Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin (12 February 1809 - 19 April 1882) was a famous naturalist born in England. Charles Darwin is best known for popularizing the idea of evolution by natural selection presented in his book "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life." The concept is that organisms are modified over vast amounts of time by naturally occurring processes, originating from common ancestors that lived tens of millions of years ago. Outside the area of evolutionary theory in particular, Charles Darwin was regarded as an expert on barnacles, as well as being credited with discovering how coral atolls were formed. Darwinism attempted to explain the origin of the various kinds of plants and animals via the process of natural selection or "survival of the fittest".
General Biography of Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, England in 1809 to his parents Dr. Robert Darwin and Susannah Wedgewood. Darwin's mother was a religious woman but his father was, for the most part, a weak deist. Despite his lack of theistic religious belief, the Darwin's father allowed Charles to be baptized into the Anglican Church and encouraged him to become a clergyman. Darwin's mother died in 1817. In 1825 Charles Darwin went on to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh. There, he became horrified with the brutality of surgery before anesthesia was invented and quit his medical studies.
In 1831 Charles Darwin graduated from Christ's College at Cambridge with a BA degree in the classics and theology. On December 27 of the same year Charles Darwin departed on the HMS Beagle for a five-year voyage of exploration. The Beagle returned to English shores on October 2, 1836. In 1837, Charles Darwin drew his now famous depiction of common ancestry in the form of a branching tree.[3] The following year he discovered the concept of natural selection. Darwin insists that naturally occurring phenomena and factors working together in blind tandem have produced nature and eventually mankind.
However, Charles Darwin originally based the idea of human evolution on a racist assumption,[4] [after God was rejected as Creator], made in the late 1830s,[5] that Fuegians (natives of Tierra del Fuego) resembled primates that he had observed in the London zoo.[6] In 1842 he wrote out a sketch of his theory but did not publish it. Again, in 1844 Charles Darwin produced what is known today as an essay of the same theory more developed but he still chose not to publish.
Finally, in 1859, Charles Darwin published his famous theory about how the species may have been produced without any aid from a Divine Creator. He titled his book On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. In 1871, well after his theory enjoyed widespread success, Darwin published his ideas on human evolution in a two-volume book titled The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex.
Family Life
Author Peter Brent wrote of Darwin's relationship with his wife Emma and stated that "Their ties to each other were linked to childhood and the very beginnings of memory. They had a common history, a joint tradition. It is hard to think their relationship a passionate one, but it was happy, and the happiness had deep roots."[7]
See also
References
- ↑ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/teleological-arguments/notes.html
- ↑ http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry-2109
- ↑ Charles Darwin, Transmutation Notebook B 1837:36
- ↑ Milton, Richard Shattering the Myths of Darwinism 1997:186,287 says "Darwin [was] openly racist"
- ↑ Barlow, Nora (editor) The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1958:130
- ↑ Larson, Edward J. Evolution: The Remarkable History Of A Scientific Theory 2004:66,67
- ↑ Peter Brent, "Darwin: A Man of Enlarged Curiosity", page 316
External links
| |||||||||||