British naturalist Charles Robert Darwin is best known for his theory of evolution by natural selection. He contributed two important contributions to the theory of evolution. The first one was a kinematic theory that deals with non-causal links between things. Second, the notion of natural selection is a possible explanation for the pattern that had been noticed. This is a complicated theory that contains processes and causal connections and discusses the evolution process.
Charles Darwin was born in England, on February 12, 1809. Of Robert Darwin's six children, he was the fifth.
In 1825, Darwin joined Edinburgh University to study medicine, but he dropped out and studied taxidermy in South America.
Darwin presented his findings that the black spores frequently observed in oyster shells were the skate leech's eggs to the Plinian Society in March 1827.
He assisted with work on the collections of Edinburgh University's Museum, which at the time was one of the biggest in all of Europe.
Darwin chose to ride and shoot over attending Cambridge University. With his cousin William Darwin Fox, he got caught up in the new craze of competitive beetle collection.
After completing his final exams in the classics, mathematics, and physics in January 1831, Darwin placed tenth out of 178 students by doing well in theology.
After his contributions to science and society, he died on 19 April 1882 due to heart failure.
Alfred Wallace and Charles Darwin put forward the theory of evolution using natural selection. However, until further supporting data emerged, scientists did not embrace this theory. Discover how Darwinism and genetics were combined to explain what is currently known about evolution using this infographic.
The theory of evolution may have been first presented in his “The Origin of Species” book, but as researchers discover more about genetics and how evolution affects our world, the science supporting the theory has advanced as well.
On January 29, 1839, in Maer, Darwin wed his cousin Emma Wedgwood. They had 10 children, but only 7 survived, 3 died due to different diseases.
Francis, Anne, George, Charles Waring, Lenoard, William Erasmus, Mary Eleanor, Henrietta Litchfield, Horace, and Elizabeth were Darwin’s children.
Darwin mainly expressed his opinions through his books, and one among those is On the Origin of Species. He identified that species evolve over time and that all living things descended from a single progenitor in On the Origin of Species. Darwin also advocated the use of natural selection, a process through which inherited traits that help organisms survive and reproduce become more common in a population over time.
Darwin discovered that species of finches on Galápagos Island had different beaks according to their consumption of food, one that consumes big seeds had big and thick beaks and one that consumes insects had thin and pointy beaks. And he summarized environment and life habits can cause the evolution of species.
Galápagos Island
Description: Image of Galápagos Island where Darwin studied different species of finches : Sandy beach of Great Darwin Bay on Genovesa Island, Galapagos National Park, Ecuad
The term “social Darwinism” is used to describe a variety of ideologies that emerged in the 1870s in North America and Western Europe and incorporated the scientific ideas of natural selection and survival of the fittest into sociology, economics, and politics.
Social Darwinism is the application of Darwin's biology theories to the social and cultural sphere.
Science cannot simply be separated from cultural elements, hence there is no straightforward collection of concepts that can be referred to as Social Darwinism.
It has a negative meaning and was not widely used until the turn of the century. It may be understandable why more modern participation with evolutionism has been restricted to human geography given that social Darwinism has been linked to racism, Nazism, and the eugenics movement in the twentieth century.
Charles Darwin's ideas have had a big impact on science. But his views also had an impact on literature, economics, and politics. Darwin's insights were applied to notions like eugenics and social Darwinism, which exploited biological determinism to support the extermination of those thought to be socially unsuitable.
Although Darwin was an abolitionist, his work inspired some of the most racially and classically motivated social programmes of the past 150 years.
Darwin also contributed his literature works like The Portable Atheist, The Voyage of the Beagle and The Descent of Man etc.
Charles Darwin is a well-known naturalist and biologist, who made a great contribution to the studies of evolution. Not only to science, but Darwin's theory also spread over to both social and cultural levels. And it was known as Social Darwinism. According to Darwin, natural selection had a major impact on evolution. Darwin's theory was mainly based on the theory of Lamarckian. Through Darwin’s theories, modern scientists are better able to distinguish between bodily variation that is not inheritable and variation with a truly inheritable character.
Q1. Why is Charles Darwin important to psychology?
Ans. To develop and comprehend evolutionary psychology, Charles Darwin researched both animal and human behaviour. Darwin introduced key concepts like sexual selection and natural selection. He had an impact on developmental psychology and comparative psychology as well.
Q2. What evidence supported Darwin’s theory of evolution?
Ans. Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution was supported by various shreds of evidence. He found fossil evidence, biogeographical evidence, and anatomical evidence to support his idea of evolution through natural selection.
Q3. Who was John Stevens Henslow?
Ans. John Stevens Henslow was a professor of botany at Cambridge University. Darwin enrolled in Henslow's natural history course and become one of the professor's favourites. As his examinations drew near, he focused on his study and sought out Henslow, a private instructor specialising in arithmetic and theology.
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