MY TALE:

I, Charles Robert Darwin born 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882 am an English naturalist, geologist and biologist, widely known for my contributions to evolutionary biology. my proposition that all species of life have descended from a common ancestor is now generally accepted and considered a fundamental concept in science. In a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace, I introduced my scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that I called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding. I have also been described as one of the most influential figures in human history and was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey.

Puzzled by the geographical distribution of wildlife and fossils I collected on the voyage, and I began detailed investigations and, in 1838, devised my theory of natural selection. Although I discussed my ideas with several naturalists, I needed time for extensive research, and my geological work had priority. I was writing up my theory in 1858 when Alfred Russel Wallace sent me an essay that described the same idea, prompting immediate joint submission of both our theories to the Linnean Society of London. My work established evolutionary descent with modification as the dominant scientific explanation of diversification in nature.] In 1871, I examined human evolution and sexual selection in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, followed by The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). My research on plants was published in a series of books, and in my final book, The Formation of Vegetable Mould, through the Actions of Worms (1881), I examined earthworms and their effect on soil.

I then decided to publish my theory of evolution with compelling evidence in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species. By the 1870s, the scientific community and a majority of the educated public had accepted evolution as a fact. However, many favoured competing explanations that gave only a minor role to natural selection, and it was not until the emergence of the modern evolutionary synthesis from the 1930s to the 1950s that a broad consensus developed in which natural selection was the basic mechanism of evolution. My scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining the diversity of life.

I was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, on 12 February 1809, at my family's home, The Mount. I am the fifth of six children of wealthy society doctor and financier Robert Darwin and Susannah Darwin (née Wedgwood). My grandfathers Erasmus Darwin and Josiah Wedgwood were both prominent abolitionists. Erasmus Darwin had praised general concepts of evolution and common descent in his Zoonomia (1794), a poetic fantasy of gradual creation including undeveloped ideas anticipating concepts my grandfather expanded.

Both our families were largely Unitarian, though the Wedgwoods were adopting Anglicanism. My father, a freethinker, had me baptised in November 1809 in the Anglican St Chad's Church, Shrewsbury, but my siblings and I attended the local Unitarian Church with our mother. By the age of eight, I already had a taste for natural history and collecting when I joined the day school run by its preacher in 1817. That July, my mother died. From September 1818, I joined my older brother Erasmus in attending the nearby Anglican Shrewsbury School as a boarder.

I spent the summer of 1825 as an apprentice doctor, helping my father treat the poor of Shropshire, before going to the well-regarded University of Edinburgh Medical School with my brother Erasmus in October 1825. I found lectures dull and surgery distressing, so I neglected my studies. I learned taxidermy in around 40 daily hour-long sessions from John Edmonstone, a freed black slave who had accompanied Charles Waterton in the South American rainforest.

In my second year at the university, I joined the Plinian Society, a student natural-history group featuring lively debates in which radical democratic students with materialistic views challenged orthodox religious concepts of science. I assisted Robert Edmond Grant's investigations of the anatomy and life cycle of marine invertebrates in the Firth of Forth, and on 27 March 1827 presented at the Plinian my own discovery that black spores found in oyster shells were the eggs of a skate leech. One day, Grant praised Lamarck's evolutionary ideas. I was astonished by Grant's audacity, but had recently read similar ideas in my grandfather Erasmus' journals. I was rather bored by Robert Jameson's natural-history course, which covered geology—including the debate between neptunism and plutonism. I learned the classification of plants and assisted with work on the collections of the University Museum, one of the largest museums in Europe at the time.

My neglect of medical studies annoyed my father, who sent me to Christ's College, Cambridge, in January 1828, to study for a Bachelor of Arts degree as the first step towards becoming an Anglican country parson. I was unqualified for Cambridge's Tripos exams and was required instead to join the ordinary degree course. I preferred riding and shooting to studying.

During the first few months of my enrolment at Christ's College, my second cousin William Darwin Fox was still studying there. Fox impressed me with his butterfly collection, introducing me to entomology and influencing me to pursue beetle collecting. I did this zealously and had some of my finds published in James Francis Stephens' Illustrations of British entomology (1829–1932).

I had to stay at Cambridge until June 1831. I studied Paley's Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (first published in 1802), which made an argument for divine design in nature, explaining adaptation as God acting through laws of nature. I read John Herschel's new book, Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1831), which described the highest aim of natural philosophy as understanding such laws through inductive reasoning based on observation, and Alexander von Humboldt's Personal Narrative of scientific travels in 1799–1804. Inspired with "a burning zeal" to contribute, I planned to visit Tenerife with some classmates after graduation to study natural history in the tropics. In preparation, I joined Adam Sedgwick's geology course, then on 4 August travelled with him to spend a fortnight mapping strata in Wales.

The term "Social Darwinism" was seldom used until around the 1890s but gained popularity as a derogatory term in the 1940s when Richard Hofstadter used it to criticize the laissez-faire conservatism of individuals like William Graham Sumner, who opposed reform and socialism. Since then, it has been employed as a term of abuse by those who oppose what they perceive to be the moral consequences of evolution.

As a prolific writer, I would have had a considerable reputation even without the publication of my works on evolution. "The Voyage of the Beagle" established me as an author, while my extensive geological publications on South America and the resolution of the puzzle of coral atolls solidified my reputation as a geologist. My definitive work on barnacles further underscored my status as a biologist. Although "On the Origin of Species" is most commonly associated with my work, "The Descent of Man" and "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals" had significant impacts. Additionally, my innovative studies on plants, including "The Power of Movement in Plants," were of great importance, as was my final work on "The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms."









Also I love boobies :)