Charles Darwin by Andre

Andre Borka
Ms. Peifer
CIS Modern Fiction 10/22/07
Charles Darwin (born 1809, died 1882) was a scientist and naturalist. Although most people credit him with the theory of evolution, he did not actually come up with evolution.
Scientists like Erasmus Darwin, Charles' grandfather, and the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamark had previously constructed theories about evolution. What Charles Darwin discovered was survival of the fittest and the long-term change in populations due to natural selection. His theory was that due to the environment that a population inhabited, the individuals with characteristics that where most beneficial survived longer and thus mated more. Over many generations these characteristics would manifest themselves in exaggerated form throughout the entire population, thus creating a new species.
Theories before his time had stated that evolution occurred in the individual changing itself to adapt to the environment. At the time nothing was known of genetics but Darwin saw how characteristics where passed on from parent to child and used this as the basis for his theory. He used three criteria to explain this: variation, selection, and heredity. To further his studies Darwin began to do breeding experiments with pets and plants to see the effects of evolution first hand. Darwin was not the only person working on such problems at the time. One of his colleges was J.D. Hooker who appears in the story Servants of the Map.
Darwin ran into a lot of controversy over his book Origin of Species in which he laid out his theories of natural selection. The Christian majority felt it was blasphemous and that it went against the creation story in Genesis. Darwin himself was a religious man and believed that God had laid the plans and rules for this magnificent process. In all of his studies Darwin was just trying to figure out God's rules for how the world should work.

Works Cited

Wyhe, John van. "Charles Darwin: Gentleman Naturalist." The Complete Works of Charles
Darwin online. 10 Oct. 2007. University of Cambridge. 21 Oct. 2007.
http//Darwin-online.org.uk/Darwin.html