HPC Portrayals

CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN (1809-1882)

by Brian Ellis

Born into the upper-crust of English society, with access to such wealth that he never had to work a day in his life, (and he never held a real job), Charles Darwin set off to explore the world. For five years he sailed on Her Majesty’s Ship, The Beagle, volunteering as the ship’s naturalist. He sailed from England around the coast of South America, to several Pacific archipelagoes, Australia, Africa and back to South America before returning home.

During this voyage he collected 10,000 specimens, including 2,000 species that were new to Western science. Most importantly, Darwin spent this time immersed in all the splendor and diversity that this planet had to offer. He began to see connections. An idea took root and began to grow. He kept a secret notebook for 30 years.

The idea of evolution was not new. His grandfather Erasmus Darwin had written Zoonomia, on the philosophical idea of evolution. It was scorned because it lacked evidence.

Charles Darwin’s contribution to science, after more than 30 years of meticulous independent research and more than 10,000 personal letters to and from other scientists, was to provide rock solid evidence showing how evolution works and irrefutable proof that it was more than a theory. Through variation, inheritance and time, natural selection allows individual adaptation to evolve into new species.

The scope and vision of Darwin’s work has had an immeasurable impact on science and society. Evolution is the foundation of all modern biological research. As a concept it influences fields as diverse as computer software and business theory, social dynamics and art history. Few other ideas have had such a dramatic and far-reaching ripple into every corner of modern thought.

Darwin’s far-sighted vision enabled him to create a malleable concept. The very idea of evolution can adapt to incorporate new ideas such as punctuated equilibrium, homologous and convergent evolution, and the great synthesis of evolution and genetics, where the two ideas reinforce each other.

Darwin knew there would be a backlash. He even wrote in his diary that he felt as though he was committing a murder if he published his work. However, the scientific community embraced his ideas immediately. Eventually the Catholic Church affirmed evolution through a papal edict, saying that the teachings of Charles Darwin do not conflict with the teachings of Christ.

BRIAN “FOX” ELLIS

Brian “Fox” Ellis is an internationally-renowned storyteller, author and naturalist. He has been a featured speaker at regional and international conferences including The National Association of Biology Teachers and The International Wetlands Conservation Conference. Fox is also a museum consultant who has worked with The Field Museum, The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, and The Ben Franklin Institute. He is the artistic director for Prairie Folklore Theatre, a company that celebrates ecology and history through original musical theatre. Fox is the author of 12 books including an adaptation of his performance, Charles Darwin and His Revolutionary Idea (Fox Tales International, 2008).To learn more about Brian “Fox” Ellis visit www.foxtalesint.com .

CHARLES DARWIN

Darwin’s gift, or talent, was his ability to synthesize an astounding amount of information to look for the ideas that underlie the facts, to create general principles of how things work based on sifting through an amazing amount of information.
One hundred and fifty years of research have only refined and affirmed Darwin’s basic idea that “Over time, species adapt to their environment and through natural selection new species arise.”
Theodosius Dobzhansky, who helped integrate genetics with Darwin’s theories, once wrote, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.”

QUOTES BY CHARLES DARWIN

“No poet ever felt more delighted at seeing his first poem published than I did at seeing my beetle in Stephens' Illustrations of British Insects, with the magic words, ‘captured by C. Darwin, Esq.’”

On the Brazilian rainforest: “Here I first saw a tropical forest in all its sublime grandeur. . . . I never experienced such intense delight. The delight one experiences in such times bewilders the mind, – if the eye attempts to follow the flight of a gaudy butter-fly, it is arrested by some strange tree or fruit; if watching an insect one forgets it in the stranger flower it is crawling over. . . . The mind is a chaos of delight.”

On the Galapagos finches: “Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends.”

“I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved (and I cannot resist forming one on every subject), as soon as facts are shown to be opposed to it.”

“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 law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

TIMELINE
Feb. 12, 1809	Charles Darwin was born at Shrewsbury, England on the same day that Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky.
1825	Went to Edinburgh to study medicine, as did his father and grandfather before him
1828	Went to Cambridge to study religion, preparing for a career in the church
1831	Matriculated at Christ’s College 10th in his class. His professor, Reverend Adam Sedgwick took Darwin on a geological excursion in North Wales. Upon his return, another professor, Reverend Henslow, recommended him for the position of naturalist on HMS Beagle.
Dec. 27, 1831 through Oct. 2, 1836	Circumnavigates the globe as the ship’s naturalist spending three-fifths of his time on shore collecting 10,000 specimens, 2000 species new to science. Upon his return, he publishes books on South American geology, the formation of coral reef atolls, and the discoveries of the voyage of the Beagle. He marries and settles down in Kent to raise a family. He never leaves Britain again!
1859	After working in secret for more than 20 years, Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection: The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.
1860	T. H. Huxley, Darwin’s “Bulldog,” argues eloquently against Bishop Wilberforce of Oxford. In spite of losing then, every religious debate since has followed a similar line of attack despite150 years of research confirming the theory!
Though Darwin never participates in the public debate, he continues to research and publish:
1862	The Fertilisation (sic) of Orchids
1868	The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication.
1871	The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex
1872	The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
1875	Climbing Plants
1875	Insectivorous Plants
1876	The Effects of Cross- and Self-Fertilisation (sic) in the Vegetable Kingdom
1877	Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species
1880	The Power of Movement in Plants, Co-authored with his son Francis.
1881	Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms
April 19, 1882	Charles Darwin left the world and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

RECOMMENDED READING

Darwin, Charles. From So Simple A Beginning. Ed. Edward O. Wilson. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006.
Darwin, Charles. On Natural Selection. Ed. J.W. Burrow. New York, New York: The Penguin Group, 2004.
Ellis, Brian “Fox.” Charles Darwin and His Revolutionary Idea. Peoria, Illinois: Fox Tales International, 2008.
Stone, Irving. The Origin. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1980.