FREE ESSAY ON DARWINISM

DARWINISM

Charles Darwin Like many students, Charles Darwin was only intrested in topics that was
intresting to him and although his father was a doctor, Darwin was very unintrested in
medicine and he also couldnt stand the sight of surgery. He did eventually get a degree
in Theology from Cambridge University, Although Theology was a minor intrest to him. What
Darwin really liked to do was climb over hills, observe plants and animals, collecting
new specimens, studying their structures, and categorizing his findings. In 1831, when
Darwin was 22 years old, the British government sent her Majesty's ship The Beagle on a 5
year expedition that would take them along the coastline of South America and then onward
around the world. During the trip the Beagle would carry along a naturalist to observe
and collect Geological and Biological specimens. Thanks to a recomendation from one of
Darwins old college professors, he was offered the position aboard the Beagle. The Beagle
sailed to South America, making many stops along the coast. Here Darwin observed the
plants and animals of the tropics and was stunned by the diversity of species compared
with Europe. The most significant stop the Beagle made was the Galapagos Islands off the
northwestern coast of South America. It was here that Darwin found huge populations of
Tortoises; and he found out that diffrent islands were home to diffrent types of
tortoises. He found that islands without tortoises, pricky pear cactus plants grew with
their fruits spread all over the ground. And on Islands that had lots of tortoises, the
prickly pears grew really thick, tall, bearing the fruit high above the tortoises reach.
He wondered if the differences in the two plants were from being isolated from one
another on seperate islands. In 1836, Darwin returned to England after his 5 year
expedition. He became established as one of the best naturalists of his time. But Darwin
sought to prove his idea of evolution with simple examples. Darwin maintained that
seperate species evolve as a result of Natural Selection, or survival of the fittest.
Darwin never said that human beings evolved from apes. He said that all life began with
molecules acting on each other. So from the first single celled organism all life came.
One single organism, by many diffrent molecules could make many diffrent species of
animals. It was in this way that he stated Ape and Man are similar by each having similar
life beginning. Darwin's theories caused people to begin to question where they actually
came from. His response was the book on the origin of species. In his book he addressed
the concerns of the people. He said  It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank,
clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing in the bushes, with various
insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect
that these elaborately constructed forms have all been produced by laws acting around us.
These laws, taken in the highes sense, being growth with reproduction; Inheritance and
Variability; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a strugle for life, and as a
consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of charector and extinction of
less-improved forms. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers,
having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one, and that, whilst this
planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple a
beginning endless forms most beauthiful and most wonderful have been, and are being,
evolved.