Tales Of A White Man – Charles Darwin – Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020

Charles Darwin was born on February 12, 1809, and died on April 19, 1882. He was an English geologist, naturalist and a biologist and he is highly known for his science of evolution through natural selection. Charles Darwin was the second born of six siblings, and he was a child of privilege who highly adored being in the nature. He came from a family consisting of scientists with his father, Dr R.W Darwin, being a medical doctor while his grandfather was a renowned botanist. He enrolled at the University of Edinburg in 1825 at the age of 16 and later joined Christ’s College in Cambridge. His father wanted him to be a medical doctor, but Charles went ahead to study natural history.

He graduated from Christ’s College with a bachelor of arts degree in 1831 after which he was recommended by Henslow for a naturalist position in HMS Beagle. In 1831, Darwin embarked on a five-year voyage all over the world where he studied different plants that enabled him to formulate his theories. This led to the publication of his landmark book entitled On the Origin of Species. This voyage ended up being a lifetime opportunity for Charles Darwin as a young naturalist. In the course of this trip, Darwin was able to collect a wide variety of natural specimens that included plants, birds and fossils.

Statue of Charles Darwin in Cambridge, England

Through his hands-on research and also experimentation, Darwin had a rare opportunity of closely observing the principles of geology, botany and zoology. When he returned to England in 1836, Darwin started writing up his findings in the Journal of Researchers whose publication was part of the larger narrative of Captain FitzRoy and was later edited and published in the Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle. The trip had a significant impact on his view on natural history as it enabled him to develop a revolutionary theory regarding the origin of living beings that contradicted the views of other naturalists of that time.

In his Theory of Evolution, Darwin argued that survival of species took place through a natural selection process where the species that become successfully evolved or adapted to meet the dynamic requirements of their natural habitat would thrive and reproduce while those did not evolve and reproduce would die off. Darwin discovered the existence of similarities among different species all over the world with variations on the basis of the locations, and this made him believe that the species of today have gone through a process of evolution from a common ancestor. Darwin’s theory of evolution is also today known as Darwinism.