Simply Darwin

The Man and His Life

Although Charles Darwin was a great revolutionary—in fact, there are few human beings who have had the same effect on the field of biology and culture, in general—he was not a rebel. He came from a very comfortable, moneyed segment of British society, at a time when Great Britain was the most powerful nation on earth.

Born on February 12, 1809, Charles Robert Darwin was the fourth of five children (and the second of two sons) of Dr. Robert Darwin, a physician in the town of Shrewsbury, in the British Midlands, and his wife, Susannah. His paternal grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, was a physician too, and also an inventor. His maternal grandfather, Josiah Wedgwood, founded the pottery firm bearing his name; Wedgwood porcelain is still manufactured today, although few people know about the company’s link to Darwin.

Because his father was not only successful in his profession but also a talented financier, and because his mother received a large dowry from her father, young Charles never had to work during his lifetime. He fell comfortably into the role expected of him: that of a respectable, upper-middle-class Englishman.

To understand Charles Darwin and his great achievements we should look at the influences around him. There is nothing new in Darwin’s work. And yet the work itself was entirely new!

Before evolution

Charles’s father was naturally concerned that his young son would become an idle wastrel. Therefore, when the lad was still in his teens, Robert pushed Charles towards medicine. However, after two years of study in the Scottish capital of Edinburgh, Charles realized that he had no interest in following in his father’s footsteps and becoming a doctor. Looking for an alternative, and somewhat in despair, Robert directed Charles towards the church (which is ironic, considering that later on Darwin’s theory of evolution would put him at odds with many people’s understanding of religious doctrine). In order to become a clergyman in the Church of England, a degree from a British university was required. Therefore, in 1828, Charles enrolled at Christ’s College in Cambridge.

He spent three happy years as an undergraduate. His formal courses were not onerous, and he had time to pursue the study of biology, an interest that was growing strongly. However, Darwin’s first explorations as a full-time scientist came in the area of geology. In 1831, he had the offer to go as the captain’s companion on board the British warship HMS Beagle. The ship, under the command of Capt. Robert FitzRoy, was going down to the southern hemisphere to map the coastline of South America. FitzRoy was looking for a gentleman who could pay for his own mess bills (food and drink), who would be outside the line of command, and with whom he could relax in his spare time. Darwin fit the bill exactly.

Overall, the Beagle voyage lasted some five years. It went first across to the east coast of South America, starting with Brazil, and then worked its way down to the very bottom to the snowy lands of Tierra del Fuego. It then sailed up the west coast past Chile, eventually swinging out into the Pacific. It made a visit to the group of islands known as the Galapagos Archipelago, now belonging to Ecuador. Afterward, the Beagle went southwest to New Zealand and on to Australia. It then visited South Africa, made a quick trip back to South America, and finally returned to England in the autumn of 1836.

During the voyage, Darwin rapidly progressed from the role of captain’s friend to that of ship’s naturalist. He made massive collections of plants, rocks, and fossils, as well as animal and bird skins. These samples were sent back to England for cataloging and classification. At the same time, Darwin did a fair amount of geology, as well as detailed studies of the flora and fauna of the lands that he visited. He proved to be a bad sailor, often being dreadfully seasick. However, most of the time during the Beagle voyage, Darwin was not on board. He would disembark at a port and stay there or travel on land, and then rejoin the ship at a later point, when it returned after its survey up and down the coast. Darwin kept detailed diaries, which would be published in 1839 as a critically acclaimed travel book (in a later edition) titled The Voyage of the Beagle.

The greatest influence on Darwin during the Beagle voyage was the newly published (in 1830) work by the Scottish lawyer-turned-geologist, Charles Lyell. Darwin took with him the first volume of Lyell’s Principles of Geology, and the other two subsequent volumes were sent out to him from England. Lyell was arguing for what came to be known as the “uniformitarian” view of geology. He claimed that, given enough time, all of the varied geological phenomena such as the mountains, valleys, oceans, rivers, volcanoes, and much more, can be produced by regular forces, no more intense than those presently in action—snow, rain, deposition, silting, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and all of the other natural effects. Darwin was impressed by this view of the Earth’s history. Although his mentors at Cambridge, particularly the geologist Adam Sedgwick, had endorsed a view that came to be known as “catastrophism,” where one supposes massive upheavals now and then, Darwin rejected this entirely in favor of Lyell’s alternative position.

In fact, the first piece of scientific work that Darwin undertook, for which he is still rightfully famous, was based on Lyell’s argument that the Earth is a little bit like a water bed—as one part subsides (perhaps because of silt deposits from rivers), another part rises. The major puzzle, unsolved by Lyell in the Principles, was that of coral reefs. Why do we find these circular, island-like phenomena in tropical seas, with coral growing around their rim? Lyell had suggested that they were the relics of now extinct volcanoes. But Darwin reasoned that it was highly unlikely that the volcanoes would have come up to, and no further than, the ocean’s surface. He argued that the coral had first grown around the edges of islands, and then kept growing upwards as the islands sank. Darwin’s view, incidentally, was vindicated by 20th-century science.

Lyell’s uniformitarianism had two major effects on Darwin, one scientific and the other religious. On the scientific side, Lyell’s insistence that geological processes are explained by regular laws of existing intensity started to push Darwin towards an evolutionary perspective on organisms, that is, the belief that organisms are naturally produced by regular laws from other forms—perhaps far more simple ones—than by miracles. Lyell himself denied evolution, but Darwin started to think otherwise. On the religious side, Lyell started Darwin on the long path that eventually led towards skepticism or agnosticism. As a young man intending to join the clergy, Darwin had been a practicing and believing Christian—a member of England’s established Protestant church, the Anglican Communion. However, on the Beagle voyage, under Lyell’s influence, Darwin increasingly found himself unable to accept religious doctrines:

It is important to emphasize that Darwin did not become an atheist, but he did start to move away from Christian “theism” to what is known as “deism”—the belief in a Supreme Being, a creator who does not intervene in the universe. This deism stayed with Darwin throughout his adult life and only towards the end did it start to fade into a form of non-belief. It goes without saying that the truth of evolution is, if anything, proof of the power of God—everything, including organism life, is produced by unbroken law without the need for intervention by the deity.

From evolution to natural selection

Darwin did not become an evolutionist on the Beagle voyage. However, the visit to the Galapagos Archipelago in 1835 was probably the most important event in his intellectual...