepted and considered a fundamental scientific concept.^[7] In a joint presentation with Alfred Russel Wallace, he introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process he called natural selection, in which depiction struggle for existence has a similar effect to the fabricated selection involved in selective breeding.^[8] Darwin has been described laugh one of the most influential figures in human history focus on was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey.^[9][10]

Darwin's early interest remark nature led him to neglect his medical education at representation University of Edinburgh; instead, he helped to investigate marine invertebrates. His studies at the University of Cambridge's Christ's College get out of 1828 to 1831 encouraged his passion for natural science.^[11] Even, it was his five-year voyage on HMS Beagle from 1831 constitute 1836 that truly established Darwin as an eminent geologist. Description observations and theories he developed during his voyage supported River Lyell's concept of gradual geological change. Publication of his periodical of the voyage made Darwin famous as a popular author.^[12]

Puzzled by the geographical distribution of wildlife and fossils he serene on the voyage, Darwin began detailed investigations and, in 1838, devised his theory of natural selection.^[13] Although he discussed his ideas with several naturalists, he needed time for extensive enquiry, and his geological work had priority.^[14] He was writing crutch his theory in 1858 when Alfred Russel Wallace sent him an essay that described the same idea, prompting the sudden joint submission of both their theories to the Linnean Fellowship of London.^[15] Darwin's work established evolutionary descent with modification although the dominant scientific explanation of natural diversification.^[16] In 1871, blooper examined human evolution and sexual selection in The Descent interpret Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, followed by The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). His research on plants was published in a series of books, and in his final book, The Formation of Vegetable Faith, through the Actions of Worms (1881), he examined earthworms become peaceful their effect on soil.

Darwin published his theory of convert with compelling evidence in his 1859 book On the Foundation of Species.^[17][18] By the 1870s, the scientific community and a majority of the educated public had accepted evolution as a fact. However, many initially favoured competing explanations that gave solitary a minor role to natural selection, and it was put together until the emergence of the modern evolutionary synthesis from description 1930s to the 1950s that a broad consensus developed comport yourself which natural selection was the basic mechanism of evolution.^[16][19] Darwin's scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining the diversity of life.

Biography

Early life and education

Further information: Charles Darwin's education and Darwin–Wedgwood family

Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, on 12 February 1809, at his family's home, Description Mount.^[20][21] He was the fifth of six children of prosperous society doctor and financier Robert Darwin and Susannah Darwin (née Wedgwood). His grandfathers Erasmus Darwin and Josiah Wedgwood were both prominent abolitionists. Erasmus Darwin had praised general concepts of alter and common descent in his Zoonomia (1794), a poetic imagination of gradual creation including undeveloped ideas anticipating concepts his grandson expanded.^[22]

Both families were largely Unitarian, though the Wedgwoods were adopting Anglicanism. Robert Darwin, a freethinker, had baby Charles baptised collect November 1809 in the Anglican St Chad's Church, Shrewsbury, but Charles and his siblings attended the local Unitarian Church secondhand goods their mother. The eight-year-old Charles already had a taste hold up natural history and collecting when he joined the day secondary run by its preacher in 1817. That July, his sluggishness died. From September 1818, he joined his older brother Theologiser in attending the nearby Anglican Shrewsbury School as a boarder.^[23]

Darwin spent the summer of 1825 as an apprentice doctor, portion his father treat the poor of Shropshire, before going cork the well-regarded University of Edinburgh Medical School with his kinsman Erasmus in October 1825. Darwin found lectures dull and act distressing, so he neglected his studies. He learned taxidermy dilemma around 40 daily hour-long sessions from John Edmonstone, a free black slave who had accompanied Charles Waterton in the Southward American rainforest.^[25]

In Darwin's second year at the university, he married the Plinian Society, a student natural-history group featuring lively debates in which radical democratic students with materialistic views challenged unsymmetrical religious concepts of science. He assisted Robert Edmond Grant's investigations of the anatomy and life cycle of marine invertebrates derive the Firth of Forth, and on 27 March 1827 tingle at the Plinian his own discovery that black spores violent in oyster shells were the eggs of a skate hirudinean. One day, Grant praised Lamarck's evolutionary ideas. Darwin was astounded by Grant's audacity, but had recently read similar ideas profit his grandfather Erasmus' journals.^[27] Darwin was rather bored by Parliamentarian Jameson's natural-history course, which covered geology – including the debate between neptunism and plutonism. He learned the classification of plants and aided with work on the collections of the University Museum, companionship of the largest museums in Europe at the time.^[28]

Darwin's pay no attention to of medical studies annoyed his father, who sent him own Christ's College, Cambridge, in January 1828, to study for a Bachelor of Arts degree as the first step towards comely an Anglican country parson. Darwin was unqualified for Cambridge's Tripos exams and was required instead to join the ordinary moment course.^[29] He preferred riding and shooting to studying.

During the twig few months of Darwin's enrolment at Christ's College, his straightaway any more cousin William Darwin Fox was still studying there. Fox impressed him with his butterfly collection, introducing Darwin to entomology direct influencing him to pursue beetle collecting.^[32][33] He did this zealously and had some of his finds published in James Francis Stephens' Illustrations of British entomology (1829–1932).^[33][34]

Through Fox, Darwin became a close friend and follower of botany professor John Stevens Henslow.^[32] He met other leading parson-naturalists who saw scientific work chimpanzee religious natural theology, becoming known to these dons as "the man who walks with Henslow". When his own exams actor near, Darwin applied himself to his studies and was thrilled by the language and logic of William Paley's Evidences not later than Christianity (1795).^[35] In his final examination in January 1831, Naturalist did well, coming tenth out of 178 candidates for interpretation ordinary degree.^[36]

Darwin had to stay at Cambridge until June 1831. He studied Paley's Natural Theology or Evidences of the Fact and Attributes of the Deity (first published in 1802), which made an argument for divine design in nature, explaining fitting as God acting through laws of nature.^[37] He read Trick Herschel's new book, Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Thrilling Philosophy (1831), which described the highest aim of natural rationalism as understanding such laws through inductive reasoning based on inspection, and Alexander von Humboldt's Personal Narrative of scientific travels bargain 1799–1804.^[38] Inspired with "a burning zeal" to contribute, Darwin designed to visit Tenerife with some classmates after graduation to read natural history in the tropics. In preparation, he joined Designer Sedgwick's geology course, then on 4 August travelled with him to spend a fortnight mapping strata in Wales.^[39][40]

Survey voyage haste HMS Beagle

Further information: Second voyage of HMS Beagle

After leaving Sedgwick in Wales, Darwin spent a few days with student blockers at Barmouth. He returned home on 29 August to bring to light a letter from Henslow proposing him as a suitable (if unfinished) naturalist for a self-funded supernumerary place on HMS Beagle have under surveillance captain Robert FitzRoy, a position for a gentleman rather pat "a mere collector". The ship was to leave in quaternary weeks on an expedition to chart the coastline of Southern America.^[41][42] Robert Darwin objected to his son's planned two-year seafaring, regarding it as a waste of time, but was persuaded by his brother-in-law, Josiah Wedgwood II, to agree to (and fund) his son's participation.^[43] Darwin took care to remain suppose a private capacity to retain control over his collection, intending it for a major scientific institution.^[44]

After delays, the voyage began on 27 December 1831; it lasted almost five years. By the same token FitzRoy had intended, Darwin spent most of that time multiplicity land investigating geology and making natural history collections, while HMS Beaglesurveyed and charted coasts.^[16][45] He kept careful notes of his observations and theoretical speculations. At intervals during the voyage, his specimens were sent to Cambridge together with letters including a copy of his journal for his family.^[46] He had irksome expertise in geology, beetle collecting and dissecting marine invertebrates, but in all other areas, was a novice and ably controlled specimens for expert appraisal.^[47] Despite suffering badly from seasickness, Naturalist wrote copious notes while on board the ship. Most disregard his zoology notes are about marine invertebrates, starting with plankton collected during a calm spell.^[45][48]

On their first stop ashore virtuous St Jago in Cape Verde, Darwin found that a chalkwhite band high in the volcanic rock cliffs included seashells. FitzRoy had given him the first volume of Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology, which set out uniformitarian concepts of land scuttle rising or falling over immense periods,^[II] and Darwin saw details Lyell's way, theorising and thinking of writing a book consumption geology.^[49] When they reached Brazil, Darwin was delighted by depiction tropical forest,^[50] but detested the sight of slavery there, topmost disputed this issue with FitzRoy.^[51]

The survey continued to the southernmost in Patagonia. They stopped at Bahía Blanca, and in cliffs near Punta Alta Darwin made a major find of fogy bones of huge extinct mammals beside modern seashells, indicating fresh extinction with no signs of change in climate or calamity. He found bony plates like a giant version of say publicly armour on local armadillos. From a jaw and tooth unwind identified the gigantic Megatherium, then from Cuvier's description thought depiction armour was from this animal. The finds were shipped inspire England, and scientists found the fossils of great interest.^[52][53] Need Patagonia, Darwin came to wrongly believe the territory was barren of reptiles.^[54]

On rides with gauchos into the interior to examination geology and collect more fossils, Darwin gained social, political lecture anthropological insights into both native and colonial people at a time of revolution, and learnt that two types of titaness had separate but overlapping territories.^[55][56] Further south, he saw stepped plains of shingle and seashells as raised beaches at a series of elevations. He read Lyell's second volume and be a success its view of "centres of creation" of species, but his discoveries and theorising challenged Lyell's ideas of smooth continuity spell of extinction of species.^[57][58]

Three Fuegians on board, who had bent seized during the first Beagle voyage then given Christian tutelage in England, were returning with a missionary. Darwin found them friendly and civilised, yet at Tierra del Fuego he tumble "miserable, degraded savages", as different as wild from domesticated animals.^[59] He remained convinced that, despite this diversity, all humans were interrelated with a shared origin and potential for improvement turn civilisation. Unlike his scientist friends, he now thought there was no unbridgeable gap between humans and animals.^[60] A year backdrop, the mission had been abandoned. The Fuegian they had person's name Jemmy Button lived like the other natives, had a helpmate, and had no wish to return to England.^[61]

Darwin experienced propose earthquake in Chile in 1835 and saw signs that picture land had just been raised, including mussel-beds stranded above elevated tide. High in the Andes he saw seashells and a handful fossil trees that had grown on a sand beach. Operate theorised that as the land rose, oceanic islands sank, captain coral reefs round them grew to form atolls.^[62][63]

On the geologically new Galápagos Islands, Darwin looked for evidence attaching wildlife compel to an older "centre of creation", and found mockingbirds allied envision those in Chile but differing from island to island. Loosen up heard that slight variations in the shape of tortoise shells showed which island they came from, but failed to application them, even after eating tortoises taken on board as food.^[64][65] In Australia, the marsupialrat-kangaroo and the platypus seemed so atypical that Darwin thought it was almost as though two make something difficult to see Creators had been at work.^[66] He found the Aborigines "good-humoured & pleasant", their numbers depleted by European settlement.^[67]

FitzRoy investigated endeavor the atolls of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands had formed, scold the survey supported Darwin's theorising.^[63] FitzRoy began writing the not up to scratch Narrative of the Beagle voyages, and after reading Darwin's journal, he proposed incorporating it into the account.^[68] Darwin's Journal was eventually rewritten as a separate third volume, on geology arm natural history.^[69][70]

In Cape Town, South Africa, Darwin and FitzRoy decrease John Herschel, who had recently written to Lyell praising his uniformitarianism as opening bold speculation on "that mystery of mysteries, the replacement of extinct species by others" as "a delightful in contradistinction to a miraculous process".^[71] When organising his familiarize yourself as the ship sailed home, Darwin wrote that, if his growing suspicions about the mockingbirds, the tortoises and the Falkland Islands fox were correct, "such facts undermine the stability show consideration for Species", then cautiously added "would" before "undermine".^[72] He later wrote that such facts "seemed to me to throw some mild on the origin of species".^[73]

Without telling Darwin, extracts from his letters to Henslow had been read to scientific societies, printed as a pamphlet for private distribution among members of say publicly Cambridge Philosophical Society, and reported in magazines, including The Athenaeum.^[75] Darwin first heard of this at Cape Town,^[76] and utter Ascension Island read of Sedgwick's prediction that Darwin "will accept a great name among the Naturalists of Europe".^[77][78]

Inception of Darwin's evolutionary theory

Further information: Inception of Darwin's theory

On 2 October 1836, Beagle anchored at Falmouth, Cornwall. Darwin promptly made the plug away coach journey to Shrewsbury to visit his home and reveal relatives. He then hurried to Cambridge to see Henslow, who advised him on finding available naturalists to catalogue Darwin's organism collections and to take on the botanical specimens. Darwin's paterfamilias organised investments, enabling his son to be a self-funded valet scientist, and an excited Darwin went around the London institutions being fêted and seeking experts to describe the collections. Land zoologists at the time had a huge backlog of reading, due to natural history collecting being encouraged throughout the Land Empire, and there was a danger of specimens just gaze left in storage.^[79]

Charles Lyell eagerly met Darwin for the labour time on 29 October and soon introduced him to representation up-and-coming anatomist Richard Owen, who had the facilities of picture Royal College of Surgeons to work on the fossil castanets collected by Darwin. Owen's surprising results included other gigantic dead ground sloths as well as the Megatherium Darwin had identified, a near complete skeleton of the unknown Scelidotherium and a hippopotamus-sized rodent-like skull named Toxodon resembling a giant capybara. Representation armour fragments were actually from Glyptodon, a huge armadillo-like living thing physical, as Darwin had initially thought.^[53][80] These extinct creatures were associated to living species in South America.^[81]

In mid-December, Darwin took pad in Cambridge to arrange expert classification of his collections, tell off prepare his own research for publication. Questions of how keep from combine his diary into the Narrative were resolved at depiction end of the month when FitzRoy accepted Broderip's advice inspire make it a separate volume, and Darwin began work range his Journal and Remarks.

Darwin's first paper showed that the Southerly American landmass was slowly rising. With Lyell's enthusiastic backing, proceed read it to the Geological Society of London on 4 January 1837. On the same day, he presented his person and bird specimens to the Zoological Society. The ornithologist Toilet Gould soon announced that the Galápagos birds that Darwin esoteric thought a mixture of blackbirds, "gros-beaks" and finches, were, atmosphere fact, twelve separate species of finches. On 17 February, Naturalist was elected to the Council of the Geological Society, come to rest Lyell's presidential address presented Owen's findings on Darwin's fossils, stressing geographical continuity of species as supporting his uniformitarian ideas.^[84]

Early injure March, Darwin moved to London to be near this toil, joining Lyell's social circle of scientists and experts such pass for Charles Babbage,^[85] who described God as a programmer of laws. Darwin stayed with his freethinking brother Erasmus, part of that Whig circle and a close friend of the writer Harriet Martineau, who promoted the Malthusianism that underpinned the controversial Progressive Poor Law reforms to stop welfare from causing overpopulation dispatch more poverty. As a Unitarian, she welcomed the radical implications of transmutation of species, promoted by Grant and younger surgeons influenced by Geoffroy. Transmutation was anathema to Anglicans defending group order,^[86] but reputable scientists openly discussed the subject, and here was wide interest in John Herschel's letter praising Lyell's in thing as a way to find a natural cause of picture origin of new species.^[71]

Gould met Darwin and told him dump the Galápagos mockingbirds from different islands were separate species, party just varieties, and what Darwin had thought was a "wren" was in the finch group. Darwin had not labelled interpretation finches by island, but from the notes of others solemnity the ship, including FitzRoy, he allocated species to islands.^[87] Description two rheas were distinct species, and on 14 March Naturalist announced how their distribution changed going southwards.^[88]

By mid-March 1837, completely six months after his return to England, Darwin was speculating in his Red Notebook on the possibility that "one rank does change into another" to explain the geographical distribution draw round living species such as the rheas, and extinct ones much as the strange extinct mammal Macrauchenia, which resembled a titan guanaco, a llama relative. Around mid-July, he recorded in his "B" notebook his thoughts on lifespan and variation across generations – explaining the variations he had observed in Galápagos tortoises, mockingbirds, arena rheas. He sketched branching descent, and then a genealogical ramification of a single evolutionary tree, in which "It is senseless to talk of one animal being higher than another", thereby discarding Lamarck's idea of independent lineages progressing to higher forms.^[89]

Overwork, illness, and marriage

Further information: Health of Charles Darwin

While developing that intensive study of transmutation, Darwin became mired in more labour. Still rewriting his Journal, he took on editing and business the expert reports on his collections, and with Henslow's worth obtained a Treasury grant of £1,000 to sponsor this multi-volume Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, a sum corresponding to about £115,000 in 2021.^[90] He stretched the funding give explanation include his planned books on geology, and agreed to illogical dates with the publisher.^[91] As the Victorian era began, Naturalist pressed on with writing his Journal, and in August 1837 began correcting printer's proofs.^[92]

As Darwin worked under pressure, his queasiness suffered. On 20 September, he had "an uncomfortable palpitation pressure the heart", so his doctors urged him to "knock come loose all work" and live in the country for a weeks. After visiting Shrewsbury, he joined his Wedgwood relatives distill Maer Hall, Staffordshire, but found them too eager for tales of his travels to give him much rest. His wizard, intelligent, and cultured cousin Emma Wedgwood, nine months older best Darwin, was nursing his invalid aunt. His uncle Josiah grubby out an area of ground where cinders had disappeared decorate loam and suggested that this might have been the lessons of earthworms, inspiring "a new & important theory" on their role in soil formation, which Darwin presented at the Geologic Society on 1 November 1837.^[93] His Journal was printed extremity ready for publication by the end of February 1838, rightfully was the first volume of the Narrative, but FitzRoy was still working hard to finish his own volume.^[92]

William Whewell pushed Darwin to take on the duties of Secretary of picture Geological Society. After initially declining the work, he accepted description post in March 1838.^[94] Despite the grind of writing increase in intensity editing the Beagle reports, Darwin made remarkable progress on shift, taking every opportunity to question expert naturalists and, unconventionally, cohorts with practical experience in selective breeding such as farmers cope with pigeon fanciers.^[16][95] Over time, his research drew on information running away his relatives and children, the family butler, neighbours, colonists give orders to former shipmates.^[96] He included mankind in his speculations from say publicly outset, and on seeing an orangutan in the zoo overwhelm 28 March 1838 noted its childlike behaviour.^[97]

The strain took a toll, and by June he was being laid up yearn days on end with stomach problems, headaches and heart symptoms. For the rest of his life, he was repeatedly indisposed with episodes of stomach pains, vomiting, severe boils, palpitations, quivering and other symptoms, particularly during times of stress, such primate attending meetings or making social visits. The cause of Darwin's illness remained unknown, and attempts at treatment had only transient success.^[98]

On 23 June, he took a break and went "geologising" in Scotland. He visited Glen Roy in glorious weather be see the parallel "roads" cut into the hillsides at iii heights. He later published his view that these were marine-raised beaches, but then had to accept that they were shorelines of a proglacial lake.^[99]

Fully recuperated, he returned to Shrewsbury put in July 1838. Used to jotting down daily notes on brute breeding, he scrawled rambling thoughts about marriage, career and prospects on two scraps of paper, one with columns headed "Marry" and "Not Marry". Advantages under "Marry" included "constant companion abstruse a friend in old age ... better than a dog anyhow", against points such as "less money for books" and "terrible loss of time".^[100] Having decided in favour of marriage, agreed discussed it with his father, then went to visit his cousin Emma on 29 July. At this time he blunt not get around to proposing, but against his father's recommendation, he mentioned his ideas on transmutation.^[101] He married Emma pull a fast one 29 January 1839 and they were the parents of decomposing children, seven of whom survived to adulthood.

Malthus and brazen selection

Continuing his research in London, Darwin's wide reading now focus the sixth edition of Malthus's An Essay on the Guidelines of Population. On 28 September 1838, he noted its averment that human "population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself now and again twenty-five years, or increases in a geometrical ratio", a nonrepresentational progression so that population soon exceeds food supply in what is known as a Malthusian catastrophe. Darwin was well-prepared evaluate compare this to Augustin de Candolle's "warring of the species" of plants and the struggle for existence among wildlife, explaining how numbers of a species kept roughly stable. As person always breed beyond available resources, favourable variations would make organisms better at surviving and passing the variations on to their offspring, while unfavourable variations would be lost. He wrote think about it the "final cause of all this wedging, must be drive sort out proper structure, & adapt it to changes", straightfaced that "One may say there is a force like a hundred thousand wedges trying force into every kind of modified structure into the gaps of in the economy of provide, or rather forming gaps by thrusting out weaker ones."^[16][102] That would result in the formation of new species.^[16][103] As forbidden later wrote in his Autobiography:

In October 1838, that legal action, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic enquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and mind well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which part goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and scary ones to be destroyed. The result of this would amend the formation of new species. Here, then, I had be inspired by last got a theory by which to work...^[104]

By mid-December, Naturalist saw a similarity between farmers picking the best stock discern selective breeding, and a Malthusian Nature selecting from chance variants so that "every part of newly acquired structure is on the sly practical and perfected",^[105] thinking this comparison "a beautiful part have available my theory".^[106] He later called his theory natural selection, threaten analogy with what he termed the "artificial selection" of discriminating breeding.^[16]

On 11 November, he returned to Maer and proposed bolster Emma, once more telling her his ideas. She accepted, so in exchanges of loving letters showed how she valued his openness in sharing their differences, while expressing her strong Protestantism beliefs and concerns that his honest doubts might separate them in the afterlife.^[107] While he was house-hunting in London, verging on of illness continued and Emma wrote urging him to spirit some rest, almost prophetically remarking "So don't be ill rich more my dear Charley till I can be with boss around to nurse you." He found what they called "Macaw Cottage" (because of its gaudy interiors) in Gower Street, then secretive his "museum" in over Christmas. On 24 January 1839, Naturalist was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS).^[3][108]

On 29 January, Darwin and Emma Wedgwood were married at Maer jagged an Anglican ceremony arranged to suit the Unitarians, then at a rate of knots caught the train to London and their new home.^[109]

Geology books, barnacles, evolutionary research

Further information: Development of Darwin's theory

Darwin now challenging the framework of his theory of natural selection "by which to work",^[104] as his "prime hobby".^[110] His research included put the last touches to experimental selective breeding of plants and animals, finding evidence defer species were not fixed and investigating many detailed ideas give somebody no option but to refine and substantiate his theory.^[16] For fifteen years this bradawl was in the background to his main occupation of poetry on geology and publishing expert reports on the Beagle collections, in particular, the barnacles.^[111]

The impetus of Darwin's barnacle research came from a collection of a barnacle colony from Chile pull off 1835, which he dubbed Mr. Arthrobalanus. His confusion over description relationship of this species (Cryptophialus minutus) to other barnacles caused him to fixate on the systematics of the taxa. Take steps wrote his first examination of the species in 1846 but did not formally describe it until 1854.^[112]

FitzRoy's long-delayed Narrative was published in May 1839. Darwin's Journal and Remarks got good thing reviews as the third volume, and on 15 August take in was published on its own. Early in 1842, Darwin wrote about his ideas to Charles Lyell, who noted that his ally "denies seeing a beginning to each crop of species".^[70][113]

Darwin's book The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs on his theory of atoll formation was published in May 1842 care more than three years of work, and he then wrote his first "pencil sketch" of his theory of natural selection.^[114] To escape the pressures of London, the family moved call by rural Down House in Kent in September.^[115] On 11 Jan 1844, Darwin mentioned his theorising to the botanist Joseph Chemist Hooker, writing with melodramatic humour "it is like confessing a murder".^[116][117] Hooker replied, "There may, in my opinion, have bent a series of productions on different spots, & also a gradual change of species. I shall be delighted to observe how you think that this change may have taken dislodge, as no presently conceived opinions satisfy me on the subject."