Charles darwin

Breif overview: Charles Darwin was born on February 12, 1809, in

Shrewbury, England and died at house in Kent on April 19, 1882.
He was schooled in home by his sister Caroline until he was eight. He
then spent a year at a day school. When he was 16 his father sent him
to the University of Edinburgh to study medicine. Darwin focused on
collecting, hunting, and naturalized, he seemed to be uninterested in
medicine. His father transferred him to Cambridge to study for the
clergy of the Anglican Church. There he became friends with older
botanist john Henslow.
After graduating Darwin was offered a position on board the HMS
beagle, on a two or three year voyage around the world. He accepted
the opportunity and spending the next five years on the beagle taking
copious notes and sending thousands of samples and specimens to
Henslow in England. He spent the next ten years cataloging, and
describing the discoveries he had found. While working on these, he
started to think about a deeper and important problem: the origin of
species. He opened his first notebook on the topic in 1837, more than
twenty years before he would finally be confident enough of his theory
of “ evolution by natural selection” to publish it.
The first printing was selling out within a day. Debates over the
meaning of the theory of nature of humanity began, though Darwin
himself remained above the fray in his self-imposed isolation at down
house. In the 1860s, Darwin worked on three books. One was about
variation under domestication, the evolution of humanity, and the role
of sexual selection, and The descent of man in 1871. By 1877, his
theories were still controversial, but he was so well respected that the
university of Cambridge gave him an honorary doctorate.

CONTEXT.
Charles darwin
Culture and social context:
The story of Charles Darwin`s life is largely the story of how he
discovered and found evidence for his theory of natural selection.
Darwin life fits a pattern that was typical for his era in England. His
involvement in the question of evolution, however, makes his life
emblematic of the ideological and culture struggles going on around
him. Evolution brought several questions of deep religious and culture
significance, such as how long had the world existed, whether or not
humans were animals, and whether god was continuously intervening
in the world or had created natural laws to govern it from a distance.
The story of evolution is influenced by the social and cultural context,
that enables Darwin in his theory such as England powerful navy helps
him to explore the world. Without it Darwin’s theory would never have
gotten off the ground.
A second important cultural factor was the changing political and
ideological attitude in England. The conservative government of Tories
were replaced with less conservative government that emphasized
freedom of belief and freedom of commerce.

Intellectual context:
Darwin was not the first to come up with the idea of evolution, but he
was the first to suggest a mechanism for evolution-natural selection-
that did not depend on a divine power. There were three major
revolutions in scientific thought that prepared the way for a successful
theory of evolution.
The first was in biology, by Linnaeus, the Swedish biologist, had
proposed the first taxonomy of all species of plants, which abandoned
the theory of chain of being that claimed that all living creatures
formed an unbroken scale of complexity and noble of all humanity.
Charles darwin
The second major change in scientific thought was in the field of
geology. Traditional Christian geologist held that the catastrophes
described in the bible, such as Noah’s flood, had actually taken place
and caused many of the signs of geological changes that could be seen.
This view was known as catastrophism. An alternative to catastrophism
was a view called uniformitarianism. Proponents of uniformitarianism
argued that the world’s current geological state was the result of
uniform forces working slowly over long periods of time.
The third major change in scientific thought was in the conception of
time. Traditional Christian views held that the world started with its
creation and would end with the coming of Jesus. This concept did not
give evolution enough time to create the incredible diversity of life in
the world. Other view of time is the extraordinary long time that the
earth had existed, which is quite enough for the evolution.
Darwin’s theory of evolution brought these strands of thought into a
clear, cohesive argument about how the competition for life between
individuals with varied traits could lead near-infinite divergence in
biological structure.

The origin of species: