Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin is the most important scientist in the history of biology and one of the most consequential thinkers in the history of human civilisation. His theory of evolution by natural selection — proposed in On the Origin of Species (1859) and extended to humanity in The Descent of Man (1871) — is the unifying principle of the life sciences, the framework within which all of modern biology, ecology, genetics, and medicine operates. But Darwin was also a superb writer — a prose stylist of patient, accumulative power whose books are among the finest works of English nonfiction — and a thinker whose intellectual courage in following evidence wherever it led, regardless of the social and religious consequences, remains the model of scientific integrity.

Shrewsbury and the Beagle

Charles Robert Darwin was born in 1809 in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, the son of Robert Waring Darwin, a prosperous physician, and Susannah Wedgwood, daughter of the potter Josiah Wedgwood. His grandfather Erasmus Darwin had been a physician, poet, and proto-evolutionary thinker whose Zoonomia (1794) speculated about the transmutation of species.

Darwin was an indifferent student at Shrewsbury School and at Edinburgh, where he briefly studied medicine. His father sent him to Christ’s College, Cambridge, to study for the clergy — but at Cambridge Darwin fell under the influence of the botanist John Stevens Henslow and the geologist Adam Sedgwick, who redirected his intellectual energies toward natural history. It was Henslow who recommended Darwin for the position of naturalist aboard HMS Beagle, which departed in December 1831 on a five-year surveying voyage that would take Darwin around the world and transform him from an enthusiastic amateur into the most original scientific mind of his age.

The Beagle voyage (1831–1836) took Darwin to South America, the Galápagos Islands, Australia, and the coral atolls of the Pacific. His observations of the geographical distribution of species — particularly the finches and tortoises of the Galápagos, each island possessing its own distinct but clearly related forms — planted the seed of his theory. Journal of Researches (1839), published as The Voyage of the Beagle, was his account of the journey — a masterpiece of travel writing and scientific observation that established his literary reputation.

On the Origin of Species

Darwin developed his theory of natural selection in the late 1830s but did not publish it for over twenty years — a delay that has been attributed to scientific caution, fear of controversy, and awareness of the theory’s implications for religion and social order. He was finally compelled to publish when Alfred Russel Wallace independently conceived a similar theory in 1858. Their ideas were jointly presented to the Linnean Society, and Darwin rushed to complete On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859).

The book’s argument was simple in outline and devastating in its implications. Organisms vary; variations are heritable; more organisms are born than can survive; those whose variations are best suited to their environment are more likely to survive and reproduce; over immense periods of time, this process — natural selection — produces the diversity of life. The theory explained adaptation, speciation, extinction, and the patterns of geographical distribution that Darwin had observed on the Beagle voyage.

The Origin was an immediate bestseller — the first printing of 1,250 copies sold out on the day of publication — and provoked the most intense intellectual controversy of the Victorian era. The theological implications were clear: if species were produced by natural selection rather than divine creation, then the argument from design — the most widely accepted proof of God’s existence — collapsed.

The Descent of Man

The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871) extended the theory of evolution to humanity — the subject Darwin had deliberately avoided in the Origin. The book argued that humans had descended from ape-like ancestors through the same process of natural selection that had produced all other species, and it introduced the theory of sexual selection — the idea that many features of organisms (the peacock’s tail, the stag’s antlers, the human capacity for music and art) were produced not by natural selection for survival but by competition for mates.

The Later Works

Darwin’s later career was devoted to a remarkable series of specialised studies that demonstrated the reach and explanatory power of evolutionary theory. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) was a pioneering work of comparative psychology. Insectivorous Plants (1875) documented the carnivorous habits of sundews and Venus flytraps. The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms (1881) — his last book — was a charming study of earthworms that demonstrated their role in soil formation. Each of these apparently minor works served a larger purpose: they showed that evolutionary theory could illuminate every aspect of the living world, from the psychology of facial expression to the ecology of soil.

Collecting Darwin

Darwin first editions are among the most valuable books in the history of science. On the Origin of Species (John Murray, 1859) is one of the most sought-after books in the world — fine copies of the first issue (with “speceies” misspelled on page 20) command six-figure prices at auction. The Descent of Man (John Murray, 1871, two volumes) is also highly collected. The Voyage of the Beagle (Henry Colburn, 1839, three volumes as part of FitzRoy’s Narrative) is collected in its various editions. Darwin’s notebooks, correspondence, and manuscripts are held primarily at Cambridge University Library.