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The birth of evolution
Charles Darwin is the father of the modern theory of evolution. His work on natural selection paved the way for the shift from the creation theory to evolution. Darwin was not tied down by his loyalty to any church because he was agnostic and therefore he was more free to think and hypothesis without any worry for repercussion from the church. -
College years
Darwin's father was a doctor and decided to first try and get Charles to follow in his footsteps. While at school, Darwin was not particularly enthused about medicine. He did do some marine biology work while he was there but his father eventually switched him to a different school where he worked hard at a Bachelor of Arts degree. -
Voyage of the Beagle
The first voyage Darwin traveled was on the HMS Beagle, a ship captained by Reverent John Stevens Henslow. On this journey they were going to be heading to coastal Patagonia. -
Galapagos Islands
This first trip was completely unspectacular for him. He didn't collect any specimen and didn't make any discoveries, except that the islands seemed to have distinct races. -
Darwin begins to put it all together
As Gould discovered the Galopagos finches were different and that the mockingbirds were three species, Darwin started to question and formulate how the finches had all diverged from one. He had to largely keep his thoughts to himself because the world was still run by religion. He would have lost all credibility and been seen as a heratic had he publically talked about his theories. -
Natural Selection
While still trying to work out his thoughts in private so that he wouldn't be shamed in public he came across a work by Thomas Malthus that shaped his view on natural selection. According to Britannica," Darwin called his modified Malthusian mechanism "natural selection."" Britanica goes on to say that his theory was basically that the one who wins endures and passes on their traits to the next generation.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-Darwin/images-videos -
Natural Selection first goes public
Fearing another scientist was going to beat him to the punch, Darwin had some colleagues do the first public reading of his theories. This theory was, the the strongest and best traits were the ones that got passed on and that different branches of species occured because specialization was needed in different areas. Lastly he said that each new generation was still imperfect.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-Darwin/images-videos -
Darwinism
As more scientists and society started to accept Darwins theories on evolution to be true a paradigm shift happened. This shift and theory were significant to the psychology of science because it shaped how we talk about evolution today. Before this shift most people clung to their religious views of creation, but this theory really shaped what we understand of evolution.
