The History of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution

The documentary, “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea” tells the story of Charles Darwin’s conception of his theory of natural selection, and how it explains the evolutionary process and species adaptation. The story begins with a brief overview of his 5-year stint on the HMS Beagle as the ship's naturalist, during her South American voyage. The film shows how Mr. Darwin collected fossils and many species of animals and birds from many different regions especially the Galapagos Islands. It portrays Mr. Darwin’s return to England and his struggle between the mainstream religious beliefs and his personal beliefs of how different species came to be. Additionally, the documentary covers his presentation of fossils and ideas to the scientific community,

However, his passion for natural science never swayed. It was this intricate fascination that brought Charles about meeting Professor John Stevens Henslow. Henslow was a specialist in botany. Overtime Henslow and Charles became quite close friends. In the article titled: “Charles Darwin: man behind monkey” author Christine Dao further explained the following events after the fact that Charles and Henslow became close friends. Henslow had the opportunity to accompany Captain Robert Fitzroy to the Americas as a naturalist. He extended this opportunity to the “novice” naturalists Charles. Dao’s article states, “Henslow proposed that Darwin take his place on the HMS Beagle journey to the Americas as an unpaid naturalist and gentleman companion to Captain Robert Fitzroy. Darwin was almost a complete novice, his experience based only on rudimentary geological studies, beetle-collecting, and the dissection of marine

At the beginning of the 1800s, scientists knew of some kinds of fossils, and were very aware of homologous and vestigial structures. Many scientists suspected that some kind of evolution had given rise to living things around them. However, they had no theory to explain how evolution might have occurred. Two scientists led the way in the search for a mechanism of evolution. The first was Jean Lamarck. The second was one of the greatest figures in biology, Charles Darwin.

Evolution is the key thread running throughout this text, signifying its importance to the author and readers. It is emphasized greatly because that is how we understand ourselves, our past, present and even the future. Through evolution we have discovered when the first organisms came around and how modifications led to the first fish to migrate to land about 375 million years

Evolution has been a very debatable topic since the theory of evolution first evolved. By definition, evolution is “the process by which different kinds of living organism are believed to have developed from earlier forms during the history of the earth”, but there are many different types of “evolution” such as coevolution, divergent, parallel and convergent – all with different theories. Jean Baptiste Lamarck was a French naturalist who invented the theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics (aka. “soft inheritance”). This evolutionary theory described how the natural environment affected the way an animal used their body parts. The features used regularly or for survival are passed onto the creatures offspring, and the parts that weren’t used, weren’t. On the other hand, another English naturalist Charles Darwin established a theory of “natural selection”. A process in which creatures that survived in their environment would pass their genes through the generations, compared to the weaker species with a lower survival rate, who reproduce less offspring or none.

As pointed out in a lecture, the concept of evolution or the transformation of species was already formulated before Charles Darwin’s time. Herbert Spencer, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, and notably Charles Darwin’s own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, all had both publicly and prominently discussed the concept of transformation of species for some time prior, while many other scientists of the period proposed theories that suggested a struggle for survival as the driving force towards evolution . Thus, Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection and environmental pressures was not thought of in a vacuum. Instead, Darwin’s theory of evolution was a product of his time, as Darwin was heavily influenced by thinkers of both the Romantic and Enlightenment

Through his research, Lamarck observed many similarities in the different types of animals he studied, these fascinated him and allowed him to draw his own scientific conclusions. First, he believed life was not a fixed system and that “When environments changed, organisms had to change their behavior to survive.” In short, he believed the body would understand how to adapt to different environments over generations. He believed these adaptions were a process that the body was trying to form to eventually make the perfect generation of

Jean Lamarck born in 1744 in France (Charton. B, 2009) and became one of the most known scientists of all time. He was pushed towards a career in the church and attended a Jesuit college in the late 1750s, he then went on to pursue a career in the military before being decommissioned due to injury. After arriving home, Lamarck pursued his passion for botany and released the first dichotomous key, after a while Lamarck turned his interest to the animal kingdom in particular evolution (Packard, A.S,1901).Lamarck was one of the earliest evolutionary scientists, and not unlike many other evolutionary scientists Jean Lamarck established that organisms adapt to their environment. Lamarck formed a theory to try and explain this phenomenon. Similarly

Unfortunately, an injury forced him to resign in 1768 but his fascination for botany endured. According to BBC UK, Lamarck believed that a characteristic which is used more and more by an organism becomes bigger and stronger; therefore one that is not used eventually disappears. Any characteristic of an organism that is improved through use is passed to its offspring. For example, a giraffe stretches its neck to reach food. This means that the neck gets longer because it is used a lot and that the offspring inherit its long neck. Lamarck was the first biologist to propose a mechanism for evolution – he proposed that organisms acquired features as they needed them (amazingdiscoveries.org). Additionally, other animals, such as kangaroos, have forelimbs that are short because they don’t use them as much as their legs or tail. The transformation theory suggests that the current generation can possess certain traits

Many scientists believe variations are caused by environmental factors, such as food availability, weather and more; and that species evolve when environmental conditions change to increase the species survival. Darwin censures this idea; he believed that the main cause of variation is due to reproduction (Chapter I). Darwin suggested that parents pass down specific characteristics to their offspring, and those variations are continued on in the following generations. The problem with Darwin’s theory of reproduction is that Darwin did not comprehend how or why some characteristics are perennial and how others are not. Darwin’s inferences on variations also conflict with the idea that God created species independently, which was widely understood by many people in a time where religion was prominent (Chapter II).

This stated that evolutionary changes within organisms were caused by environmental factors, and would then modify their behavior. According to Lamarck, the changes in traits could be hereditarily passed from one generation to the next, creating a constant change over time for the species. Stating the prospect of natural selection, Lamarck’s theories paralleled Darwin’s; only Lamarck came up with his theories way before Darwin ("Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829)”).

Jean-Baptist Lamarck quite clearly contributed a lot to the study of evolution. Arguably, his biggest publication was a book called Philosophie Zoologique. In this book Lamarckianism was introduced. This stated, in simple terms, That as an organisms environment changed the organism responded and changed with it to be able to survive better. Along with Lamarckianism he introduced his first and second laws. The first law stated that as animals adapted their need for certain organs increased or decreased then the organ would grow or shrink. His second law stated that all changes or adaptions were heritable.

Numerous naturalists and scientistss held what now appear to us to be semi-magical hypotheses, for example, interior drives to change or flawlessness large portions of them upheld Lamarckian perspectives up until the 1930. In his exemplary history of cutting edge science, The Edge of Objectivity, Charles Coulston Gillispie cites the main student of history of science in 1929, Erik Nordenskiold, as expressing that the recommendation that common determination does not work in the structure envisioned by Darwin should unquestionably be taken as demonstrated. The book Evolutioning the Light of Modern Knowledge, an abstract of expositions by 13 driving British scholars, distributed by Blackie and Son in 1925 to give a legitimate explanation about the principle of evolution...after the general change of basic hypotheses in the previous 20 years has no file reference to normal

French naturalist Jean Baptiste Lamarck was the first to propose the idea that plants and animals changed over time to adapt to the environment and increase survival. He believed that the changes in form of plans and animals passed down to their offspring, this idea he called Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characteristics (Lamarckism). A well-known example for Lamarckism is the giraffe and their long necks. According to Lamarck, giraffes stretched their neck to reach high branches to get food over a long period of time which resulted to the development of elongated necks, then they passed the elongated necks to their offspring.

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1755-1829) is one of the best-known early evolutionists, holding a belief that evolution was a continuous development and strived toward greater complexity and perfection. Through which, his theory of evolution was that living organisms evolved in a unceasingly up ward direction, from dead matter, through simple to more complex forms and towards human “perfection” (Nesci.edu, 2015). From his theories of Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics; where organisms adapt to their environments and those changes were passed onto their off springs (Corbis, 2001), to his theories of Use and Disuse, where organisms that are not used progressively disappear (Evolution.berkeley.edu, 2015). Lamarck was the first biologist to publish