Life and Times of Charles Darwin Flashcards
Charles Darwin
Februrary 12, 1809 - April 19, 1882
(Shares a birthday with Abraham Lincoln)
Born in Staffordshire England
Father - Robert Darwin (too large of a man) Physician
Grandfather - Erasmus (Physician) dabbled in evolutionary theories
sent off to medical school at 16 - Oxford
Flunked out
Wanted to study natural theology and was sent to Cambrige
Distinguished himself among his peers.
Invited to join Robert FitzRoy on his voyage.
Father was against the idea.
Went to his uncle (Thomas Wedgewood - best friends with father) and convinced Charles’ father.
Darwin’s conditions to join were that he was allowed to leave the expedition whenever he wanted and he should pay a fair share of expenses.
Robert FitzRoy
1805 - 1865
Captain of the H.M.S Beagle (Sloop - Man of War) in the British Navy
Brought up in a strict religious household and was a fundamentalist Christian.
Takes his crew on a trip around the world to map the coast of South America.
Common for captains to take a gentleman guest with skills on non-combat missions for companionship.
Brought along Charles Darwin (Biologist) and an artist.
Charles and Robert did not like each other.
Later ended up taking his own life because of Charles’ Darwin’s book of evolution
Jean-Baptist Lamark
1809 - published Theory of acquired characteristics
One of the first published evolutionary theories
Before the late 1700s, the accepted theory was creationism and the world was only 6,500 years old, and there was only one creation even.
Theory of Acquired Characteristics stated an organism acquires its characteristics throughout its lifetime and those characteristics were passed down through pangenes.
Pangene
Pan - All/Widespread
Information throughout the body was sent to gametes on how to make that body part.
The genes would blend in the offspring.
Erasmus Darwin
Charles Darwin’s grandfather
Physician
poet & writer
Dabbled in evolutionary theory
Family wasn’t atheist but wasn’t overly spiritual either, a lot of talk about subjects like evolution.
Natural Theology
Religious degree through the department of divinity.
Trained people to go out as priests and describe the creations of the natural world as wonders of God.
Cartography
map-making
Thomas Malthus
1799 Essay on Populations - Malthusian theory
Human populations grow exponentially but food and resources grow linearly.
1.Famine
2.Disease
3.War
Limit population growth
Darwin took applied it to the natural world, that many more organisms are born than can survive.
Charles Lyell
Friends with Darwin. Met at Cambridge
Geologist. Wrote one of the first books on Geology: Principles of Geology.
Proposes idea of geologic time: millions to billions of years.
Uniformitarianism
The processes operating today operated in the past
Concepcion, Chile
Magnitude 8 Earthquake while Charles Darwin was there.
Noticed shallow reef rose 30 feet in a matter of minutes.
Noticed aquatic fossils day before earthquake
Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
Published by Charles Darwin in 1859. 25 years after expedition.
