The Life and Work of Charles Darwin - Research Paper Example

Charles Darwin Introduction Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England in 1809. Darwin grew up with an early interest in natural history and science; by age 8 he was helping his father treat patients in the Shropshire region. While Darwin was brought up in a religious environment and was sent to Christ’s College, Cambridge, he held an avid interest in science, pursuing taxidermy, and broad studies of natural classification. During his stay at Cambridge, Darwin began to study investigations into the design of the world (Browne 1996). He became highly interested in studies of natural theology that argued that there was intelligent design in nature. Conversely, he also researched writers such as John Herschel and Alexander von Humboldt that promoted a more thoroughly scientific understand of the natural order based on inductive reasoning and direct observation (Browne 1996). Darwin began to desire to make his own contributions to these studies and joined a geology course that involved on site investigations. In 1831 Soon after the completion of this course, he was invited to go on a five year voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle – a trip where he would ultimately gather the observations that would make up his seminal On the Origin of the Species (Darwin, 1999). Origin of the Species On the Origin of Species (Darwin 1999) is a scientific abstract about revolutionary ideas on evolution and the diversity of species from the evolutionary process. This book was originally a personal journal while Darwin was touring onboard the ship H.M.S. Beagle as the naturalist. The ship sailed along the west coast of South America and stopped by islands that were later called the Galapagos Islands. Darwin discovered new sub-divisions of species that were on mainland South America and started hypothesizing on how so many different kinds of sub-divisions could occur. He eventually formed the journal into an informal scientific abstract and let colleagues, who later urged Darwin to publish the abstract, read and critique his ideas. The book was published in 1859 and within fifteen years of the publication the majority of the scientific community accepted Darwins ideas as fact (Bowler 2003). Intellectual Life Darwin wrote on his ideas that included new insights on the processes of evolution, gradualism, population speciation, common descent, and natural selection. Natural selection is probably the most unique and radical idea about which Darwin wrote, but his other insights were also to play an important role in how the scientific community would view evolution and heredity from that period onward. Darwins outlook on evolution, besides the fact that it was actually plausible, was much different than his colleagues views. For one, Darwin believed that it took different mechanisms for the process of evolution. In Origin of the Species (1999), he explains that instead of evolution taking place over the span of just a few generations like most evolution-supporters thought, it takes a very long time and for innumerable small occurrences for change in a species. This idea of gradualism also led to many changes in the field of geology. According to Darwin, for this kind of slow evolution to take place the history of the earth would have to be extremely long (Alland 1985). Before 1900, the geological record did not allow for such long spans of time to account for the evolutionary process. In Origin of the Species (1999), Darwin covers the imperfections of the geological record by focusing on the distance of the continents. He observes that on different continents, along the coasts, there are coinciding fossils of the same basic species, however different sub-divisions. Darwin concluded that this separation of the species and the different evolutionary turns each took had to have occurred over a long period of time when the continents first separated. Another issue Darwin discusses is his idea that all species on earth descended from only a few common ancestors. This theory developed out of another theory that larger, more complex species evolved form simpler ones. The reason Darwin believed in such a radical notion was by continuously observing the anatomy of different species of animals. When comparing the skeletons of a blue whale and a human, although having many differences, there are many similarities. The basic embryology discussed by Darwin shows that each bone in the whales skeleton coincides with each bone in the human skeleton. The whales flipper has "finger" bones, with tiny, almost non-existent wrist bones that lead to what would be the humerus bone in the human skeleton and so on throughout the skeleton. These similarities happen in all species that Darwin observed and took notes on during his voyage on the Beagle. And so from these observations Darwin concluded that all species have a common descent from only a few ancestors on the evolutionary tree (Browne 1996). Lastly, Darwin discusses the mechanism of natural selection for which evolution can ultimately occur. Natural selection is a theory that involves the change within a species for selection for or against certain characteristics that will ultimately help members of a species live or eliminate the weak. Darwin considered the prior theory of why a species may flourish or become extinct. This is called the "struggle for existence" or competition. It was found that each species require a certain niche in nature; they need their own food, water, territory and sometimes these niches overlap with the niches of another species which creates competition for survival. But the struggle would be most severe between the individuals of the same species because they lived in the same areas, ate the same kind of food and are exposed to the same kind of dangers. Therefore, it was assumed that the strongest survive (Browne 1996). Darwin took this concept a step further by saying that there are changes within a species that help it survive. Part of this concept was the idea called population speciation. This stated that there can be random phenotypic, variations within a species that give advantages selected for by natural selection and so these variations can be then passed from parent to offspring. So now natural selection had a process to it also. For example, when a giraffe is born with a longer neck than its herd, it gains an advantage because it is able to reach more food. The long-neck giraffe is therefore stronger, lives longer, and more likely to have offspring. The offspring are born with the same long neck as their parents, though some might have even longer necks and thus the short-neck giraffes will ultimately die out. This leaves the gene pool with the long-neck gene, so it could be stated that all giraffes will eventually gain long necks through heredity. Although Darwin did not know himself the reason behind heredity of certain traits, he strongly believed in the mechanism of natural selection as a process of evolution. Conclusion Darwin was a revolutionary thinker that took a major field of study and within fifteen years turned it on its head and overhauled the way evolution was thought about. While, not until the early 1900s when Mendel started playing around with his pea plants did the scientific community come up with a justification of the role of heredity, it was Darwins theory of natural selection theory that functioned as the foundation of these investigations. In addition to On the Origin of the Species (1999) Darwin published a number of scientific treatises, including – perhaps appropriately in the final year of his life -- an investigation into earthworms and their effect on soil. While Darwin passed away in Kent, England in 1882, his legacy lives to the present day at his theory of natural selection has become a cornerstone of evolutionary science (Bowler 2003). References Alland, Alexander Jr. (1985). Human Nature: Darwin’s View. New York: Columbia U P. Browne, Janet. (1996). Charles Darwin: A Biography. Princeton University Press. Bowler, Peter J. (2003). Evolution: The History of an Idea (3rd ed.). University of California Press. Darwin, Charles. (1999). On the Origin of Species. New York: Grammercy. Read More