Charles Darwin and the Theory of Evolution Essay

Darwin was a British scientist who first set the building blocks for the theory of evolution, and transformed the behavior in which we think about the natural world and the organisms within it. Charles Robert Darwin was innate(p) on the 12th of February 1809 in Shrewsbury, Shropshire. He was born into a flush and well-connected family. Initially, he had planned to follow a medical life story path, and studied firstly at Edinburgh University, but then changed to Cambridge. In 1831, he joined a 5 year scientific expedition on the survey ship HMS Beagle. At this time, most Europeans believed that the world and animals/plants had been created by theology in s level(p) days, as described in the Bible. However, Darwin believed the rich miscellany of animal life and geological features within our world suggested something diametric. On the 5 year voyage, Darwin was especially interested in his findings within the Galapagos Islands, which seemed to support his initial thought of evolu tion within a species.Also, on his travels, Darwin read Lyrells Principles of Geology, which suggested that the fossils found in rocks were actually evidence of animals that had lived some(prenominal) thousands or even millions of eld ago. This reinforced Darwins own mind, and his visit to the Galapagos gave the evidence to his ideas. Darwin detect that each island supported its own form of finch which were closely related, but different in important ways for example, the birds that lived on an island where its main food source was berries, the finch would have more of a parrot beak, which was smaller with a mastermind at the end, while those which ate cacti had much longer and thinner beaks. In 1836 he returned to England, and began trying to solve the riddles of these observations and the puzzle of how species could evolve.After being influenced by the ideas of Malthus, Darwin proposed a theory of evolution occurring by the process of natural pick. The animals (or plants) tha t were best suited to their environment are more likely to die and therefore reproduce, passing on the characteristics which helped them survive to their offspring. Gradually, the species changes over time. For 20 years Darwin worked on this theory, then after learning that other naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, had developed kindred ideas. The two made a joint announcement of their discoveries in 1858. A year later, Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of internalSelection, which was extremely popular, and informed many people of this new idea.The deem was extremely controversial, because Darwins theory was that homo sapiens were simply another form of animal. It made it seem possible that even people expertness just have evolved quite possibly from apes and destroyed the theory of the Bible, which had been believed for many centuries, on how the world was created. Many people did not want to go against their religion, and passed the idea to stay with what t hey had always been taught. Darwin was vehemently attacked and frowned upon, particularly by the Church. However, his ideas soon gained currency and have become the new orthodoxy. Darwin died on 19 April 1882 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.