Celebrity story

It seems purely accidental that history chose Darwin as the founder of biological science. 1809 Charles Darwin, born in a wealthy doctor's family in February, was an idle dude when he was young, not a genius with a historical mission. His father once accused him: "you don't care about anything but hunting, playing with dogs and catching mice." You will be a disgrace to yourself and your whole family. " Of course, he was very keen on collecting specimens of minerals and insects at this time, but this is a common hobby of boys, and there is nothing special about it, although we can now think that his future scientific research is a continuation of his childhood interest. 1in the autumn of 825, old Darwin was going to let his son inherit the mantle and send him to Edinburgh Medical College. Unfortunately, little Darwin had no interest in medicine, and what was more fatal was that he was too fragile to face the blood dripping on the operating table. Two years later, I had to drop out of medical school. Being a doctor is impossible, and being a priest is also a decent profession. Darwin obeyed his father's orders and went to Cambridge to study theology. Although he is not interested in theology, I'm afraid he spends much more time hunting and collecting beetle specimens than his studies, but he finally graduated from 183 1 and is going to be a country priest for the rest of his life.

When Darwin looked back on his life in his later years, he thought that all his so-called higher education was a complete waste. He finds formal courses boring and never learns anything. But over the years, he met a group of excellent naturalists in his spare time and received their scientific training. His talent in natural history has also been appreciated by these naturalists. 183 1 year, when botanist j·s· Henslow was asked to recommend a young naturalist to take part in the voyage around the world on the beagle, he recommended Darwin. Darwin's father strongly opposed his son's participation in sailing, believing that it would delay his son's development in theology. Under Darwin's repeated entreaties, Old Darwin finally gave in and said that he could go if he could find a respectable person to support him. Darwin found his uncle and future father-in-law to convince his father, and fortunately passed the interview of Captain R. Fitzroy, who is famous for his harshness. 183 1 At the end, he set sail with the Beagle, passing through the Atlantic Ocean, South America and the Pacific Ocean, and inspected geology, animals and plants along the way. Along the way, Darwin made a lot of observation notes, collected countless specimens and shipped them back to England, which provided first-hand information for his future research. Five years later, the Beagle circled the earth and returned to England.

Darwin was a theological graduate and an Orthodox when he set foot on the Beagle, and his piety was often teased by sailors. But when he returned to England, in his view, the Old Testament was just an "obviously false world history", and its reliability was not higher than that of the Hindu holy book. He completely abandoned the Christian faith and gradually became a skeptic or rationalist who did not believe in the existence of God. His starting point was to doubt the belief that "all living things were created by God".

When sailing around the world, there are three sets of facts that make Darwin unable to accept the preaching of creationism: one is the continuity of biological species. He dug up some extinct armadillo fossils in South America, almost the same as the surviving armadillo bones, but much larger. In his view, it can be considered that today's armadillos evolved from this extinct armadillo. Second, the existence of endemic species. When he crossed the South American prairie, he noticed that one kind of ostrich was gradually replaced by another kind of ostrich. Although different, this kind of ostrich was very similar. Each region has different and similar endemic species, which is not so much the result of God's creation as the result of the evolution of the same ancestor in a geographically isolated state. Third, it is evidence from ocean islands. He compared the biota of Cape Verde Islands in Africa and Galapagos Islands in South America. The geographical environment of the two islands is similar. If creatures were created by God, it is reasonable to create similar biological groups in similar geographical environments, but the biological groups of the two islands are very different. The biota of Cape Verde Islands is actually closer to the African continent near it. Obviously, it should be taken into account that the creatures on the island come from the African continent and have gradually changed. This evolutionary process is more obvious in the Galapagos Islands. Darwin found that the islands that make up this archipelago have their own unique turtles, lizards and finches, although their environments are similar. There is no reason to think that God deliberately created these unique species on an island. More reasonably, it should be considered that these unique species evolved from the same ancestor under geographical isolation.

1837, one year after the Beagle sailed, Darwin began to study evolution in secret. His first pile of notes is the variation of animals and plants in domestic and natural environments. He studied all possible materials: personal observations and experiments, other people's papers, communication with biologists at home and abroad, conversations with gardeners and breeders, etc. And soon came to the conclusion that the variation of domestic animals and plants is caused by careful selection of people. But how did the variation in the natural environment come from? He still doesn't know. A year later, he read Malthus's Population Theory in his spare time. Malthus believes that the growth of population is bound to be faster than the growth of means of subsistence, which will inevitably lead to poverty and competition for means of subsistence. Darwin suddenly realized that Malthus' theory could also be applied to biology. The reproductive speed of all living things increases exponentially, and the number of offspring is quite amazing, but the number of a biological group is relatively stable, which shows that only a few offspring can survive, and there is bound to be competition for resources. Darwin further deduced that individuals of any species are different and have variations. These variations may be neutral, and may also affect the viability, leading to the strength of individual viability. In the competition for survival, individuals with strong viability can produce more offspring, races can reproduce, and their genetic traits gradually gain advantages in quantity, while individuals with weak viability are gradually eliminated, which is called "survival of the fittest". As a result, biological species gradually changed because they adapted to the environment. Darwin called this process natural selection.

So in Darwin's view, the origin of giraffe is not the result of recycling, but the variation of long neck in giraffe ancestors. When the environment changes and food is scarce, giraffes with long necks have survival advantages because they can eat the tall leaves on the trees. As a result of selection from generation to generation, the characteristics of long neck spread in the group, and a new species of giraffe was born.

Although Darwin was inspired by reading Population Theory and immediately came up with the idea of natural selection, it was not until four years later that he began to record this theory and sent the manuscript to some friends for advice after collecting a lot of information. He knows very well what kind of shock his theory will bring to society once it is published. As a peace-loving person, this is what he wants to avoid, so he left a will, and his manuscript on evolution can only be published after his death.

But in the summer of 1858, Darwin received a letter from Wallace, forcing him to publish the theory of natural selection before he died. Wallace is a young biogeographer who is visiting the Malay Archipelago. Like Darwin, the geographical distribution characteristics of creatures he observed also prompted him to think about the evolution of creatures. In February of that year, he had an intermittent fever. In his illness, he suddenly thought of Malthus's "population theory", and thus independently discovered the theory of natural selection. He was born in poverty and was extremely opposed to Christianity. He doesn't have Darwin's worries as an upper-class person. Therefore, he spent three nights writing a paper demonstrating natural selection and sent it to Darwin for advice. He didn't know that Darwin had been studying evolution for twenty years at this time, and he discovered Darwin entirely because of his lofty position in biogeography. This position was established after Darwin completed the voyage of Beagle.

When Darwin read Wallace's paper and saw his theory appear in other people's works, his shock and frustration can be imagined. His first thought was to suppress his own achievements and let Wallace enjoy the honor alone. But his friends, geographer Ryle and botanist Hooke, have read his manuscript on natural selection. At their suggestion, Darwin compressed his manuscript into a paper and published it together with Wallace's paper in the Journal of Linnaean Society of 1859. These two papers did not cause much repercussions. It was also at the urging of Ryle and Hooke that Darwin published the Origin of Species in the same year (the length is only about one-third of the manuscript he had prepared for many years), which caused an uproar and conquered the scientific community.

Because the success of the Origin of Species may also be impressed by Darwin's personality and wisdom. Although Wallace and Darwin shared the honor of discovering the theory of natural selection, he always attributed this honor to Darwin and called the theory of natural selection "Darwinism"-a term that is still in use today.