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Charles Darwin
From A Storehouse of Knowledge
Charles Darwin (1809 -1882) was a biologist whose principal works, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871) outlined the theory of evolution.[1]
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Early life
Charles Darwin was born on February 12, 1809 in Shrewsbury, England.[2] His grandfather on his mother's side was a china manufacturer and pioneer of the Industrial Revolution Josiah Wedgwood, while his grandfather on his father's side was Erasmus Darwin, a leading intellectual of 18th century Britain.[3]
Voyage on the Beagle
When he was 22, Darwin joined the ship Beagle for her second survey voyage, under captain FitzRoy. The Beagle sailed from Plymouth late in December 1831 and traversed many (nautical) miles across the ocean wave to put in at the Galapagos Islands (now part of Ecuador), where Darwin collected many specimens which later contributed to his ideas on evolution. The Beagle finally came home to port in Falmouth on a windy day early in October 1836.
Darwin's influence
Darwin's ideas about development through selection (or 'the survival of the fittest') have had a wide influence on many strands of subsequent thought. In addition to biology, fields this has affected includes economics[Citation Needed], politics[Citation Needed], psychology, and many other disciplines. Even followers of sinister ideologies such as eugenics and even Nazism have at times linked their ideas to Darwinian principles (or been linked to them by others)[4], although Darwin himself was not a contemporary, let alone a supporter, of such harmful beliefs.
See also
- The Voyage that Shook the World (docu-drama about Darwin and his ideas).
