1) His Biography:
On February 12, 1809, Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, England. His mother was the daughter of the well-known potter Josiah Wedgwood, while his father was a physician. When Darwin was eight years old, his mother passed away, and his elder sisters practically raised him. Although he wasn’t a particularly bright student when he was younger, he continued to study at the University of Edinburgh Medical School in Scotland with the initial goal of becoming a physician. Darwin had a profound distaste for medical school and ultimately attended Cambridge. Prior to becoming incredibly interested in botany, he had intended to become an Anglican minister. In 1831, he earned a degree.
Darwin was approved to board the H.M.S. Beagle for its second journey on the advice of a college professor. In late December 1831, the ship set off on a scientific trip to South America and the South Pacific islands. Almost five years later, in October 1836, the Beagle made its way back to England.
On the ship, Darwin was in an unusual situation. It was believed that the former captain of the ship had lost hope during a protracted scientific expedition since he had no intelligent shipmates with whom to have intelligent conversations. The British Admiralty reasoned that sending a smart young man on a voyage would accomplish two goals at once: he could study and write notes on discoveries while also offering the captain smart company. Darwin was selected to board the ship.
During the journey, Darwin spent more than 500 days at sea and over 1,200 days on land. He observed and recorded his findings in several notebooks as he researched plants, animals, fossils, and geological structures. He structured his notes while at sea for extended durations. The Beagle visited the Galapagos Islands for nearly five weeks. Darwin made several observations during that time that had a big impact on his new natural selection beliefs. His observation of significant variances between species on several islands piqued his interest. Darwin visited four Galapagos Islands: Albemarle, James (now Santiago), Chatham Island (now San Cristobal), and Charles (now Floreana). He devoted a lot of his time to drawing, gathering specimens, and studying the behaviour of animals. His discoveries would revolutionize science and upend the tenets of Western religion.
In 1839, Darwin wed his cousin Emma Wedgwood. Over the course of their marriage, they had 10 children, seven of whom lived to adulthood. In 1842, he relocated from London to the countryside due to illness. In order to better comprehend the evolutionary processes of various lifeforms, he pursued his scientific studies and spent years researching them. Darwin released the “Journal of Researches”—a summary of his observations from the Beagle expedition—three years after arriving back in England. Darwin’s travels as a scientist are described in this delightful book, which was well-liked enough to see multiple printings.
In addition, Darwin was the editor of five volumes titled “Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle,” which included works by other researchers. Darwin personally contributed sections on animal species distribution and geological observations on fossils he had observed. The Beagle trip was undoubtedly a pivotal moment in Darwin’s life, but his observations throughout the journey had a lot to do with how his theory of natural selection came to be. What he was reading also had a big impact on him. Thomas Malthus, a British philosopher, wrote the “Essay on the Principle of Population”, which Darwin read in 1838. Malthus’ theories influenced Darwin in his efforts to develop his own theory of “survival of the fittest.”
In his writings on overpopulation, Malthus described how some people of society were able to endure adversity. Darwin continued to gather data and samples after reading Malthus, eventually spending 20 years honing his own theories about natural selection. Throughout the 1840s and 1850s, Darwin’s standing as a naturalist and geologist grew, but he kept his views on natural selection a secret. In the late 1850s, friends urged him to publish them; nevertheless, it wasn’t until Alfred Russell Wallace’s article, which expressed similar views, was published that Darwin was inspired to create a book outlining his own theories.
Darwin and Wallace made a joint appearance to the Linnean Society of London in July 1858. Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection” was published in November 1859, and he followed it up with “The Descent of Man,” which expanded on his at-the-time contentious theories regarding how humans in particular had evolved. Multiple editions of “On the Origin of Species” were released, with Darwin periodically altering and revising the text. Darwin too led a tranquil existence in the English countryside, satisfied to carry out botanical studies while the public discussed his theories. He was recognized as a great old man of science and held high regard. He was honoured by being buried in Westminster Abbey in London after passing away on April 19, 1882.
2) Main Works:
On the Origin of Species:
The scientific hypothesis that populations change over the course of generations through a process of natural selection was first presented in Darwin’s book. The book provided a body of information demonstrating how evolution followed a branching pattern, giving rise to the diversity of life. In addition to the data he had gathered on the Beagle journey in the 1830s, Darwin also included data from his later studies, correspondence, and experiments.
The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex:
Numerous relevant topics are covered in the book, such as the application of evolutionary theory to society, distinctions between human races and sexes, evolutionary psychology, evolutionary ethics, and evolutionary musicology.
The Voyage of the Beagle:
Written in a period when Western Europeans were traveling and mapping the whole planet, the book is both a vivid travel narrative and a thorough scientific field journal covering biology, geology, and anthropology that exhibits Darwin’s great abilities of observation. Although Darwin visited several places again while on the journey, the chapters of the book are organized by location references rather than chronological sequence for clarity.
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals:
In this book, Darwin examines the biological roots of human traits like raising the eyebrows in surprise and raising the upper lip in an aggressive sneer. This book is on the biology aspects of emotional life.
3) Main Themes in his Writings:
Nature as the Agent of Descent:
In Darwin’s theory of descent with modification, nature acts as the agent. Which species survive and which go extinct is a result of nature, as manifested in the forces that influence the process of natural selection. There are various contradicting ways in which Darwin describes nature. The “perfect adaptation of species” that enables them to survive in the surroundings in which they exist is sometimes referred to as a result of nature, which is described as “wondrous” and “good” at times. In other instances, Darwin presents a more pessimistic vision of nature, describing it as the primary obstacle to a species’ ability to exist.
Natural resource depletion leads to a battle for survival and the extinction of entire species. Nature is portrayed in this work as a dark, destructive force. Nature is also thought of as chaotic. The differences an individual living in a certain setting would exhibit is purely a matter of chance. The forces of nature’s randomness eventually determine which species thrive and which go extinct.
The Central Importance of the Scientific Method:
In explaining his theories of natural selection and descent with modification, Darwin’s commitment to scientific methods is evident. Darwin claims that it was only possible for him to construct his hypothesis in the first place because of his experiments and observations. Throughout the work, Darwin cites the conducted experiments and observations to support his theory of evolution, most notably his study of and observations of various species while aboard the H.M.S. Beagle.
Darwin makes use of inductive reasoning to develop ideas that are founded on information gleaned from experiments and observation. Darwin builds his thesis and equips himself with concrete facts by using inductive reasoning. The Origin of Species serves as an example of how scientific investigation offers resources for knowledge, truth, and discovery.
The Progress Toward Perfect Adaptation:
For many of Darwin’s contemporaries, an organism’s ecological adaptability was flawless, but to Darwin, it was only a “seeming perfection” Darwin claimed that the natural world advances toward an ever-improving state through processes like natural selection and descent with modification. A species’ ability to adapt to its environment gets more complex when favourable mutations emerge, are naturally selected, and are passed down through succeeding populations.
The “wonderfully adapted” species we see today are the result of species evolving to higher levels of perfection over time. Darwin points out that because variation is random and unpredictable, progress is gradual and takes place over a long period of time in little steps. However, natural selection can only result in the development of better-adapted species. It never produces new species that are less fortunate than their ancestors were. According to Darwin’s theory of natural selection, each species is always advancing toward optimal adaption, and evolution is seen as an inherent positive trend in the natural world.
The Implicit Idea that Humans Are Part of the Evolutionary Process:
The place of humans in Darwin’s theory of evolution is not made clear anywhere in The Origin of Species. However, he also makes indications throughout the narrative that people and animals both go through stages of evolution. He contrasts the hand and arm architecture of humans with bat wings and porpoise paddle arms while analyzing the bone structures of various organisms. By drawing this parallel, it is inferred that humans share an evolutionary history with bats and porpoises. The notion that all organic beings are included in Darwin’s theory of descent with modification is also stated publicly, and this belief implicitly includes humans.
Darwin’s allusions to the position of humans in the evolutionary process have important ramifications. Darwin questions the distinctiveness of humans in the natural world by blending the lines between humans and other creatures. He makes the implication that nature, not God, governs how people evolve. Further, he raises the question of whether people should think of their communities in terms of natural selection, struggle, and Darwinian progress.
4) Darwin’s Religious Beliefs:
Darwin’s father and grandfather were free thinkers, yet his baptism and boarding school were both Church of England institutions. His family tradition was nonconformist Unitarianism. He did not “in the least doubt the strict and literal truth of every word in the Bible” when he went to Cambridge to train to be an Anglican priest. He studied the science of John Herschel, which, like William Paley’s natural theology, looked for explanations in natural laws rather than in miracles and regarded species adaptability as proof of design.
Darwin was a devout Christian who frequently cited the Bible as a source for ethical principles while aboard the HMS Beagle. In order to explain dispersal, he searched for “centres of creation,” and he believed that the striking similarities between the antlions found in Australia and England were proof of a supernatural hand. When his daughter Annie passed away in 1851, Darwin was distraught. His devotion to Christianity had by that point waned, and he had ceased attending services.
When he came back, he was sceptical of the Bible’s historical accuracy and questioned why all faiths should not hold equal weight. He spent the following few years really thinking about geology and the evolution of species, but he also gave religion a lot of attention. He openly discussed this with his wife Emma, whose beliefs were also the result of serious study and consideration.
Paley and Thomas Malthus’ theodicy defended bad things like starving as the outcome of a kind creator’s laws, which had a positive overall impact. Darwin believed that natural selection eliminated the necessity for design while producing the good of adaptation, and he was unable to recognize the handiwork of an all-powerful deity in all the suffering, such as when the Ichneumon wasp paralyzed caterpillars to use as living nourishment for its eggs. Darwin was hesitant to give up the notion of God as the ultimate lawgiver, even though he saw religion as a tribal survival tactic. The issue of evil was beginning to concern him more and more.
John Brodie Innes, the vicar of Downe, and Darwin remained close friends, and Darwin continued to play a significant role in the parish work of the church. However, starting in 1849, Darwin would go for a walk on Sundays while his family attended church. Although he was guarded about his religious beliefs, he stated in 1879 that “I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God. – I think that generally … an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind”.
5) Theory of Evolution:
In his 1859 book “On the Origin of Species,” Charles Darwin first introduced the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. According to National Geograph, Darwin discusses in his book how creatures change over generations through the inheritance of physical or behavioural features. The underlying tenet of the theory is that features can vary within a population, as demonstrated by one of the Galapagos finches Darwin investigated and its beak shape.
The idea is that people with characteristics that make it easier for them to adapt to their surroundings will help them survive and produce more children, who will inherit those characteristics. Less adaptable people are less likely to live and pass those traits on. The population will alter or evolve through time as the qualities that allow species to live and reproduce become more prevalent. Darwin proposed that genetically distinct species could develop from a common ancestor through natural selection.
Three basic ideas made up Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution: variation among species members occurred randomly; a person’s traits might be passed on to their offspring; and only those with advantageous traits would survive due to competition for survival.
6) His Criticism:
The arrival of the fittest is not explained by natural selection theory, even if it explains how the fittest survive. Therefore, natural selection, acting only upon minute gradations towards perfections, seems insufficient to give rise to such specializations as intricate mimicry, or the electric organ of the torpedo, etc., which are of apparent value only in the completed stage. Some organs, like the tusks of elephants and the antlers of deer, have become very specialized to the point that they frequently cause trouble for the owner rather than being useful to them. If natural selection was at work, these organs or bodily components shouldn’t have evolved to a dangerous degree. However, Darwin has explained such overspecializations in terms of discontinuous variations or “sports,” which in his view have no place in evolution. Degeneracy cannot be explained by natural selection—to argue that an organ has lost its function and has therefore disappeared is to state the result, not the cause.
The idea that novel variations would be lost through “dilution” as the individuals with them bred with those without them is one of the traditional arguments against natural selection. We now understand that while a gene’s phenotypic expression may change when it interacts with specific other genes, the gene itself does not change and is passed on to following generations.
In the guise of the pangenesis hypothesis, which cannot be accepted considering the current understanding of genetics, Darwin indirectly embraced the Lamarckian idea of the inheritance of acquired traits. A modified version of Darwinism is called neo-Darwinism. Neo-Darwinians such as T.H. Huxley, Herbert Spencer, D.S. Jordan, Asa Gray, E. Haeckel, and A. Wiesmann thought natural selection accounted for everything involved in evolution.
Some Neo-Darwinians, including A. Wiesmann and his adherents, rejected Darwin’s theory except for its central component, natural selection. Although these Neo-Darwinians distinguished between the somatoplasm and gerinplasm of living beings in their theory of germplasm, they were unable to understand the significance of mutations in the process of evolution.
In contrast to Darwin’s theory, which maintained that adaptations primarily come from a single source, i.e., natural selection, Neo-Darwinians believed that numerous processes, including natural selection, contribute to adaptations. Neo-Darwinians also held the view that traits are not inherently inherited but rather are determined by other factors, such as determinants or biophores, which only affect development. The interaction of the factors, the organism’s activities, and the environment during development would produce the final character. Neo-Darwinism was therefore incomplete and partially incorrect because it was based on outdated genetic knowledge.
7) His Influence Today:
Naturalist Charles Darwin (February 12, 1809–April 19, 1882) is credited with developing the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. Being the main proponent of this idea, Darwin has a special place in history. Although he had a rather sedate and academic life, his writings were divisive in their day and frequently still do.
Young and intelligent, he boarded a Royal Navy ship for an amazing trip of exploration. He was deeply contemplating how life might have evolved when he encountered strange creatures and vegetation in far-off locations. And he significantly shocked the scientific community when he released his masterpiece, “On the Origin of Species.” It is impossible to exaggerate Darwin’s impact on contemporary science.
Charles Darwin was not the first to suggest that plants and animals change over thousands of years in response to environmental changes. However, Darwin’s book generated debate by presenting his theory in an approachable manner. Darwin’s ideas affected science, religion, and society as a whole almost immediately.
The irony is that, even though Darwin’s proof finally persuaded others to embrace evolution, the most frequently recognized forms of evolution at the time were neo-Lamarckian. This notion was put forth by other scientists for several decades, accentuating the irony. Most scientists did not adopt Darwinian evolution, which is primarily driven by natural selection acting on “random” mutations, until about 1930. The term “eclipse of Darwinism” has been used to describe this phenomenon, however delving into that subject would go considerably beyond what is covered in this reading.
Regardless of their religious beliefs, the vast majority of biologists and geologists today agree that Darwin’s basic hypothesis—that vastly different animals share a common ancestor, and that natural selection is a major contributor to that diversity—was correct. Many of the explanatory issues that Darwin, Jenkin, and others discovered in some of the specifics of his theory have been resolved or rendered obsolete by later scientific findings.
Overall, the tale of Darwin and his hypothesis demonstrates the importance of particulars in both science and history. Darwin did not come up with the theory of evolution and initially did not accept it, but after making extensive observations and having life-changing experiences during a five-year journey around the globe, Darwin began to wonder about the “mystery of mysteries”—the origin of new species over such vast geological epochs. He developed a new sort of evolutionary theory that is driven by competition for scarce resources while simultaneously understanding it as a process of creation by natural law, drawing important insights from economic theory.
Even though Darwin wasn’t totally correct, he was correct in the big picture: God does certainly create a wide variety of things in ways that are not entirely beyond our comprehension. The study of evolution is yet another way to think like God and we should be delighted and rejoice in this.