Founder of the modern evolution theory

Charles Robert Darwin, English scientist, justified the modern evolution theory with its explanation that the kind change and the emergence of new kinds are realized by natural selection. Its work affected biology and geology fundamentally and won also meaning for modern thinking.

Darwin was the fifth child of a wealthy and educated country doctor family. Its grandfather mütterlicherseits was a successful businessman, his paternal grandfather the well-known scientist Erasmus Darwin.

After a less successful school time Darwin in Edinburgh began to study medicine. After two years it had to break the study off. At the university in Cambridge it began to study theology (in preparation for becoming A clergyman OF the Church OF England). Here two important personalities met it: the geologist Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873) and the biologist John of Stevens Henslow (1795-1861).

Henslow helped Darwin to re-establish its fastened self-assurance and taught to it exact observation and pointed it on with the production of collections.

With 22 years Darwin locked its studies in Cambridge. The attractive offer was made for it - by the helpful switching of Henslow - to undertake with the English research ship HMS Beagle a voyage round the world.

During the five-year voyage round the world Darwin had the opportunity to examine geological formations of the different continents and numerous fossils and living animals. Which Darwin to most impressed, were the effects of the natural forces, which changed the earth's surface.

At this time most geologists were trailers of the disaster theory of Georges Cuvier, which should have destroyed different earlier partnerships. The recent disaster was according to this theory the Sintflut, which was to have away-rinsed the entire living world - except those animals, which in the ark Noahs was. For the Katastrophisten were the kinds individually create and unchangeably.

Sir Charles Lyell attacked this theory in its well-known two-restrained work “Principles OF Geology (1830-33)”. Lyell maintained, the earth's surface changes continuously by natural forces, this however very slowly and over is enough for time epochs. Darwin, which had also taken Lyells book on the Beagle, found that many of its observations agreed with Lyells hypotheses. He found fossils, which were very similar to the today's kinds. On different Galapagosinseln before the coast Equadors he observed finches and other birds (tortoise, mockingbird), which close was different related however - from island to island - in characteristics and eating habits. These two observations led it to the question whether become extinct and today living persons (rezente) were possibly related.

After Darwin had returned 1836 to England, he began to note its ideas over the changeableness of the kinds. An explanation for the kind change however he found only after the reading of an article of Thomas's Robert Malthus (at essay on the Principle OF population), to an English economist. After Malthus the human population increases more than the food basis increases. If the population excessively increases, then her downward adjusted by natural effects such as hunger emergencies and diseases or social effects such as wars.

Darwin took over immediately these thoughts and would apply it to plants and animals. Approximately in the year 1838 it had already outlined its theory of the evolutions by natural selection. In the next 20 years he worked on this thoughts and was occupied intensively with the anatomy and biology of groups of animals such as sea-smallpox.

1839 married Darwin its cousin Emma Wedgwood (1808-96) and lived with it in close proximity to London. It and its wife had ten children, three of them died in the childhood.

The coincidence wanted it that Alfred Russel Wallace, a far-traveled English biologist, Darwin sent a manuscript 1857 with the request for publication. This manuscript contained exactly the same thoughts, as it had already sketchily represented and in the desk had stored Darwin. The paper on Wallace as well as an edited version of Darwins Origin OF Species was submitted the Linnean Society. Darwin was recognized the authority of this thought. One year later articles appeared over the work of Darwin and Wallace. 1859 could publish Darwin a “edited version” of its Hauptwerks “on the Origin OF Species”. The book was already on the first day of its appearance out of print. Briefly successively six editions of this book appeared.

The reactions to the book Darwins were prompt. At the beginning much criticism, particularly from side of the church, those up to beginning 20. Century continued. After the Wiederentdeckung of the Mendel genetics however the soil for the Darwinismus was smoothed.

Darwin spent the remainder of its life to improve different details from the “Origin” and find examples of it. It published further works how: “The variation OF Animals and Plants Under Domestication (1868)”, “The the cent OF one (1871)”, and “The Expression OF the emotion in Animals and one (1872)”. Its contemporaries recognized the meaning Darwins. He was selected into the Royal Society (1839) and the French Academy OF Sciences (1878). It experienced a last honour by its funeral in the Westminster Abbey.

Darwin's theory

For the development of the evolution theory Darwins attendance on the Galapagos islands played an important role. At the time of the attendance of the Beagle only one was only of the islands inhabited. The population consisted almost exclusively of convicts and lay with approximately 200 persons “governed by at Englishman, Nicholas Lawson, in the name OF the state OF Ecuador. Whalers visited regularly tons obtain water and ton collect some OF the giant tortoises for food.”

Apart from the fact the islands were however completely left, which made them the ideal research object for Charles Darwin. For the development of the evolution theory it was besides of importance that the islands of the mainland represent far remote volcanic islands, which were reached in the course of history only by relatively few kinds. These few kinds differentiated themselves however on the individual islands of the archipelago and also within these islands strongly out.

Thus there is another race on the Galapagos islands for each island the giant turtle test Udo elephantopus, which developed its own form of the back tank in each case. Even 13 different kinds developed from that finches, which became to strike thousands of years ago from South America on the Galapagosinseln. These today after Charles Darwin designated “Darwin finches” in the course of the time different life ways and - to vacate had optimally adapted. The colors of the finches differ just like the forms of their bills, which are adapted to the consumption by insects, berries or the Stochern in barks.

A similar discovery had before already made Darwin on the Falklandinseln before the east coast Patagoniens, which it had visited in March 1833 and in March 1834 with the Beagle “where foxes were found ton more differ between Iceland in small but significant ways” (BOWLBY, 1990)
Late often tradierte romantic conception, Darwin on the Galapagosinseln the evolution theory “would have invented”, does not correspond reliably not to the reality. It still lasted not in vain over twenty years after its return to England, until it presented this innovative theory in its work “on the Origin OF species by to Means OF Natural Selection” of the public. On the Galapagosinseln Darwin could develop however still no theory, “but he which raising some radical questions.” (BOWLBY, 1990)

During the next twenty years Darwin developed the “evolution theory” with the help of the recordings, whose short summary must probably contain the following points:
Darwin states that “the kinds were modified during a long Deszendenzreihe. This was caused mainly by the natural breed choice more numerously, successively arising, insignificant favorable alterations, in significant way supported by the left effects of the use and nonusage of Theilen, and, in a comparatively insignificant kind, i.e. regarding Adaptibildungen, much whether current or earlier by the direct effect of outside conditions and that appearing our ignorance than spontaneous occurrence of alterations.” (DARWIN, 1988)

Darwin, in particular however its followers saw the constant competition, the constant fight of all individuals within a kind around the optimum ecological adjustment and the fight between the kinds for the actual engine of the evolution.
Darwin assumes that that “the structure of each organic thing stands on the most substantial, but often hidden way to the all other organic natures in relationship, with which it into Concurrenz around food or dwelling comes, or before which it has to flee, or of which it lives.” (DARWIN, 1988) and this competition is now evenly for Darwin the Hauptmotor for the evolution.
With its later, second Hauptwerk “Darwin already partly transferred the descent of humans and the sexual breed choice” these theses to humans.

From excellently three in the following specified natural conditions new kinds can form after Darwin during a continuous process.

- Variability of the individuals of a population, who are genetically fixed
- Descendant surplus
- Natural selection of the fittest

Darwin assumed that evolution took place, that means the today living kinds were not created together at a certain time.
Darwin interpreted the gradated similarities between the organisms as voucher for a common descent (Deszendenz).
Darwin assumed the evolution in small steps ran off and that no jumps arose.
Darwin tried to show that in the course of the time natures developed, which did not give it before yet.
For Darwin the selection was the main mechanism, which made an evolution possible, as it introduced itself her.

Criticism at the darwinian theory

If this criticism at Darwin became meanwhile also completely insignificant in this country by the progressive secularization of Europe, then that means not that she would have completely disappeared. In particular in the USA - with its strong fundamentalischen Stömungen in the evangelikalen churches and own “Christian universities” - the evolution theory Darwins is not yet by any means socially recognized scientific standard. Duane T. Gish, which had studied institutes on the university of California in Berkeley biochemistry and today one of the directors “for of the Creation Research” and professor at the Christian Heritage college is in San Diego, could for instance in one also on German appeared book after long papers over fossil finds and the “precipitous occurrence of new kinds to close: ” `In the beginning God created. `is still the most modern statement, which can be made over our origin! “(GISH, 1982)

Substantially more serious objections come from theoretician inside and science gutters, which do not question the general evolution theory, speak the development of all life from a common origin affirm, but the motivations and rules of the changes like it Darwin accepts, reject.

Thus there are today for instance objections that itself at complicated organs, as, not only an individual organ can change for the human eyes appropriately, but numerous characteristics to change at the same time and in the same direction to have. Also it is disputed whether as a result of small, gradual mutations arise the emergence of new kinds or from precipitous macro mutations.

The motivations and drives for the evolution, like it Darwin, and/or which accept DarwinistInnen, also the Russian Anarchist and universal scholar question Peter Kropotkin. In its reports for the first time 1902 published book “mutual assistance in the animal and people world” Kropotkin of its journeys in Siberia, on which he, although he paid attention “emsig to it, do not discover that embittered fight for the means of subsistence between animals, which belong to the same kind, [could]. And it was this fight, that on the part of most Darwinisten - under no circumstances however constant of Darwin themselves - as the typical characteristic of the fight for the existence and as main factor of the development was regarded.” (KROPOTKIN, 1975)

Kropotkin sees the fit test” in this combat writing against the Sozialdarwinismus not “suvival to the OF as engine of the evolution, but states that the “mutual assistance represents an important progressive element of the evolution” (KROPOTKIN, 1975)
Independently of whether now however the theses Darwins for the animal and plant world validity can stress or not, appear it me importantly that they may not raise under any circumstances the requirement, to be valid also in the range of human societies. Humans are evenly not only a nature, but a nature with culture, determined by its biology, consciousness, reflection ability and society. As such it can take its history into the hand and form its society in such a way, as it wants to have it now once.
Who regards thus a society “survival of the OF the fit test” as natural, thereby no statement about the condition of the world, but about that society in reality, which would like to have he/they, makes.

On the Origin of Species (1859): online