Did you know that Charles Darwin was not the first to formulate the theory of evolution?
Darwin was influenced by Thomas Robert Malthus, Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck, Charles Lyell and Alfred Russel Wallace who anticipated the theory of evolution in their works. What made Charles Darwin theory unique?
Darwin demonstrated his theory
Darwin has the merit of demonstrating the theory of evolution.
Charles Darwin had collection of insects and he was interested in science as a child and his father thought he would never accomplish anything in life.
Pressed by his father who was a doctor , Darwin went to medical school at the University of Edinburgh; and he dropped out.
Darwin was supposed to be a parson
He went to study theology University of Cambridge (Christ’s College).
Darwin’s ideas about natural selection didn’t come while visiting the Galápagos Islands but he came up with the idea 20 years after.
Darwin described an earthquake in Chile and that helped him to realize how environment might change species.
Firstly his theory still cannot explain why some species appear or disappear abruptly.
Darwin was not an atheist
Darwin was not an atheist. He studied theology and because he was waiting to become a parson, he decided to take a trip until a parish became available for him. Above all Darwin was a Christian but after his daughter death he stopped going to church, but he continued to believe in God.
He was supernumerary on his Beagle trip, and his father founded his trip and Darwin was initially just a companion to Captain Robert FitzRoy on the HMS Beagle.
Alfred Russel Wallace is best known for independently conceiving the theory of evolution through natural selection; his paper on the subject was jointly published with some of Charles Darwin‘s writings in 1858. This prompted Darwin to publish On the Origin of Species.
Further study and recommended videos:
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/59/9/800/248702,
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