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Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection Essay

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The question of how man evolved has been pondered for some time. Many great philosophers and explorers have made attempts to try to answer this question. Charles Darwin was one of these people. Darwin led a full life of exploration, and during these adventures, he accumulated much information about evolution. He met many explorers that had various ideas of their own about how man evolved. In discussion with these people, he figured out if what they were telling him was fact or fiction. This helped him to formulate his own theory. Curiosity was aroused in Darwin at a very young age. He was one of those children that are always into things, trying to find out how things work. He was especially interested in the …show more content…

This isn't the only theory, though. James Hutton introduced a different approach to evolution. His theory, uniformitarianism, suggests that the prominent features of the earth's surface were produced by forces like wind, water, and weather over a long period of time. His theory was only partly true. It explains the question how fossils form, but it really doesn't thoroughly explain evolution. Another theory of evolution is catastrophism. This theory, brought about by Cuvier, says that the earth went through a great series of catastrophes. In his theory, Cuvier suggested that there was one big super continent. He said that the continents slowly drifted apart from one large continent by plate tectonics. Darwin had the chance to talk to all these people on his trip on the Beagle, and they gave him the idea to look into evolution. During Darwin's voyage on the Beagle, he stopped at the Galapagos Islands in September of 1835. This stop is very important in the formulation of his theory because he discovered that even though the islands were very close together, and each islands contained different species of animals, and each of the species was adapted to their specific environment. (Darwin, 20). Darwin didn't realize it at first, but he had found exactly what he was looking for in terms of how man evolved. " 'Descent with

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