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Tori Meeks
Anth. 303
A. Gruenthal
Darwin
Charles Darwin is known as the father of modern biology. If it weren’t for his work and
observations during his voyage on the HMS Beagle or concrete discoveries in the theories of
evolution, we would think of evolution in entirely different terms. According to Parks, the author
of Biological Anthropology, the discovery of evolution started in the seventeenth century. In the
sixth century a Greek astronomer and philosopher, Anaximander, proposed that humans evolved
from fish, even though he was incorrect, this would be a major influence in Darwin’s idea of
evolution. Over the centuries more and more scientists noticed differences in species, but
because of religion and the influence of the church not much was publicized about the idea of
evolution.
The first of the “natural scientists”, Hooke, Ussher, Steno, and Cuvier tried working with
the bible and the stories of Noah’s flood, and the creation of man, “Adam and Eve” and the
creation story, that the world was created in six days. Uniformitarians, Hutton, Smith and
eventually Lyell, began noticing deposition and erosion, changes in the earth’s strata, and that
the changes occur over time and in great cycles. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck was on his way to
evolution, emphasizing Hooke’s conclusion that animals adapt to their environment. As an
organisms environment changes, that organism also needs to change to exist in the new
environment. Lamarck called it, “inheritance of acquired characteristics.”
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Charles Robert Darwin was born on February 12, 1809, in Shrewsbury, Shropshire,
England, to a “wealthy and well connected family,” according to the BBC News website. Both of
his grandfathers led successful lives, one was a china manufacturer and the other a leading
intellectual of the 18th century. His father, R.W. Darwin, was a medical doctor, and his mother,
Susanna, died when Charles was only 8 years old. Charles was the fifth of six children, but only
the second son, according to the Encylopædia Britannica. His three older sisters helped raise
him, and as mentioned on the Natural History Museum website, he was extremely interested in
nature from a very young age, and spent his spare time collecting plants and insects and
exploring the fields around his family home.
In October of 1825, when Charles was 16, he and his brother enrolled at Edinburgh
University, as mentioned on The Biography Channel website, and later at Christ’s College in
Cambridge. It was no secret that when Charles was a teenager his father wanted him to follow in
his footsteps and become a doctor as well, as read in an article by Carl Zimmer in The New York
Times. However, the sight of blood made Charles queasy (Biography), and he hated anatomy and
witnessing pre-chloroform surgeries made him sick (Encylopædia). During his second year at
Edinburgh he decided to join the Plinian Society, “a student natural history group that engaged in
discussions of radical materialism” mentioned on The European Graduate School: Graduate &
Postgraduate Studies. While at Edinburgh University he became Robert Grant’s number one
student. Grant became Charles’ mentor, he taught him about marine invertebrates. During Ariel
Gruenthals class lecture I wrote that he found a pancreas in a sea slug, and learned to do
dissections in the field.
Darwin graduated from Christ’s College with a Bachelors of Arts degree. After
graduating he was asked to join the crew of the HMS Beagle, but it was a self funded trip. He
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had to ask his father for money, but his father said no, according to my lecture notes his uncle
convinced his father to give him the money so he could set off on the journey of a lifetime. The
HMS Beagle set out on December 27 1831 for a tour around the world. Charles brought the first
volume of Lyell’s Principles of Geology on the voyage with him. While on the five year voyage
the HMS Beagle made many stops around the world; Cape Verde Islands, Bahia, Rio de Janeiro,
Montevideo, Folkland Island, Tierra del Fuego, Cape Horn, Straits of Magellan, Valparaiso,
Tahiti, the Galapagos Islands, Bay of Islands, Hobart, King George’s Sound, Keeling Island,
Mauritius, Cape of Good Hope, St, Helena, Ascension Island, and Azore Island before arriving
back home in October of 1836.
Charles took many notes about the different animals and plants he saw at all the different
stops. He also brought samples of what he could. He found lots of different types of animals he
had never seen before, like marine iguanas, giant tortoises and sharks with T shaped heads. He
noticed that there were different types of birds in the same environments and the same types of
birds in different environments. He also noticed that the similar birds had differences based on
where he found them. He realized there is an incredible degree of variation among each living
species (Park). While on his voyage, Darwin witnessed for himself, a volcanic eruption of Mount
Osorno on January 15, 1835, and in Chile on February 20 of the same year a violent earthquake
and caused a tidal wave that wiped out the entire city of Concepcion. Darwin noted that he saw
that the land had risen, being as how he saw muscle beds that were not near the water even at
high tide and that the land itself shifts and gives rise to mountains. He then began thinking about
how the world had changed over time, not short periods of time but eons.
Darwin began collecting fossils along with his live specimens. He began to notice the
change in the fossils just like he did with the birds from the different islands and other creatures
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he came across. When Darwin got back to England he began going over his notes and searched
for causes for extinction and variation among the specimen that he observed. He was not ready to
publish his findings, not only was he still trying to find concrete evidence, but because going
against the church and its beliefs that God created man, Adam and Eve, and that humans did not
evolve from another creature, like the ape, was like confessing to murder.
Darwin befriended Lyell and discussed the change in land height over the years. Darwin
never told Lyell his findings and theories of Natural Selection. He began to have heart
palpitations and stomach problems in 1837, it was because of the stress of hiding his findings or
being made a social outcast. He was thinking about the persecution of the early astronomers.
Darwin wrote and studied in secret, no one could know what he was writing until he had enough
evidence to keep him from being shunned.
Darwin brought a skull he had found in Uruguay to Richard Owen who told him that the
skull belonged not to a rhinoceros like Darwin had thought, but to a hippopotamus sized
capybara. Later in 1837, ornithologist John Gould told Darwin that his birds were not a mix of
finches and wrens, like Darwin had originally thought, but they were all ground finches that had
adapted differently to the different environments that they were living in. Some of the finches
had longer beaks for getting nectar out of flower and some with short hard beaks for cracking
seeds and nuts. But they were all the same species. This intrigued Darwin and got him thinking
that life was a branching tree and was not linear.
In 1838 Charles Darwin married Emma Wedgwood, his maternal cousin. He weighed the
pros and cons of telling her about his finding and what he had discovered, by the shock on her
face he decided the world was not ready to know just yet. He eventually came up with his theory
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of survival of the fittest, “the animals (or plants) best suited to their environment are more likely
to survive and reproduce, passing on the characteristics which helped them survive to their
offspring. Gradually the species changes over time” (BBC). He even did work on flowers,
orchids to be exact to learn about cross pollination and learned that the flowers that self pollinate
have less fit plants that the flowers that get pollinated by insects. He also witness sexual
selection, meaning that a female would chose to mate with a male with the characteristics she
found appealing and thought would survive the next generation.
During their life together Charles and Emma had ten children. In 1851 they lost a
daughter, Annie, to typhoid, and in 1858 their mentally retarded son to scarlet fever, and the
death of another son in 1859. The birth of his mentally retarded son led him to search more into
variation of species, he began to fear for his children and his brothers children (he too married a
cousin), that there would be no variation in their genetics and that the same genes would
continue to be passed on and that they might not survive another generation.
Darwin was so paranoid about others finding out what he was working on that he even
lowered the road outside his house so traveler and passerby’s couldn’t look in his windows. He
also moved his family to the village of Downe, in Kent, known as the “extreme edge of [the]
world,” only 16 miles from the center of London (Encyclopædia). He fully secluded himself, he
set aside certain hours for napping, eating, walking and nightly backgammon. He even wrote a
letter to his wife, Emma, saying that if he died she was to send his work to an editor to be
published with ₤400.
In 1856, a fellow naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, sent Darwin his notes on his take of
natural selection from what he had observed on his less successful voyage. Darwin sent
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Wallace’s and his own notes to his friend, Thomas Huxley and Lyell and Hooker, who told him
that Wallace was very close to publishing, which rushed Darwin to finish his book The Origin of
Species. Their conclusions and theories were so similar that Darwin presented both sets of
findings at the Linnean Society, without mentioning Wallace. The society gave Darwin full
credit to the findings and research. It only took Darwin fifteen months to publish his book, which
was essentially just an abstract of what he was doing.
Huxley defended Darwin’s book and findings to the non-believers when Darwin was too
ill to travel. Darwin still feared the worst. He felt like he was “living in Hell.” When newspapers
got a hold of the information that mankind evolved from apes they asked if it was on his mothers
or fathers side. Huxley continued to defend Darwin and manage the debates. According to the
Encyclopædia Britannica Online, Darwin went through long periods of debilitating illness, and
that he vomited for 27 days straight. His wife became his nurse and his shield from persecution.
His house became his laboratory where he continued his experiments reworked his book through
six editions.
Darwin suffered from angina, he said he looked forward to joining the worms in the dirt.
He had a seizure in March if 1882 followed by a heart attack that would take his life on April 19,
1882. He wanted to be buried near his home in Downe, but the Royal Society asked permission
from his family to have him buried in Westminster Abbey with a full ecclesiastical pomp on
April 26, 1882. Huxley preserved Darwin’s reputation of “sweet and gentle nature blossomed
into perfection” (Encyclopædia).
In 1913 Wallace died in obscurity to the world, except in Borneo where he was living.
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Works Cited
“Charles Darwin,” The Biography Channel website, 2013. 06 May, 2013.
"Charles Darwin". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. 06 May. 2013
“Charles Darwin." Natural History Museum. Natural History Museum. 06 May 2013.
"Charles Darwin - Biography." Charles Darwin. The European Graduate School: Graduate &
Postgraduate Studies. 06 May 2013.
Gruenthal, MSc, Ariel. "Darwin, Wallace and Natural Selection." 5 Feb. 2013. Lecture
“Historic Figures: Charles Darwin." BBC News. BBC, 06 May 2013.
Park, Michael A. "The Evolution of Evolution." Biological Anthropology. 7th ed. New York:
McGraw-Hill, 2013. 23-40. Print.
Zimmer, Carl. "Charles Darwin." - News. The New York Times, 10 Feb. 2009. 06 May 2013.