Influence of Charles Darwin

The intent in the following pages is to briefly explore Darwin's work and world view in order to understand both the revolutionary nature of his views at the time they were promulgated and the continuing controversy about those views.

Charles Darwin was very much a product of his times. He was born in England in 1809 and raised in a wealthy, protective family. He was not forced to work for his living and was able to be somewhat of an intellectual dilettante during his early life. This enabled him to gain the kind of intellectual background that was to serve him well on his voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle and in pulling together the diversity of information in the natural history and scientific realm that served as the foundation for his theory.

Darwin also seemed to be something of a hypochondriac during his youth, with his palpitations and fear that he would have a heart attack. His inability to focus on one particular thing, before the

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tly challenged the idea that there had been a number of separate creations, as was set forth in the Hebrew Bible and accepted by Christianity as revelatory. Instead, he contended that the species were interdependent and had evolved from predecessor species over long periods of time. In both scientific and cultural terms, it was his concept of evolution that proved to be the most discussed during his lifetime. His theorizing about the role of natural selection was relatively ignored. The argument focused squarely on whether or not human beings, in particular, were the created product of a benevolent and controlling God, or whether they were simply representatives of a natural, and impersonal, process of evolution. Interestingly enough, Stephen Gould (1994) indicated that part of the problem that resulted from Darwin's work was because Darwin was unwilling to discuss his theory in more palatable, and speciessaving, terms. He did not talk about human beings as at the top of a progressive hierarchy, nor discuss evolution in terms of the ongoing growth of potential in creation. As Gould noted, Darwin did not even like the term evolution, with its connotations of progress. Instead, he favored the concept of the descent of man th
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Approximate Word count = 1557
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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