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3f: Darwinism Lesson 1: Student Resource Sheet 1 Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution through natural selection Charles Darwin in 1880 Charles Darwin (1809-1882) was born into quite a well-to-do family in Shropshire. When he had completed his early schooling, he went to study medicine at Edinburgh University. He dropped out from this course in 1827 and went off to Cambridge to study to become a clergyman in the Church of England. It was here that he gained a special interest in the natural world and began to collect specimens to study. He left university in 1831 and set off on a voyage of discovery on a ship named ‘HMS Beagle’ and began his career as a naturalist on a scientific expedition. HMS Beagle from a watercolour by Owen Stanley 1841 Darwin’s close observations of both animal life and rock formations while he was travelling led him to consider that natural forces had been acting on these things over an extremely long time. The earth and everything on it had taken a very long time to arrive at where it was now! Many people at the time believed that the earth was actually quite young and that the different species of animals had been created by God in the beginning when the world had been made. This of course is one way of reading the creation story in the Bible. Therefore, Darwin’s thinking was beginning to concern him as he saw a conflict between his ideas and those who took the Biblical account literally. Science and Religion in Schools – 3f: Darwinism What Darwin noticed next was crucially important. In the Galapagos Islands off the coast of South America there were finches, mocking birds and thrushes but they differed slightly on each of the islands. In other words, each island had its own slightly variant form of these birds. As Darwin was leaving the islands, the governor of one of the islands, Nicholas Lawson, told Darwin, who had not observed the fact himself, that he could tell by inspecting a tortoise from which island it came. Darwin was struck by this remark because this is also what he had begun to think whilst collecting the birds. When he returned to England, Darwin was able, with the help of ornithologist John Gould, to establish which of his finch specimens were genuinely different species and which were variants of the same species. So the governor telling him about the tortoises provided Darwin with an important clue, but the testing of the idea of natural selection came later via the birds. Although Darwin was arriving at his basic theory for all this by 1838, it was not until 1858 that it was made public and a year later that his book ‘On the Origin of Species’ was published. Essentially, Darwin suggested that animals compete for survival because of food supply problems. The young animals that survive best and go on to reproduce have slight advantages such as longer legs or better camouflage, more teeth or stronger stomachs! These advantages enable them to survive more effectively in their particular environments. As these animals breed they pass on these advantages to the next generation. Over time, each generation will gradually change in small ways as they adapt to their living conditions and pass on these adaptations to their young. This is evolution through natural selection. Science and Religion in Schools – 3f: Darwinism