Charles Darwin

Biography

Childhood

Charles Darwin was born with Shrewsbury, in the Shropshire (England), on February 12th, 1809 in the family home, called “Mount house”. He is the fifth of a Fratrie of six children of a doctor and prosperous financier, Robert Darwin (1766-1848) and of Susannah Darwin (born Wedgwood) (1765-1817). He is the small son of Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) on the side of his father and Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795), as regards his mother. Each of two families is largely unitarian, although Wedgwood adopted the Anglicanisme. Robert Darwin, rather Free-thinker, accepted that his/her Charles son is baptized with the church Anglican. Nevertheless, the Darwin children attended with their mother the unitarian vault. The preacher of this one becomes the schoolmaster of Charles, external in 1817. In July of the same year, Susannah Darwin dies whereas Charles was eight years old. In September 1818, it enters to the school close Anglican, the school of Shrewsbury, as intern.

Darwin spends the summer of 1825 as apprentice doctor near his father who looked after the poor of Shropshire. To the autumn of the same year, it leaves for Scotland, with the Université of Edinburgh to study medicine there, but it is revolted by the brutality of the surgery and neglects its medical studies. He learns the Taxidermie near John Edmonstone, a free black slave, who tells him attractive stories on the wet tropical forests of South America. Later, in the Filiation of the man and the selection related to the sex , it makes use of this experiment to stress that, in spite of surface differences of appearance, “the negros and Europeans” are very close.

During his second year, Charles Darwin joined the Company plinienne, a group of students especially interested by the Natural history. He becomes a pupil of Robert Edmond Grant (1793-1874), a partisan of the theory of the evolution of Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck (1744-1829), theory to which also adheres his/her grandfather, Erasmus Darwin. On the shores of the Firth off Forth, Charles takes part in the searches of Grant on the vital cycles of the marine animals. This research relates to the homology, theory according to which all the animals have similar bodies differing only by their complexity, which indicates their common ascent. In March 1827, Darwin makes a presentation in front of his comrades pliniens on his clean découverte : the black spores often found in oyster shells are eggs of a Sangsue. He also follows the courses of Robert Jameson (1774-1854), initiates with geological stratigraphy , the classification of the plants and uses the rich person collections of the natural history museum of the university, one of richest of Europe of his time.

In 1827, his/her father, dissatisfied by the absence of progress of its young person wire, the registered voter to obtain a Bachelor off Arts with the Christ' S College of Cambridge. It is a question of giving him a diploma of Théologie, in the hope that Charles becomes Pasteur Anglican. Nevertheless, Darwin prefers to ride a horse and to drive out that to devote itself to his studies. With his cousin William Darwin Fox (1805-1880), it starts to be impassioned for the collection of the Coléoptère S. Fox makes him meet the reverend John Stevens Henslow (1795-1861), professor of botany and large expert of these insects. Darwin then joined the courses of natural history of Henslow and becomes his preferred pupil. Darwin is known other professors like “the man who walks with Henslow”. When the examinations approached, Darwin concentrated on his studies and accepted private courses of Henslow. Darwin is particularly enthusiastic about the writings of William Paley (1743-1805), of which the natural Théologie (1802), including on the divine design of nature.

One has advanced that the enthusiasm of Darwin for the adaptationism religious of Paley had paradoxically played a part, later, at the time of the formulation of his theory of the natural selection. He passes his examinations in January 1831: if it succeeds well in theology, it gains accuracy the tests of traditional literature, Mathématique S and Physique, arriving tenth over a list of 178 received pupils.

The university obligations oblige Darwin to remain in Cambridge until June. According to the councils of Henslow, he does not hasten his entry in the orders. Inspired by the newspaper of voyage of Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), it organizes a voyage in the archipelago of Madeira with some fellow students themselves coldly graduate, in order to study the natural history of the tropics. In order to better prepare, Darwin joined the courses of geology of the reverend Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873) and, during the summer, assists it with the realization of a geological map in the Wales. After passed fifteen or so days with friends student with Barmouth, Darwin turns over at his place and discovers letter of Henslow which recommends it as a suitable naturalist (even if his formation is not complete) for a station not paid near Robert FitzRoy (1805-1865), captain of the HMS Beagle , which left four weeks later to make the cartography of the coast of South America. His/her father opposes initially this voyage two years that he regards as a waste of time, but he is finally convinced by his brother-in-law, Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795), and ends up giving his agreement to the participation of his son.

Travel of the Beagle

Over the five years of the forwarding of the Beagle , Darwin passes two thirds of time to ground. He describes a great number of geological observations, collects living organisms or fossils, and preserves with method a rich person collection of specimens, good number of them being new for science. On several occasions during the voyage, it sends specimens to Cambridge, accompanied by letters on its discoveries. That will contribute to establish its reputation of Naturaliste. Its long detailed notes show its capacity to be theorized and form the base of its later work. The newspaper which it holds at the origin for its family will be published under the title of The Voyage off the Beagle ( the Voyage of the Beagle ). It there recapitulates its observations, and provides social, political and anthropological information on a great number of people whom it meets, colonial like natives.

Before the departure, Robert FitzRoy had given to Darwin the first volume of the Principles off Geology of Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875) which explained the terrestrial reliefs by the accumulation of gradual processes over very long periods of time. At their first stopover in the island of Santiago to the Cape Verde, Darwin observes a white band in altitude in volcanic cliffs, bandages made up of fragments of corals and cooked shells. This observation, in conformity with the principle of Lyell on the slow rise or descent of the reliefs, gave to Darwin a new prospect on the geological history of the island, and at the head put to him to write a book on geology. This discovery will be followed by others even more decisive. It observes that the plains of Patagonie consist of rollers and shells, like elevated beaches; in addition, after an earthquake with the Chile, it notes benches of moulds above the level of the full seas, which indicated that the level of the ground had just been elevated. In altitude, in the the Andes, it observes that fossil trees had developed on a sand beach, near marine shells. Finally it emits the theory according to which the coral atolls are formed on volcanic cones in the course of immersion, which it confirms after the Beagle passed in the islands Cocos.

In South America, Darwin discovers fossils of extinct mammals giant included in layers of recent shells marine, which indicated a recent extinction without to reveal traces of catastrophe or climate change. Although it correctly identifies one of these fossils to a Megatherium and that it recognizes fragments of carapace of local Tatou, it estimates that these remainders are connected to African or European species; it is only after its return, that Sir Richard Owen (1804-1892) shows that these remainders are actually close to creatures living only in America.

The second volume of the work of Charles Lyell argues against the evolutionism and explains the distribution of the species by “centers of creation”. Darwin receives it and reads it with attention, it from of deduced from the ideas which exceed what Lyell had imagined. In Argentinian, it observes that the two types of nandous occupy of the separate territories but overlapping partly. On the islands Galápagos, it collects Mimini S and note which they differ according to the island from source. He had also intended to say that the Spaniards living in these areas were able to say from which the tortoises came to their simple aspect, but he had concluded that they themselves had introduced them. In Australia, the Ornithorynque and the Kangaroo rat, seem to him so strange that they seem to have been the work of two different creators.

With the Cape, Darwin and FitzRoy meet Sir John Herschel (1792-1871), which had recently written in Lyell about the “mystery of the mysteries”, the origin of the species. When it organizes its notes during its return voyage, Darwin writes that if his suspicions about the miminis and of the tortoises were right, such facts sap the stability of the species , then, it adds the word prudently could . He will write later that such facts seemed me to throw a little light on the origin of the species .

Three natives of the Ground of Fire who had been accommodated by the Beagle at the time of his preceding voyage were on board: they returned there as missionaries. During their two years stay in England, they had become “civilized”, also their close relations appeared in Darwin like unhappy and degraded wild . One year later the missionaries who had been left on the spot had given up their mission and only Jemmy Button came to their meeting, it was turned over to the wild life and announced to them that it had no desire to turn over to England and that it was content and filled . Because of this experiment, Darwin came to think that the man was not far away from the animals so much, and that the difference was especially due to differences of cultural projections between civilization rather than with racial differences. He hated the Esclavage which he had seen elsewhere in South America, and was sorry effects of the European settlement on the Aborigènes of Australia as on the maoris of New Zealand.

FitzRoy was charged to write the official account of the voyage of the Beagle ; little before the end tour, it reads the newspaper of Darwin and asks him to work it over again so that it becomes the third volume, that devoted to the natural history.

Beginning of the theory of the evolution of Darwin

Whereas Darwin was always travels from there, Henslow worked to make known its former student by communicating to eminent naturalists specimens of fossils and a booklet of Darwin containing his letters on geology. With the return of the Beagle , on October 2nd, 1836, Darwin had become a celebrity in the scientific circles. After being last at its house of Shrewsbury and having re-examined its family, it went back as fast as possible to Cambridge to see Henslow, which advised to him to find naturalists able to describe the collections and to establish the catalog of it, and which agreed itself to deal with the specimens of botany. The father of Darwin gathered funds which made it possible his/her son to become a financially independent scientist and it was enthusiastic Darwin who made the turn of the institutions of London where it was honoured everywhere. He then sought experts to describe the collections: the zoologists had an enormous delay in their work and certain specimens ran the risk to be quite simply forgotten in the reserves.

It is with a great curiosity that Charles Lyell met Darwin for the first time, on October 29th, and he hastened to present it to Sir Richard Owen (1804-1892), an anatomist promised with a bright future, which had at its disposal the equipment of the royal College of surgery to study the fossil bones that Darwin had collected. Among the surprising results of Owen appear of the giant Paresseux, a cranium similar to that of an hippopotamus pertaining to the Toxodon , an extinguished rodent, as well as fragments of carapace of enormous a Tatou disappeared (the Glyptodon ), which Darwin upon the departure had conjectured. These fossil creatures did not have any relationship with the African animals, but were closely related to the species living in South America.

Mid-December, Darwin went to Cambridge to organize work on his collections and to rewrite his newspaper. He wrote its first article where he showed that the South American continental mass knew a slow uplift and, warmly supported by Lyell, lute with the geological Société of London on January 4th, 1837. The same day, it offered to the zoological Société its specimens of mammals and birds. The ornithologist John Gould (1804-1881) was not long in stating that the birds of Galapagos that Darwin believed being a mixture of blackbird S, “Gros-bec S” and of Fringillidés, constituted, in fact, thirteen species distinct from fringillidés. February 17th, 1837, one elected Darwin with the Council of the geographical Société and, in its presidential address, Lyell reported of Owen on the fossils of Darwin, while insisting on the fact that the geographical continuity of the species confirmed its ideas actualists.

March 6th, 1837, Darwin settled in London to approach his new load at the company of geography. He united with the animated circle made around scientists and of scientists like Charles Babbage (1791-1871), who believed that God had in advance ordered the life according to natural laws without carrying out miraculous creations ad hoc . Darwin lived close to his brother Erasmus, a free-thinker, who belonged to the Whig circle and of which the intimate friend, the author Harriet Martineau (1802-1876), promoted the ideas of Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) which one found at the base of the reforms of the Poor Law preached by Whigs. The reforms in question aimed at discouraging from the poor reproducing more than the food resources available allowed it. The question of Sir John Herschel (1792-1871) about the origin of the species was abundantly discussed. Personalities of the medical environment, including Dr. James Manby Gully (1808-1873) went even until joining Grant in its ideas of transformation of the species, but at the eyes of the friendly scientists of Darwin such a radical heresy put in danger the divine base of the social order already threatened by the recession and the riots.

Gould announced whereas the polyglot mockers of Galápagos originating in the various islands were distinct species and not only varieties, while the “troglodyte S” still constituted another species of fringillidés. Darwin had not noted precisely which islands came the specimens from fringillidés, but found this information in the notes of other members of forwarding on the Beagle , including FitzRoy, who had recorded more carefully than they had collected themselves. The zoologist Thomas Bell (1792-1880) showed that the tortoises of Galápagos were indigenous in the islands. Before mid-March, Darwin had been convinced that the animals once arrived in the islands had to some extent changed to form on the various islands of the species nouvelles ; he thinks of this transformation by noting the result of his thoughts on the “red notebook” which he had begun on the Beagle. Mid-July, it began its secret notebook, the “notebook B”, on this transformation and, on page 36, it wrote “I think” above his first draft of a tree showing the evolution.

Overwork, disease and marriage

Whereas it was absorbed in the study of the Transformisme, Darwin was taken by additional work. While it was still to rewrite its Journal , it undertook to revise and publish the reports of experts on its collections and, with the assistance of Henslow, obtained a subsidy of 1.000 pounds sterling to finance this Zoologie of the Voyage of the H.M.S. Beagle in several volumes. It accepted times impossible to hold for this task as for a book on the Géologie of South America which supported the ideas of Lyell. Darwin finishes writing his Journal on June 20th, 1837 right at the time when the Reine Victoria went up on the throne, but it still remained to him to correct the tests.

The health of Darwin suffered from such an extra work. September 20th, 1837, it felt “palpitations of the heart”. Its doctor having prescribed one month of rest to him, it went then to Shrewsbury in parents on the maternal side to Maer Hall, but it found them too curious about its stories of voyages to leave him some rest. His/her cousin Emma Wedgwood, charming, intelligent and cultivated, and nine months older than Darwin, looked after the aunt of this one, which was invalid. His/her uncle Jos showed to him a place where ashes had disappeared under the clay and suggested that it could be a question of the work of the lombrics. It was the origin of a conference which Darwin made at the geological Company on November 1st, and where it showed for the first time the role of the Lombric S in the formation of the grounds.

William Whewell (1794-1866) encouraged Darwin to accept the load of secretary of the geological Company. After having initially refused this additional task, it accepted the station in March 1838. In spite of the work brought by work of writing and edition, it made remarkable progress on the transformism. While keeping secret its ideas on the evolution, it did not miss any occasion to question the experienced naturalists and, in an abstract way, people who had a practical experiment like the farmers and the pigeon fancier S. With time its research widens: it got information near its family, children included/understood, of the majordomo of the family, of neighbors, colonists and former shipmates. It included mankind in its initial speculations and, on March 28th, 1838, having observed a Singe with the zoo, it foot-note the resemblance between its behavior and that of a child.

All these efforts ended up being felt and, as of June, it was forced to confine to bed itself a few days without interruption because of problems of stomach, migraines and cardiac symptoms. All the remainder of its life, it should several times stop working with episodes of pains to the stomach, vomiting, of Furoncle S severe, palpitations, tremors and other faintnesses, especially in the moments of tension, as when it was to attend meetings or to answer controversies on its theory. The cause of this disease remained unknown of alive sound, and the treatments had only little success. Recent tests of diagnosis suggested the Maladie of Chagas, which would have communicated to him of the insect bites in South America, the Maladie of Menière, or various psychological diseases. One still remains in uncertainty.

June 23rd, 1838, it made a pause in its work while going to do a little geology in Scotland. He visited Glen Roy by a radiant time to see the parallel “terraces”, these cut projecting ledges with hillside. He saw elevated beaches there: one showed later that they were the banks of a glacial Lac.

Completely restored, it returned in Shrewsbury in July. Accustomed continuously to take notes on the animal reproduction, it griffonnait thoughts décousues concerning its career and its projects on two small pieces of papier : one comprised two columns entitled “Marriage” and “No marriage”. The advantages included/understood inter alia: “a faithful partner and a friend in old age… better than a dog in any case”; and contrary to the points like “less money for the books” and “terrible waste of time”. Being decided for the marriage, he discussed with his father, and returned it then visit to Emma on July 29th, 1838. He did not have time to make his proposal but, against the councils of his father, spoke about his ideas on the transformism.

While it continued its research in London, the very broad range of readings of Darwin included/understood now “to distract” the 6th edition from the Essai on the Principle of Population of Malthus; this one had calculated that because of birth rate, the human population could double every 25 years, but that, in practice, this growth was slowed down by death, the disease, the wars and the famine. Darwin was well prepared to see immediately that also applied to the “conflict between the species”, noticed for the plants by Augustin Pyrame de Candolle (1778-1841), and with the struggle for life among the wild animals, and that this was why manpower of a species remained relatively stable. As the species reproduce always more than there are available resources, the favorable variations would return the organizations which are carrying ready to survive and transmit these variations to their offspring, while the unfavourable variations would end up disappearing. From where the formation of new species would follow. September 28th, 1838 it foot-note this new lighting of the question, describing it like a kind of corner, introducing structures more adapted into spaces of the natural economy while the lower structures would be ejected. It now had a working hypothesis. During following months, it compared the farmers who selected the best subjects for the breeding with a Nature Malthusian making her choice among the alternatives created by the “chance”, so that “each element each structure lately acquired was completely implemented and improved”. He saw in this analogy “the most beautiful part of theory”.

November 11th, it returned in Maer and made its request with Emma, by presenting its ideas once again to him. She accepted then, in the letters that they exchanged, she showed how she appreciated her frankness, but because of its education very pious Anglican, she let see her fear that such heresies compared to the faith could endanger its hopes to find it in the eternal life. While it was in search of a housing in London, the episodes of disease continued and Emma wrote to him to press it to take a little rest, noticing in an almost prophetic way: “Thus do not fall down sick any more, my dear Charlie, before I can be near you to take care of you. ” It found in Gower Street what they called the “Cottage of the Macaw” (because of its yelling interior), then it moved its “museum” with Christmas. The marriage was planned for on January 24th, 1839, but Wedgwood delayed this date. The 24, Darwin had the honor to be elected member of the Royal Society.

January 29th, 1839, Darwin and Emma Wedgwood married in Maer during a ceremony Anglican arranged to be appropriate for the Unitarian ones. They then took immediately the train for London and gained their new hearth.

Preparation of the publication of the theory of the natural selection

Darwin had found the base of his theory of the Natural selection, but was quite conscious of all the work which remained to be made to make it credible to the eyes of his/her scientific colleagues, who criticized it savagely. December 19th 1838, with the meeting of the Geological Company of which he was secretary, he saw Owen and Buckland nothing to hide of their hatred against the evolution by tackling the reputation of its old Master Grant, disciple of Lamarck. Work continued on the conclusions at which it had arrived on board the Beagle and, at the same time as it consulted stockbreeders, he multiplied the experiments on the plants, trying to find evidence which answered all the objections which he expected as from the moment when its theory would be communicated. When the Narration of FitzRoy was published, in May 1839, the Journal and Remarques of Darwin (more known under the title the Voyage of the Beagle ) who constitutes the third volume of it met such a success that one made a separate republication of it the same year.

To the beginning of 1842, Darwin sent to Lyell a letter to present its ideas to him; this last was dismayed to see that which had been its ally now refused “to see a beginning with each group of species”. In May, the book of Darwin on the coral reefs was published after more than three years of work. In June he then wrote a “summary draft” of his theory holding on 35 pages. To escape the pressures from London, the family settled in November in the countryside, in the field of Down House. January 11th 1844 Darwin wrote with his friend, the botanist Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817-1911), for him to speak about its theory, by saying that was almost to acknowledge “a murder”, but in its great relief Hooker believed that “a gradual modification of the species could have taken place well” and it expressed his interest for the explanation of Darwin. About July, Darwin had developed his “draft” in a “Test” of 230 pages. This book which was a best-seller increased the interest of the middle-class for the transformism, and thus opened the way with Darwin. This work nevertheless was severely attacked by the recognized scientists, which recalled to Darwin the need for answering all the difficulties before making public its theory. Darwin finished its third book of geology in 1846 and undertook as from October a vast study on the cirripèdes with the assistance of Hooker. In January 1847, Hooker lute the “Test” of Darwin and returned his observations to him; it was the serene criticism which Darwin needed, even if Hooker called in question its rejection of the idea of a continuous creation.

To try to treat his chronic morbid state, Darwin went to Malvern, a thermal city, in 1848. The cure of a few months made him a large good and it could resume its work on its return. With died of his father on November 13rd, it is nevertheless so much weakens that it cannot attend the funeral. In 1849 his/her daughter cherished, Annie, fell sick, which awoke its fear which its disease can be hereditary. After long series of crises she died in April 1851, and Darwin lost any faith in benevolent God.

The eight years that Darwin passed to work on the cirripèdes made it possible him to find “homologies” which consolidated its theory by showing that light morphological changes could make it possible various functions to face new conditions. In 1853 it obtained the royal Médaille of Royal Society, which establishes its reputation as biologist. In 1854 it resumed work on its theory of the species and, in November, realized that the divergence in the character of descendants could be explained by the fact why they had adapted “to situations different in the economy from nature”.

Publication of the theory of the natural selection

At the beginning of 1855, Darwin sought to know if the eggs and the Graine S were able to survive a voyage in salt water and to thus widen the distribution of their species through the oceans. Hooker was more and more skeptic as for the traditional design according to which the species were immutable, but their young friend Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) was firmly opposed to the evolution. Lyell was intrigued by the speculations of Darwin without realizing of their range. After having read an article of Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) on the Introduction of the species , it found resemblances to the ideas of Darwin and advised to him to publish them to establish its anteriority. Although Darwin did not see any threat there, it started to write an article runs. To find answers to the difficult questions stopped it several times, and it widens its project with a “large book on the species” entitled “the Natural selection”. It continued its research, obtaining information and specimens near naturalists of the whole world, including Wallace who worked with Borneo. In December 1857, Darwin accepted from Wallace a letter asking to him whether its book would examine the human origins. He answered that it would avoid such a subject, “if encumbered prejudices”, while it encouraged the test of theorization of Wallace, by adding “I go much further that you”.

Darwin was halfway of his book when, on June 18th, 1858, it accepted a letter of Wallace who described the natural selection. Although annoyed “to be preceded”, it transmitted it to Lyell like agreed and, although Wallace had not asked that it was published, proposed to send it to any newspaper that Wallace would choose. Its family was then plunged in the anguish because in the village of the children died of the Scarlatine, also gave it the business between the hands of Lyell and Hooker. They were appropriate to present together to Linnean Society on July 1st “ On the Tendency of the species to form varieties” and “ On the Perpetuation of the varieties and the species by the average natural ones of the selection” . Like Charles, the last child of Darwin, then still to the cradle, came to die of the scarlet fever, his/her father was upset too much to be present.

At the time one lent little attention to the advertisement of this theory; the president of Linnean noticed in May 1859 that the previous year had been remembered by no revolutionary discovery. Thereafter, Darwin could remember only one recension, that of professor Haughton, of Dublin, proclaiming that “all that there was again was inaccurate, and all that was exact was not new”. Darwin baited himself for thirteen months to write a summary of his “large book”, suffering of health issues, but encouraged constantly by his scientific friends. Lyell was arranged to make it publish by Sir John Murray (1841-1914).

On the Origin of the Species by means of the Natural selection, or the Safeguarding of the best Races in the Struggle for Life (title usually shortened in the form the Origin of the species ) had near the public an unexpected success: the whole pulling of 1.250 specimens was already reserved when it was put on sale in the booksellers on November 22nd, 1859. Darwin develops to with it “a long argumentation” based on detailed observations, exposes to it Inférence S and the taking into account of the awaited objections. Its only allusion to the evolution at the man was the discrete assertion that “lights will be thrown on the origin of the man and his history”. It avoided the word “evolution”, discussed at the time, but at the end of the book it concluded that “of the forms unceasingly more beautiful and more admirable were worked out and continue to be it”. Its theory is exposed in a simple way in the introduction: As he is born much more individuals of each species than he cannot about it survive, and than, consequently, he often occurs a struggle for life, he follows that any being, if he varies, even slightly, in a manner which is advantageous for him, under the complex conditions and sometimes variables of the life, will have a better chance to survive and thus will find itself selected in a natural way. Because of the principle dominating of heredity, any variety thus chosen will tend to multiply in its new form and modifiée.

Reactions to its publication

The work of Charles Darwin aroused an lively interest in the public as well as a controversy which it followed closely, preserving the newspaper cuttings with the recensions, the articles, the mockeries, the parodies and the caricatures. The evolution by the natural selection was largely discussed, even disparaged, particularly in the communities nun and scientist. Although Darwin has be supported by certain scientists (for example, Thomas Henry Huxley, Ernest Renan or Ernst Haeckel which will very early popularize it in Germany), others hesitated to accept its theory because of the unexplained capacity of the individuals to transmit their capacities to their descendants. This last point was however studied at the same time by Gregor Mendel, but it does not seem that the two men communicated together. Even with the laws of Mendel, the subjacent mechanism remained a mystery until one discovered the existence of the genes.

Hostile criticisms had early made draw the conclusions which were not expressed, like the fact that the men would go down from the monkeys. However, in the Origin of the species , Darwin does not speak about the origins of the man. The public confuses the ideas expressed in the book of Darwin with those of Lamarck, which fifty years before had advanced this idea without then making scandal. Among the favorable answers, the recensions of Huxley addressed criticisms to Richard Owen, chief of the scientific Establishment which he wanted to shake. The verdict of Owen remained unknown until its report of April had condemned the book.

The scientific Establishment of the Church of England, which included/understood the former Masters of Darwin to Cambridge, Sedgwick and Henslow, reacts in a hostile way, in spite of a favorable reception in the younger generation of the professional naturalists. In 1860, the publication d'Essays and Reviews by seven theologists liberal Anglicans diverted of Darwin the attention of the men of the church. The latter condemned as heretic such a manifestation of liberal criticism because one found there inter alia this argument that by the miracles God enfreindrait his own laws, atheistic opinion, as well as the praise of the “masterly volume of Mr. Darwin the great principle which nature has the capacity to evolve/move by itself”.

The most famous public debate took place in Oxford at a meeting of the British Association for the Advance of Sciences. The professor John William Draper had pronounced a long plea in favor of Darwin and of the social progress, at this point in time the bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, were caught some in Darwin. In the discussion which followed Joseph Dalton Hooker took party for Darwin vigorously while Thomas Huxley was constituted as the “bulldog of Darwin” - he was the most savage defender of the theory of the Evolution at the time victorienne. The two parties separated by shouting victory each one, but Huxley remained famous for its answer: as Wilberforce had asked to him whether it went down from the monkey by his grandfather or his grandmother, Huxley grommela: “It is God himself which has just delivered it between my hands” and it retorted that it “would prefer to go down from a monkey rather than of an educated man who used his culture and his eloquence with the service of the prejudice and the lie”.

The debate overflows the framework of science, the Church Anglican and Protestantism. The authorities of the Catholic church enter the polemic. As of 1860, indeed, Darwin is condemned by a meeting of bishops which is held in Cologne. The pope intervenes then on several occasions to denounce the thesis according to which the man would go down from the monkey.

Held far away from the public discussions by his disease, Darwin did not read of them less with passion what one reported of them and received from the supports by mail. Asa Gray convainquit an editor in the United States to pay royalties, and Darwin made come and distributed the booklet of Gray which showed that the Natural selection was by no means incompatible with the natural Théologie. In Great Britain his/her friends, including Hooker and Lyell, took share with the scientific discussions that Huxley carried out with rage to break the domination of the Church and the aristocratic amateurism, incarnated by Owen, in favor of a new generation of professionals of science. Owen made the error to call upon (wrongly) certain anatomical differences between the brain of the monkey and the human brain, and to show Huxley to support that “the man goes down from the monkey”. Huxley was happy to support this opinion and its countryside, which lasted more than two years, was a true catastrophe for Owen and the “old guard”, which were eliminated. The friends of Darwin formed Club X and helped to be worth to him the honor of the Médaille Copley which Royal Society in decreed to him 1864.

Vestiges had already aroused in the public the vastest interest, and l'Origine of the espèces was translated in a great number of languages and knew many reprintings, becoming a basic scientific text accessible as well to a middle-class curious about this innovation as to the simple workers who pressed themselves with the conferences of Huxley. The theory of Darwin corresponded besides to the various movements of the time and it became one of the key bases of the popular culture.

Descent off Man , sexual selection and botany

In spite of continual relapses during the twenty-two last years of his life, Darwin continued his work. He had published a summary of his theory, but the most discussed aspects of its “large book” remained incomplete, including the explicit proof owing to the fact that humanity went down from animals former to it, and it research of possible causes which were at the base of the development of the company and the mental capacities of the man. He was to still explain characteristics without obvious utility if it is not with an esthetic aim. He continued to make experiments, to seek, write.

When the girl of Darwin fell sick, it suspended its experiments on the seeds and the pets to accompany it at the seaside; there it was interested in the Orchidée S savages and it resulted from it a revolutionary study on the way in which the beauty of the flowers is used to ensure the Pollinisation by the insects and to guarantee a fertilization with crossing. As with the barnacles, the homologous parts filled of the different functions at the various species. Of return to him, it found its bed of patient in a part which its experiments filled on the climbing plants. It accepted the visit of Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), one of its admirors who had propagated the Gospel of the Darwinism in Germany. Wallace continued to support it, although it poured more and more in the Spiritisme.

Of the variation of the animals and the plants under the action of domestication constituted the first part of the “large book” that Darwin projected (development of the “summary” whom it had published under the title the Origin of the species ); this first part swelled until becoming two large volumes, forcing it to leave side the human evolution and the sexual selection; it was sold well in spite of its size. An additional book of demonstrations, which treated in the same style of the natural selection, was written mainly, but remained new until it was transcribed in 1975.

The question of the human evolution had been raised by its partisans (and its detractors) little time after the publication of the Origin of the species , but the clean contribution of Darwin on this subject was to come more than ten years later with the work in two volumes Filiation from the man and the selection related to the sex published in 1871. In the second volume, Darwin explained in all letters his design of the sexual selection to explain the evolution of the human culture, the differences between the sexes at the man and the differentiation of the human races, as well as the beauty of the plumage in the birds (which did not seem the result of an adaptation). The following year Darwin published his last important work, the Expression of the emotions at the man and the animals , devoted to the evolution of human psychology and its continuity with the behavior of the animals. It developed its ideas according to which at the man the spirit and the cultures were worked out by the natural selection and sexual, design which knew a new youth during the three last decades with the emergence of the evolutionary Psychologie. As he concluded in La Filiation from Homme, Darwin estimated that in spite of all “noble qualities” of humanity and the “capacities which she had developed”: “The man always carries in his physical constitution the ineffaceable seal of his humble origin”.

Its experiments and its research concerning the evolution found their conclusion in books on the movement of the climbing plants, the plants insectivorous, the effects of the crossings of the plants and their car-fertilization, the various shapes of flowers on plants of the same species and the Capacity of the plants to be driven . In its last book, it returned to the influence of the lombrics on the formation of the grounds.

Children of Darwin

Darwin had ten children: two died in low age and the disappearance of Annie, whereas it was only ten years old, was a catastrophe for his/her parents. Charles was a devoted and exceptionally attentive father towards his children. Each time they fell sick it feared that it was due to consanguinity since it had married his cousin, Emma Wedgwood. It considered this question in its writings, putting in opposition the advantages of the crossings at much of organizations. In spite of its fears, majority of the children who survived made remarkable careers, being distinguished even inside the Famille Darwin-Wedgwood already extremely brilliant.

Among them, George, Francis and Horace became members of Royal Society, being announced respectively like astronomer, botanist and civil engineer. His/her son Leonard, in addition, was soldier, politician, economist and eugenist; he had like disciple Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher (1890-1962), statistician and biologist of the evolution.

Religious designs

Although its family was in majority and that his/her father, his/her grandfather and his brother were free-thinkers, at the Darwin beginning did not doubt the literal truth of the Bible. He had attended a school of the Église of England, then studied theology Anglican in Cambridge to embrace an ecclesiastical career. He had been convinced by the teleological argument of William Paley which one saw in nature a intention which proved the existence of God; however during voyage of Beagle it asked, for example, why superb creatures had been made at the bottom of the oceans, where nobody could to see them, or how it was possible to reconcile the design of Paley of a benevolent intention with the wasp ichneumon which paralyzes caterpillars to give them to its eggs like alive food. There remained completely orthodoxe and quoted readily the Bible like an authority in the field of morals, but did not believe any more in historicity of the Old Testament.

Whereas it undertook its research on the Transformation of the species it knew that his/her friends naturalists saw there an abominable heresy which put in danger the miraculous justifications on which the social order was founded; it was the kind of radical argument which the dissidents and the atheists used then to tackle the privileged position of the Church of England as established Église. Although Darwin had written that the religion was a tribal strategy of survival, he always believed that God was the supreme legislator. This conviction was shaken little by little and, with the death of his/her daughter Annie in 1851, it ends up losing any faith in Christianity. It continued to help its local church for parochial work, but Sunday it was going to walk while its family went to the church. From now on he considered it preferable to look at the pain and the sufferings like the result of general laws rather than of a direct intervention of God. Questioned on its religious designs, he wrote that he had never been an atheist in this direction which he would have denied the existence of God and who, in a general way, “it is the Agnosticisme which would describe in the most exact way frame of mind”.

The Account of Lady Hope , published in 1915, supported that Darwin had returned to Christianity during his last disease. Such an assertion was contradicted by his/her children and the historians drew aside it like false. His/her daughter, Henrietta, which was with its bed of death, said that it was not turned over to Christianity. Its last words, in fact, were addressed to Emma: “You Point out the good wife that you were”.

Political interpretations

Writings and theories of Darwin combined with the genetic discoveries of Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) (the synthetic Theory of the evolution) are regarded as formant the base of all the modern Biologie. However, the fame and the popularity of Darwin resulted in associating his name with ideas and movements which have only one indirect relation with its work, and sometimes are directly contrary to its convictions.

Eugenism

Social Darwinism

Commemorations

During the life of Darwin, many species as of the toponyms were dedicated to him. Thus the Western prolongation of the Channel Beagle which connects this last to the Pacific Ocean, the Canal of Darwin, bears his name. It is the FitzRoy captain who dedicated to him after an action of Darwin: left with two or three sailors, it has the reflex to lead them on the shore when it sees a side of a glacier crumbling in the sea and causing a strong wave, this one would have probably to sweep their boat. The mount Darwin was dedicated to him at the time of sound 25e birthday. When the Beagle was in Australia in 1839, John Lort Stokes (1812-1885), friend of Darwin, discovered a natural port that the captain John Clements Wickham (1798-1864) baptized Port Darwin. The colony of Palmerston, founded in 1869, was renamed Darwin in 1911. It became the capital of the Territoire of North of Australia. This city enorgueillit to have a University Charles Darwin and a National park Charles Darwin. The Darwin College of the University of Cambridge, founded in 1964, was baptized thus in the honor of the Darwin family, partly because it had part of the grounds on which he was built.

The 14 S of Pinson S which he had discovered in the Galapagos Islands were called the finches of Darwin. In 2000, an image of Darwin was used by the Banque of England for the ticket of ten pounds sterling to replace the image of Charles Dickens.

Appendices

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