The Private Notes of Darwin.

April 16th, 2008 · 1 Comment

There is some exciting news around one of the most well known men in history.

(Excuse me while I geek out for a minute)

The son of Robert Darwin and Susannah Wedgwood, Charles Robert Darwin was born in The Mount located in Shrewsbury, England two days before Valentines Day in 1809. He developed a keen interest in natural history while being educated at the Edinburgh University for medicine then studied theology at Cambridge University. In 1831 he joined the crew of the H.M.S. Beagle under captain Robert FitzRoy (who was a pioneer in weather forecasting) where he made the ship one of the most famous in history by serving as a naturalist on a science expedition.

Stay with me, the news is ground breaking.

Darwin believe that all life on earth evolved over time from a few common ancestors and upon the 5 year world expedition on the Beagle he further developed these theories. He collected fossils in South America and noted that they shared a likeness to modern species. On the Galapagos Islands he observed both the similarities and the differences that existed amongst the plants and animals, and how those same characteristics were present in South American species. Everywhere he went he collected specimens for further study. His conclusions:

Evolution did occur
Evolutionary change was gradual and happened over thousands to millions of years
Natural selection was the primary mechanism for evolution
Speciation was the process by which millions of species came from a single original life form

His theory of evolutionary selection says that change randomly occurs within species and that the survival of a species depends on the organism’s ability to adapt to its environment. In 1859 he put forth these theories in his booked named “On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.”

DRUM ROLL PLEASE.

Today, for the first time ever, all of Charles Darwin’s personal notes (taken on the Beagle), his first drafts of theories, his wife’s personal recipe book (including her Ilkley pudding’ recipe), family photographs and much more will be published on the Internet for all to see…for free. Most of this information has been held hostage at the Cambridge University Library since 1942 and the rest has been in private collections throughout the world. To drive the point home…

**This is the largest collection of works ever published online**

And slightly off topic: December 4th, 2007 a teacher in Texas was expelled over failing to remain neutral on Creationism – Teacher Expelled Over Religion. What do ya’ll think of that?

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