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Charles Robert Darwin was an English naturalist who showed
that all species of life have
descended over time from common ancestors, and proposed the scientific theory
that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.
He published his theory with compelling evidence for evolution in his 1859 book
On
the Origin of Species.The scientific
community and much of the general public came to accept evolution as a fact in his
lifetime,but it was not
until the emergence of the modern evolutionary synthesis
from the 1930s to the 1950s that a broad consensus developed that natural
selection was the basic mechanism of evolution. In modified
form, Darwin's scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining
the diversity of life.
Darwin's early interest in nature led him to neglect his medical education
at the University of Edinburgh; instead, he
helped to investigate marine invertebrates. Studies at the University
of Cambridge encouraged his passion for natural science.His five-year voyage on HMS Beagle established him
as an eminent geologist whose
observations and theories supported Charles Lyell's uniformitarian ideas, and
publication of his journal of the voyage made him famous
as a popular author.
Puzzled by the geographical distribution of wildlife and fossils he collected on the voyage, Darwin investigated
the transmutation of species and conceived
his theory of natural selection in 1838. Although he
discussed his ideas with several naturalists, he needed time for extensive
research and his geological work had priority.He was writing up his theory in 1858 when Alfred Russel Wallace sent him an essay
which described the same idea, prompting immediate joint publication of both
of their theories.Darwin's work
established evolutionary descent with modification as the dominant scientific
explanation of diversification in nature. In 1871, he
examined human
evolution and sexual selection in The Descent of
Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, followed by The Expression of
the Emotions in Man and Animals. His research on plants was published in
a series of books, and in his final book, he examined earthworms and their effect on soil. Charles Robert Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England on 12 February 1809 at his
family home, the Mount.He was the fifth of six children of wealthy society doctor and financier Robert Darwin, and Susannah
Darwin (née Wedgwood). He was the grandson of Erasmus Darwin on his
father's side, and of Josiah Wedgwood on his mother's side. Both
families were largely Unitarian, though the Wedgwoods were adopting Anglicanism. Robert Darwin,
himself quietly a freethinker, had baby Charles baptised in the Anglican Church, but
Charles and his siblings attended the Unitarian chapel with their mother. The
eight year old Charles already had a taste for natural history and collecting
when he joined the day school run by its preacher in 1817. That July, his mother
died. From September 1818, he joined his older brother Erasmus
attending the nearby Anglican Shrewsbury School as a boarder.
Darwin spent the summer of 1825 as an apprentice doctor, helping his father
treat the poor of Shropshire, before going to the University of Edinburgh
Medical School with his brother Erasmus in October 1825. He found lectures
dull and surgery distressing, so
neglected his studies. He learned taxidermy from John Edmonstone, a freed black slave who had
accompanied Charles
Waterton in the South
American rainforest, and
often sat with this "very pleasant and intelligent man".
In Darwin's second year he joined the Plinian Society, a student natural history group
whose debates strayed into radical materialism. He assisted Robert Edmund
Grant's investigations of the anatomy and life cycle of marine
invertebrates in the Firth of Forth, and in March 1827 presented at
the Plinian his own discovery that black spores found in oyster shells were the eggs of a skate leech. One day, Grant praised Lamarck's
evolutionary ideas. Darwin was
astonished, but had recently read the similar ideas of his grandfather Erasmus
and remained indifferent.Darwin was rather
bored by Robert
Jameson's natural history course which covered geology including the debate between Neptunism and Plutonism. He learned classification of plants, and assisted with work
on the collections of the University Museum, one of the largest museums in
Europe at the time.
This neglect of medical studies annoyed his father, who shrewdly sent him to
Christ's College, Cambridge, for
a Bachelor of Arts
degree as the first step towards becoming an Anglican parson.[20] Darwin began there
in January 1828, but preferred riding and shooting to studying. His cousin William Darwin
Fox introduced him to the popular craze for beetle collecting which he pursued zealously, getting
some of his finds published in Stevens' Illustrations of British
entomology. He became a close friend and follower of botany professor John Stevens
Henslow and met other leading naturalists who saw scientific work as
religious natural
theology, becoming known to these dons as "the man who walks with Henslow". When
exams drew near, Darwin focused on his studies and was delighted by the language
and logic of William
Paley's Evidences of Christianity. In his final
examination in January 1831 Darwin did well, coming tenth out of a pass list of
178.
Darwin had to stay at Cambridge until June. He studied Paley's Natural
Theology which made an argument for divine design in nature,
explaining adaptation as God
acting through laws of nature. He read John Herschel's new book
which described the highest aim of natural philosophy as understanding such
laws through inductive reasoning based on observation,
and Alexander von Humboldt's Personal
Narrative of scientific travels. Inspired with "a burning zeal" to
contribute, Darwin planned to visit Tenerife with some classmates after graduation to
study natural history in the tropics.
In preparation, he joined Adam Sedgwick's geology course, then went with
him in the summer for a fortnight to map strata in Wales.After a week
with student friends at Barmouth, he
returned home to find a letter from Henslow proposing Darwin as a suitable (if
unfinished) gentleman naturalist for a self-funded place with captain Robert FitzRoy, more as a
companion than a mere collector, on HMS Beagle which was to leave in four weeks
on an expedition to chart the coastline of South America.His father objected to the planned two-year voyage, regarding it as a waste of
time, but was persuaded by his brother-in-law, Josiah Wedgwood, to agree to his son's
participation.
Beginning on the 27th of December, 1831, the voyage lasted almost five years
and, as FitzRoy had intended, Darwin spent most of that time on land
investigating geology and making natural history collections, while the
Beagle surveyed and
charted coasts.He kept
careful notes of his observations and theoretical speculations, and at intervals
during the voyage his specimens were sent to Cambridge together with letters
including a copy of his journal for his family.He had some
expertise in geology, beetle collecting and dissecting marine
invertebrates, but in all other areas was a novice and ably collected
specimens for expert appraisal.Despite
repeatedly suffering badly from seasickness while at sea, most of his zoology
notes are about marine invertebrates, starting with plankton collected in a calm spell.
On their first stop ashore at St. Jago, Darwin found that a white band
high in the volcanic
rock cliffs included seashells. FitzRoy had given him the first volume of Charles Lyell's
Principles of Geology which set out uniformitarian concepts of land
slowly rising or falling over immense periods,and Darwin saw things
Lyell's way, theorising and thinking of writing a book on geology. In Brazil, Darwin was delighted by the tropical
forest,but detested the
sight of slavery
At Punta Alta in Patagonia he made a major find of
fossil bones of huge extinct mammals in
cliffs beside modern seashells, indicating recent extinction with no signs of change in climate or
catastrophe. He identified the little known Megatherium by a tooth and its association with
bony armour which had at first seemed to him like a giant version of the armour
on local armadillos. The finds
brought great interest when they reached England.On rides with
gauchos into the interior to explore
geology and collect more fossils he gained social, political and anthropological insights into
both native and colonial people at a time of revolution, and learnt that two
types of rhea had separate
but overlapping territories.Further south he saw stepped plains of shingle and seashells as raised beaches showing a
series of elevations. He read Lyell's second volume and accepted its view of
"centres of creation" of species, but his discoveries and theorising challenged
Lyell's ideas of smooth continuity and of extinction of species.
Three Fuegians on board, who had been seized during the first Beagle voyage and had
spent a year in England, were taken back to Tierra del Fuego as missionaries. Darwin found
them friendly and civilised, yet their relatives seemed "miserable, degraded
savages", as different as wild from domesticated animals.To Darwin the difference showed cultural advances, not racial inferiority.
Unlike his scientist friends, he now thought there was no unbridgeable gap
between humans and animals.A year on, the
mission had been abandoned. The Fuegian they'd named Jemmy Button lived like the other natives, had a
wife, and had no wish to return to England.
Darwin experienced an earthquake in Chile and saw signs that the land had just been raised,
including mussel-beds stranded above
high tide. High in the Andes he saw
seashells, and several fossil trees that had grown on a sand beach. He theorised
that as the land rose, oceanic islands
sank, and coral reefs round
them grew to form atolls.
On the geologically new Galápagos Islands Darwin looked for
evidence attaching wildlife to an older "centre of creation", and found mockingbirds allied to those in
Chile but differing from island to island. He heard that slight variations in
the shape of tortoise shells showed
which island they came from, but failed to collect them, even after eating
tortoises taken on board as food. In Australia, the
marsupial rat-kangaroo and the platypus seemed so unusual that Darwin
thought it was almost as though two distinct Creators had been at work.He found the
Aborigines "good-humoured &
pleasant", and noted their depletion by European settlement.
The Beagle investigated how the atolls of the Cocos
(Keeling) Islands had formed, and the survey supported Darwin's
theorising.FitzRoy
began writing the official Narrative of the Beagle voyages, and
after reading Darwin's diary he proposed incorporating it into the account. Darwin's
Journal was eventually rewritten
as a separate third volume, on natural history.
In Cape Town Darwin and
FitzRoy met John
Herschel, who had recently written to Lyell praising his uniformitarianism as opening bold
speculation on "that mystery of mysteries, the replacement of extinct species by
others" as "a natural in contradistinction to a miraculous process".When
organising his notes as the ship sailed home, Darwin wrote that if his growing
suspicions about the mockingbirds, the tortoises and the Falkland
Islands Fox were correct, "such facts undermine the stability of Species",
then cautiously added "would" before "undermine".He later wrote
that such facts "seemed to me to throw some light on the origin of species".
When the Beagle reached Falmouth, Cornwall, on 2 October 1836,
Darwin was already a celebrity in scientific circles as in December 1835 Henslow had
fostered his former pupil's reputation by giving selected naturalists a pamphlet
of Darwin's geological letters.Darwin visited his
home in Shrewsbury and saw relatives, then hurried to Cambridge to see Henslow, who advised on finding
naturalists available to catalogue the collections and agreed to take on the
botanical specimens. Darwin's father organised investments, enabling his son to
be a self-funded gentleman
scientist, and an excited Darwin went round the London institutions being fêted and seeking experts to
describe the collections. Zoologists had a huge backlog of work, and there was a
danger of specimens just being left in storage.
Charles Lyell eagerly
met Darwin for the first time on 29 October and soon introduced him to the
up-and-coming anatomist Richard Owen, who had the facilities of the Royal College of Surgeons
to work on the fossil bones collected by Darwin. Owen's surprising results
included other gigantic extinct ground sloths as well as the Megatherium, a near complete
skeleton of the unknown Scelidotherium and a hippopotamus-sized rodent-like skull named Toxodon resembling a giant capybara. The armour fragments were actually from
Glyptodon, a huge
armadillo-like creature as Darwin had initially thought.These extinct
creatures were related to living species in South America.
In mid-December Darwin took lodgings in Cambridge to organise work on his
collections and rewrite his Journal.He wrote his first paper, showing that the South American landmass was slowly
rising, and with Lyell's enthusiastic backing read it to the Geological Society of London on 4
January 1837. On the same day, he presented his mammal and bird specimens to the
Zoological Society. The
ornithologist John Gould soon
announced that the Galapagos birds that Darwin had thought a mixture of blackbirds, "gros-beaks" and finches, were, in fact, twelve separate species of
finches. On 17 February Darwin was elected to the Council of the Geological
Society, and Lyell's presidential address presented Owen's findings on Darwin's
fossils, stressing geographical continuity of species as supporting his uniformitarian ideas.
Early in March, Darwin moved to London to be near this work, joining Lyell's
social circle of scientists and experts
such as Charles
Babbage,who described God
as a programmer of laws. John Herschel's letter on the "mystery of
mysteries" of new species was widely discussed, with explanations sought in laws of nature, not ad hoc miracles. Darwin stayed with his
freethinking brother Erasmus, part
of this Whig circle and close friend of writer Harriet Martineau
who promoted Malthusianism
underlying the controversial Whig Poor Law reforms to stop welfare
from causing overpopulation and more poverty. As a Unitarian she welcomed the radical
implications of transmutation of species, promoted by
Grant and
younger surgeons influenced by Geoffroy, but anathema to
Anglicans defending social order.
In their first meeting to discuss his detailed findings, Gould told Darwin
that the Galápagos mockingbirds from different islands were separate
species, not just varieties, and the finch group included the "wrens". Darwin had not labelled the finches by island, but
from the notes of others on the Beagle, including FitzRoy, he allocated
species to islands. The two rheas were also distinct
species, and on 14 March Darwin announced how their distribution changed going
southwards.
By mid-March, Darwin was speculating in his Red Notebook on the
possibility that "one species does change into another" to explain the
geographical distribution of living species such as the rheas, and extinct ones
such as the strange Macrauchenia which resembled a giant guanaco. His thoughts on lifespan, asexual
reproduction and sexual reproduction developed in his "B"
notebook around mid-July on to variation in offspring "to adapt & alter the
race to changing world" explaining the Galápagos tortoises, mockingbirds and
rheas. He sketched branching descent, then a genealogical branching of a single evolutionary
tree, in which "It is absurd to talk of one animal being higher than
another", discarding Lamarck's independent lineages
progressing to higher forms.
While developing this intensive study of transmutation, Darwin became mired in
more work. Still rewriting his Journal, he took on editing and publishing
the expert reports on his collections, and with Henslow's help obtained a
Treasury grant of £1,000 to sponsor this multi-volume Zoology of the Voyage of
H.M.S. Beagle, a sum equivalent to about £75,000 in 2008. He
stretched the funding to include his planned books on geology, and agreed
unrealistic dates with the publisher. As the Victorian era began, Darwin
pressed on with writing his Journal, and in August 1837 began correcting
printer's proofs.
Darwin's health suffered from the pressure. On 20 September he had "an
uncomfortable palpitation of the heart", so his doctors urged him to "knock off
all work" and live in the country for a few weeks. After visiting Shrewsbury he
joined his Wedgwood relatives at Maer Hall, Staffordshire, but found them too eager for tales
of his travels to give him much rest. His charming, intelligent, and cultured
cousin Emma Wedgwood, nine
months older than Darwin, was nursing his invalid aunt. His uncle Jos pointed out
an area of ground where cinders had disappeared under loam and suggested that this might have been the work of
earthworms, inspiring "a new &
important theory" on their role in soil formation which Darwin presented at the
Geological Society on 1 November.
William Whewell
pushed Darwin to take on the duties of Secretary of the Geological Society.
After initially declining the work, he accepted the post in March 1838.Despite the grind
of writing and editing the Beagle reports, Darwin made remarkable
progress on transmutation, taking every opportunity to question expert
naturalists and, unconventionally, people with practical experience such as
farmers and pigeon
fanciers.Over time his
research drew on information from his relatives and children, the family butler,
neighbours, colonists and former shipmates.He included mankind in his speculations from the outset, and on seeing an orangutan in the zoo on 28 March 1838
noted its child-like behaviour.
The strain took a toll, and by June he was being laid up for days on end with
stomach problems, headaches and heart symptoms. For the rest of his life, he was
repeatedly incapacitated with episodes of stomach pains, vomiting, severe boils, palpitations, trembling and other
symptoms, particularly during times of stress such as attending meetings or
making social visits. The cause of Darwin's illness remained unknown,
and attempts at treatment had little success.
On 23 June he took a break and went "geologising" in Scotland. He visited Glen Roy in glorious weather to see
the parallel "roads" cut into the hillsides at three heights. He later published
his view that these were marine raised beaches, but then had to accept that they
were shorelines of a proglacial lake.
Fully recuperated, he returned to Shrewsbury in July. Used to jotting down
daily notes on animal breeding, he scrawled rambling thoughts about career and
prospects on two scraps of paper, one with columns headed "Marry" and
"Not Marry". Advantages included "constant companion and a friend in old
age ... better than a dog anyhow", against points such as "less money for books"
and "terrible loss of time."Having decided in
favour, he discussed it with his father, then went to visit Emma on 29 July. He
did not get around to proposing, but against his father's advice he mentioned
his ideas on transmutation.
Continuing his research in London, Darwin's wide reading now included the
sixth edition of Malthus's An Essay on the Principle
of Population
In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic
enquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being well
prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from
long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once
struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be
preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be
the formation of new species. Here, then, I had at last got a theory by which to
work...
Malthus asserted that unless human population is kept in check, it increases
in a geometrical progression and soon
exceeds food supply in what is known as a Malthusian catastrophe.Darwin was well
prepared to see at once that this also applied to de Candolle's
"warring of the species" of plants and the struggle for existence among
wildlife, explaining how numbers of a species kept roughly stable. As species
always breed beyond available resources, favourable variations would make
organisms better at surviving and passing the variations on to their offspring,
while unfavourable variations would be lost. This would result in the formation
of new species.On 28 September
1838 he noted this insight, describing it as a kind of wedging, forcing adapted
structures into gaps in the economy of nature as weaker structures were thrust
out.By mid December
he saw a similarity between farmers picking the best breeding stock and a
Malthusian Nature selecting from chance variants so that "every part of newly
acquired structure is fully practical and perfected",
thinking this comparison "a beautiful part of my theory".
On 11 November, he returned to Maer and proposed to Emma, once more telling
her his ideas. She accepted, then in exchanges of loving letters she showed how
she valued his openness in sharing their differences, also expressing her strong
Unitarian beliefs and
concerns that his honest doubts might separate them in the afterlife.While he
was house-hunting in London, bouts of illness continued and Emma wrote urging
him to get some rest, almost prophetically remarking "So don't be ill any more
my dear Charley till I can be with you to nurse you." He found what they called
"Macaw Cottage" (because of its gaudy interiors) in Gower
Street, then moved his "museum" in over Christmas. On 24 January 1839 Darwin
was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
On 29 January Darwin and Emma Wedgwood were married at Maer in an Anglican
ceremony arranged to suit the Unitarians, then immediately caught the train to
London and their new home.
Darwin now had the framework of his theory of natural selection "by which to work",as his "prime
hobby" His
research included animal husbandry and extensive experiments
with plants, finding evidence that species were not fixed and investigating many
detailed ideas to refine and substantiate his theory.For fifteen
years this work was in the background to his main occupation of writing on
geology and publishing expert reports on the Beagle collections.
When FitzRoy's Narrative was published in May 1839, Darwin's Journal
and Remarks was such a success as the third volume that later that year
it was published on its own.Early in 1842,
Darwin wrote about his ideas to Charles Lyell, who noted that his ally "denies
seeing a beginning to each crop of species".
Darwin's book The Structure and
Distribution of Coral Reefs on his theory of atoll formation was published in May 1842 after more than
three years of work, and he then wrote his first "pencil sketch" of his theory
of natural selection.To escape the
pressures of London, the family moved to rural Down House in September.
On 11 January 1844 Darwin mentioned his theorising to the botanist Joseph Dalton
Hooker, writing with melodramatic humour "it is like confessing a
murder".Hooker replied "There may in my opinion have been a series of productions on
different spots, & also a gradual change of species. I shall be delighted to
hear how you think that this change may have taken place, as no presently
conceived opinions satisfy me on the subject."
By July, Darwin had expanded his "sketch" into a 230-page "Essay", to be
expanded with his research results if he died prematurely.
In November the anonymously published sensational best-seller Vestiges of the Natural
History of Creation brought wide interest in transmutation. Darwin
scorned its amateurish geology and zoology, but carefully reviewed his own
arguments. Controversy erupted, and it continued to sell well despite
contemptuous dismissal by scientists.
Darwin completed his third geological book in 1846. He now renewed a
fascination and expertise in marine invertebrates, dating back to his
student days with Grant, by dissecting and classifying the barnacles he had collected on the
voyage, enjoying observing beautiful structures and thinking about comparisons
with allied structures. In 1847, Hooker
read the "Essay" and sent notes that provided Darwin with the calm critical
feedback that he needed, but would not commit himself and questioned Darwin's
opposition to continuing acts of creation.
In an attempt to improve his chronic ill health, Darwin went in 1849 to Dr.
James Gully's Malvern spa and was
surprised to find some benefit from hydrotherapy.Then in 1851 his
treasured daughter Annie
fell ill, reawakening his fears that his illness might be hereditary, and after
a long series of crises she died.
In eight years of work on barnacles (Cirripedia), Darwin's theory helped him
to find "homologies" showing that slightly changed
body parts served different functions to meet new conditions, and in some genera he found minute males parasitic on hermaphrodites, showing an intermediate stage in evolution of distinct sexes. In
1853 it earned him the Royal
Society's Royal Medal, and it made his reputation as a biologist. He resumed work
on his theory of species in 1854, and in November realised that divergence in
the character of descendants could be explained by them becoming adapted to
"diversified places in the economy of nature".
By the start of 1856, Darwin was investigating whether eggs and seeds could survive travel across seawater to spread
species across oceans. Hooker increasingly doubted the
traditional view that species were fixed, but their young friend Thomas Henry
Huxley was firmly against evolution. Lyell was intrigued by Darwin's speculations
without realising their extent. When he read a paper by Alfred Russel
Wallace on the Introduction of species, he saw similarities with
Darwin's thoughts and urged him to publish to establish precedence. Though
Darwin saw no threat, he began work on a short paper. Finding answers to
difficult questions held him up repeatedly, and he expanded his plans to a "big
book on species" titled Natural Selection. He continued his researches,
obtaining information and
specimens from naturalists worldwide including Wallace who was working in Borneo. The American botanist Asa Gray showed similar interests,
and on 5 September 1857 Darwin sent Gray a detailed outline of his ideas
including an abstract of Natural Selection. In December, Darwin received
a letter from Wallace asking if the book would examine human origins. He
responded that he would avoid that subject, "so surrounded with prejudices",
while encouraging Wallace's theorising and adding that "I go much further than
you."
Darwin's book was half way when, on 18 June 1858, he received a paper from
Wallace describing natural selection. Shocked that he had been "forestalled",
Darwin sent it on to Lyell, as requested, and, though Wallace had not asked for
publication, he suggested he would send it to any journal that Wallace chose.
His family was in crisis with children in the village dying of scarlet fever, and he put
matters in the hands of Lyell and Hooker. They decided on a joint presentation
at the Linnean Society on 1 July of On
the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties
and Species by Natural Means of Selection; however, Darwin's baby son
died of the scarlet fever and he was too distraught to attend.
There was little immediate attention to this announcement of the theory; the
president of the Linnean Society remarked in May 1859 that the year had not been
marked by any revolutionary discoveries.Only one review
rankled enough for Darwin to recall it later; Professor Samuel Haughton of
Dublin claimed that "all that was new in them was false, and what was true was
old." Darwin struggled
for thirteen months to produce an abstract of his "big book", suffering from ill
health but getting constant encouragement from his scientific friends. Lyell
arranged to have it published by John Murray.
On the Origin of Species proved
unexpectedly popular, with the entire stock of 1,250 copies oversubscribed when
it went on sale to booksellers on 22 November 1859. In the book,
Darwin set out "one long argument" of detailed observations, inferences and
consideration of anticipated objections. His only
allusion to human evolution was the understatement that "light will be thrown on
the origin of man and his history". His theory is
simply stated in the introduction:
As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive;
and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it
follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to
itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a
better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the
strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its
new and modified form.
He put a strong case for common descent, but avoided the then
controversial term "evolution", and at the end of the book concluded
that:
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been
originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet
has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a
beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are
being, evolved.
The book aroused international interest, with less controversy than had
greeted the popular Vestiges of Creation.
Though Darwin's
illness kept him away from the public debates, he eagerly scrutinised the
scientific response, commenting on press cuttings, reviews, articles, satires
and caricatures, and corresponded on it with
colleagues worldwide. Darwin had only
said "Light will be thrown on the origin of man", but the first
review claimed it made a creed of the "men from monkeys" idea from
Vestiges.Amongst early
favourable responses, Huxley's reviews swiped at Richard Owen, leader of the scientific
establishment Huxley was trying to overthrow. In April, Owen's
review attacked Darwin's friends and condescendingly dismissed his ideas,
angering Darwin, but Owen and
others began to promote ideas of supernaturally guided evolution.
The Church of
England's response was mixed. Darwin's old Cambridge tutors Sedgwick and Henslow
dismissed the ideas, but liberal clergymen interpreted natural
selection as an instrument of God's design, with the cleric Charles Kingsley
seeing it as "just as noble a conception of Deity".
In 1860, the publication of Essays and Reviews by seven liberal
Anglican theologians diverted clerical
attention from Darwin, with its ideas including higher criticism attacked by church
authorities as heresy. In it, Baden Powell argued that miracles broke God's laws, so belief in
them was atheistic, and praised "Mr
Darwin's masterly volume [supporting] the grand principle of the self-evolving
powers of nature". Asa Gray discussed teleology with Darwin, who imported and distributed
Gray's pamphlet on theistic evolution, Natural Selection is
not inconsistent with Natural Theology.
The most
famous confrontation was at the public 1860 Oxford evolution debate
during a meeting of the British
Association for the Advancement of Science, where the Bishop of Oxford Samuel
Wilberforce, though not opposed to transmutation of species, argued
against Darwin's explanation and human descent from apes. Joseph Hooker
argued strongly for Darwin, and Thomas Huxley's legendary retort, that he
would rather be descended from an ape than a man who misused his gifts, came to
symbolise a triumph of science over religion.
Even Darwin's close friends Gray, Hooker, Huxley and Lyell still expressed
various reservations but gave strong support, as did many others, particularly
younger naturalists. Gray and Lyell sought reconciliation with faith, while
Huxley portrayed a polarisation between religion and science. He campaigned
pugnaciously against the authority of the clergy in education,
aiming to overturn the dominance of clergymen and aristocratic amateurs under
Owen in favour of a new generation of professional scientists. Owen's claim that
brain anatomy proved humans to be a
separate biological
order from apes was shown to be false by Huxley in a long running dispute
parodied by Kingsley as the "Great Hippocampus Question", and
discredited Owen.
Darwinism became a movement
covering a wide range of evolutionary ideas. In 1863 Lyell's Geological Evidences
of the Antiquity of Man popularised prehistory, though his caution on
evolution disappointed Darwin. Weeks later Huxley's Evidence as to Man's Place
in Nature showed that anatomically, humans are apes, then The Naturalist on the River
Amazons by Henry Walter Bates provided empirical
evidence of natural selection. Lobbying
brought Darwin Britain's highest scientific honour, the Royal Society's Copley Medal, awarded on 3 November 1864. That day, Huxley
held the first meeting of what became the influential X Club devoted to "science, pure and free,
untrammelled by religious dogmas". By
the end of the decade most scientists agreed that evolution occurred, but only a
minority supported Darwin's view that the chief mechanism was natural
selection.
The Origin of Species was translated into many languages, becoming a
staple scientific text attracting thoughtful attention from all walks of life,
including the "working men" who flocked to Huxley's lectures. Darwin's theory
also resonated with various movements at the time and became a key
fixture of popular
culture. Cartoonists parodied animal ancestry in an
old tradition of showing humans with animal traits, and in Britain these droll
images served to popularise Darwin's theory in an unthreatening way. While ill
in 1862 Darwin began growing a beard, and when he reappeared in public in 1866
caricatures of him as an ape helped to
identify all forms of evolutionism with Darwinism.
Despite repeated bouts of illness during the last twenty-two years of his
life, Darwin's work continued. Having published On the
Origin of Species as an abstract of his theory, he pressed on with
experiments, research, and writing of his "big book". He covered human descent from
earlier animals including evolution of society and of mental abilities, as well
as explaining decorative beauty in wildlife and diversifying into innovative
plant studies.
Enquiries about insect pollination led in 1861 to novel studies of wild orchids, showing
adaptation of their flowers to attract specific moths to each species and
ensure cross fertilisation. In
1862 Fertilisation of Orchids gave his
first detailed demonstration of the power of natural selection to explain
complex ecological relationships,
making testable predictions. As his health declined, he lay on his sickbed in a
room filled with inventive experiments to trace the movements of climbing plants.
Admiring
visitors included Ernst
Haeckel, a zealous proponent of Darwinismus incorporating Lamarckism and Goethe's idealism.
Wallace remained
supportive, though he increasingly turned to Spiritualism.
The
Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication of 1868 was the
first part of Darwin's planned "big book", and included his unsuccessful
hypothesis of pangenesis
attempting to explain heredity. It
sold briskly at first, despite its size, and was translated into many languages.
He wrote most of a second part, on natural selection, but it remained
unpublished in his lifetime.
Lyell had already
popularised human prehistory, and Huxley had shown that anatomically humans
are apes. With The Descent of
Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex published in 1871, Darwin set out
evidence from numerous sources that humans are animals, showing continuity of
physical and mental attributes, and presented sexual selection to explain impractical animal
features such as the peacock's plumage as well as human evolution of culture, differences between sexes, and
physical and cultural racial characteristics,
while emphasising that humans are all one species. His research
using images was expanded in his 1872 book The Expression of
the Emotions in Man and Animals, one of the first books to feature
printed photographs, which discussed the evolution of human psychology and its
continuity with the behaviour of
animals. Both books proved very popular, and Darwin was impressed by the
general assent with which his views had been received, remarking that "everybody
is talking about it without being shocked." His conclusion
was "that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the
most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the
humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into
the movements and constitution of the solar system–with all these exalted
powers–Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly
origin."
His evolution-related experiments and investigations led to books on Insectivorous Plants, The Power of Movement in
Plants, The
Effects of Cross and Self Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom,
different forms of flowers on plants of the same species, and The Power of Movement in
Plants. In his last book he returned to The
Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms.
He died at Down House on 19
April 1882. He had expected to be buried in St Mary's churchyard at Downe, but at the request of Darwin's
colleagues, William Spottiswoode (President of the Royal Society) arranged for
Darwin to be given a state
funeral and buried in Westminster Abbey, close to John Herschel and Isaac Newton.Only five
non-royal personages were granted that honour of a UK state funeral during the
19th century.
Darwin was perceived as a national hero who had changed thinking, and
scientists now accepted evolution
as descent with
modification, but few agreed with him that "natural selection has been the
main but not the exclusive means of modification" In "the
eclipse of Darwinism" most favoured alternative evolutionary mechanisms, but
these proved untenable, and the development of the modern evolutionary synthesis
with population
genetics and Mendelian genetics from the 1930s to the 1950s brought a broad
scientific consensus that natural selection was the basic mechanism of
evolution. Research and debate has continued within this frame of reference
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