Alvin's enthusiastic suggestion was not adopted. /kloc-at the end of 0/0, The Origin of Species-Natural Elimination or the Preservation of Excellent Race in Survival Competition was officially published, and each book was priced at 15 shilling. The first edition sold 1250 copies on the first day, and has never been out of print since then, and the controversy caused by it has never stopped. For a person who likes earthworms to the utmost extent, if he didn't travel around the world on impulse, he would probably be an unknown country priest all his life. This is really a great thing.
Charles robert darwin1February, 809 12 was born in Shrewsbury, a quiet town west of central England. His father is a respected doctor, and his mother is the daughter of Josia Weitzwood, a famous ceramic family. She died when Darwin was only eight years old.
Darwin had excellent living conditions since he was a child, but his academic performance was mediocre, which made his widowed father miserable. "You don't care about anything but shooting, playing with dogs and catching mice. You will lose the face of yourself and your family. " His father once wrote. When looking back on Charles' childhood, he almost always quotes this sentence from his father. Although Darwin was interested in natural history, at his father's insistence, he reluctantly went to the University of Edinburgh to study medicine. But he fainted at the sight of blood, and he was highly nervous when he encountered the pain of the patient. Once, he witnessed a child's operation with his own eyes, and the horror of the child screaming at the top of his lungs-anesthetic had not been invented at that time-caused pain to his spirit that could never be erased. He tried to transfer to law major, but soon found the subject extremely boring, which really made him unbearable. In the end, he didn't get a theological degree from Cambridge University.
A village priest's career seems to be waiting for him ahead, and at this moment, a more attractive opportunity suddenly appeared in front of him. Robert fitzroy, the captain of the navy probe ship Beagle, invited Darwin to go sailing with him-fitzroy's identity determined that he had to associate with educated people-in fact, he was the captain's deskmate. Fitzroy is very eccentric. He chose Darwin because he liked the shape of his nose. He thinks this is the embodiment of strong character. ) Darwin was not fitzroy's first choice, but he finally got his approval because his favorite candidate ran away. From today's perspective, the most striking similarity between the two people is that they are both young. When they set out, fitzroy was only 23 years old and Darwin was only 22 years old.
Fitzroy's main task is to draw a map of coastal waters, but his hobby-in fact, he is extremely enthusiastic-is to find evidence for the word that God created man described in the Bible. Darwin had received theological training, which was the main reason why fitzroy decided to let him go with him. However, Darwin later not only showed liberal views, but also did not wholeheartedly pursue Christian teachings, which became the root of the constant conflict between them.
Darwin stayed on the Beagle from 183 1 until 1836. Obviously, this is not only a great opportunity for him to gain experience, but also a trip full of hardships and tribulations. He and Captain fitzroy huddled in a small cabin, which was probably not an easy thing, because fitzroy often lost his temper and then gnashed his teeth, and they often quarreled. Darwin later recalled that this quarrel sometimes almost reached the "edge of madness." Even in the best of circumstances, ocean voyage is often a boring thing-the former captain of the Beagle ended his life with a bullet pointed at his head in loneliness and sadness-fitzroy came from a famous family suffering from depression. 10 years ago, his uncle Viscount Castlereagh cut his throat with a knife when he was the British Chancellor of the Exchequer. (1885, fitzroy committed suicide in the same way. ) Even when he was emotionally stable, fitzroy was unreasonable. Just after their voyage, fitzroy married a young woman whom he had admired for a long time, which surprised Darwin, because during the five years they lived together, fitzroy never showed his admiration once, and he never even mentioned her name.
However, in all other respects, the voyage of the Beagle was a successful journey. The adventurous spirit exercised by Darwin in ocean voyage runs through his life, during which he collected a large number of specimens for his life, thus establishing his reputation. He discovered many very precious large paleontological fossils, including the most complete genus ground sloth so far; In Chile, he experienced an almost fatal earthquake; He also discovered a new kind of dolphin (he respectfully named it fitzroy Dolphin); He made a detailed and useful geological survey of the entire Andes and put forward a new theory on the genesis of coral reefs. In this highly respected theory, he proposed that coral reefs could not have been formed in 6.5438+0 million years-in particular, this is the first time he revealed that he always thought that the evolution of life on earth was extremely ancient. 1836, Darwin returned to his hometown after leaving his hometown for five years and two days. At this time, he was 27 years old and he had never left England.
Darwin did not put forward the theory of evolution (or any theory) during his ocean exploration. Evolution, as a concept, has existed for decades from 65438 to 1930s. Before Darwin was born, Erasmus, Darwin's grandfather, gave sincere praise to the theory of evolution in a low-level poem called the Temple of Nature. It was not until the young Darwin returned to England and read thomas malthus's "Population Theory" (that the arithmetically increased food supply could never satisfy the geometrically increased population) that the concept of evolution began to sprout in his mind. He realized that life is a continuous competitive process, and natural selection determines the prosperity of some species and the decline of some species. More specifically, Darwin observed that all living things are competing for resources, and those born with advantages will thrive and pass on this advantage to future generations. In this way, the species has been continuously improved.
This seems to be a simple point of view-it is indeed a very simple point of view, but it explains too many problems, and Darwin is ready to devote his life to this theory. When reading the Origin of Species, T.H. Huxley once shouted, "How could I be so stupid that I didn't think of it!" "Since then, this kind of exclamation has been there.
Interestingly, in all Darwin's works, he did not use the word "survival of the fittest" (although he really appreciated the word sincerely). It was created by herbert spencer in his book Principles of Biology in 1864, five years after the publication of the Origin of Species. Darwin did not use the word "evolution" (which was widely used at that time and had great temptation), but used "gradual change of offspring" instead. It was not until the sixth printing of On the Origin of Species that he began to use this word. More importantly, when he was in the Galapagos Islands, his conclusion was by no means inspired by the diversity of effective tongue thrush's mouth. Generally speaking (at least in the memory of many of us), Darwin noticed that the effective tongue thrush on each island is very suitable for using local resources-the effective tongue thrush on an island has a short and powerful mouth and is suitable for pecking nuts; On the next island, tongue thrush may have a long, sharp mouth, which is suitable for pecking corn and snails in the crevices of rocks-it is this phenomenon that makes him start to think that maybe these birds are not born this way, but to some extent they are caused by themselves.
In fact, birds did create themselves, but it was not Darwin who noticed this. On the voyage with the Beagle, Darwin was a freshman, not a trained naturalist, so he didn't notice that all the birds in the Galapagos Islands belonged to the same type. It was John Gould, a friend of Darwin's and an ornithologist, who realized that Darwin had discovered only a mockingbird with different abilities. Unfortunately, due to lack of experience, Darwin didn't notice which island of the Galapagos Islands these birds came from. He made the same mistake when observing the tortoise. It took him years to clean up this mess.
Due to such negligence, it is also necessary to classify the boxes of specimens brought back by the Beagle. It was not until 1842 that Darwin finally drafted the prototype of his new theory in the fifth year after returning to England. Two years later, he further expanded his new theory into a 230-page "summary". Then, he made an amazing move: he threw his notes aside and spent 15 years busy with other things. He became the father of 10 children and spent nearly 8 years writing a detailed book about barnacles. ("I hate barnacles more than anyone before." After work, he sighed and said. That's understandable. He has a strange disease, often listless, dizzy and "upset", he said himself. It is not surprising that he often feels nausea, unbalanced heart rate, migraine, extreme fatigue, shaking all over, seeing stars, shortness of breath, "light-headed" and extremely depressed.
The cause of his illness has not been decided. There are many speculations, but the most unfounded and probable is that he suffers from a tropical chronic disease, namely Xia Jiaer's disease. He may have been bitten by trypanosoma, a parasite in South America, and contracted the disease. A more realistic statement is physical and mental illness. No matter what kind of disease, the pain is self-evident. He often can only work continuously for no more than twenty minutes, sometimes even less.
In the rest of his life, Darwin tried a series of increasingly desperate treatments-cold water bath, vinegar bubble and electrotherapy. The last time caused him to suffer a slight electric shock. He has almost become a hermit and rarely leaves his home in Kent. The first move after moving is to set up a mirror outside the study window, so that he can find it in advance and avoid visitors if necessary.
Darwin didn't make his theory public because he knew exactly what kind of shock it would bring to society. 1844, the year Darwin locked the manuscript in a drawer, there was a book called Remnants of Created Natural History, which caused great anger in the ideological circle, because it suggested that human beings may have evolved from lower primates without the help of the gods who created the world. The author predicted in advance that there would be an uproar, so he carefully concealed his identity. The secret has been kept for 40 years, even his closest friends don't know it. Some people speculate that the author may be Darwin, while others suspect that it is Prince Albert. In fact, the author is a successful and unobtrusive Scottish publisher. His name is Robert Chambers. He doesn't want to reveal his practical and personal considerations: he runs a famous company that specializes in publishing the Bible. The remnants have been criticized not only by religious circles at home and abroad, but also by many academic circles. The Edinburgh Review spent nearly a whole issue of 85 pages criticizing it. Even T.H. Huxley, an advocate of evolution, lashed out at the book, but he didn't realize that the author of the book was a friend of his.
Darwin's manuscript may not be published until after his death, but an unexpected thing surprised him deeply. /kloc-in the early summer of 0/858, Darwin received a package from the Far East, which contained a friendly letter written by a young naturalist named alfred russel wallace and a draft of his paper entitled "The Trend of Forever Separation between Species and Primitive Species". The theory of natural selection coincides with Darwin's unpublished manuscript, and some sentences are even exactly the same as Darwin's. "I have never seen such a coincidence," Darwin said gloomily. "Even after reading my manuscript in 1842, Wallace could not give a more accurate summary."
Wallace didn't accidentally walk into Darwin's life as people sometimes think. The two of them have been communicating with each other, and Wallace has generously sent Darwin specimens that he thought were interesting more than once. In the process of their correspondence, Darwin gently told Wallace that he had taken the Origin of Species as his own exclusive research field. "By this summer, I have been in the 20th year (! I haven't opened my first manuscript yet, which discusses how species and varieties are different from each other. " Earlier, in a letter to Wallace, he wrote, "I am now preparing to publish my book." He went on to say, but in fact he didn't intend to do so.
However, Wallace doesn't understand Darwin's meaning-in any case, he certainly can't know that his theory will be almost consistent with Darwin's theory that has been studied for 20 years.
Darwin was in a dilemma. If he publishes his works first to ensure priority, he will take advantage of an innocent admirer who is far away from Qianshan; If he does it in one step, because it is necessary to cultivate gentlemanly manners, he will lose the right to discover the theories he has independently studied. Wallace himself admits that his theory is the product of epiphany; Darwin's theory is the result of more than ten years' careful study and thinking. Therefore, this is absolutely unfair.
As if to increase his own pain, Charles, Darwin's youngest son with the same name, was infected with scarlet fever, and his condition was extremely serious. On June 28th, the critical condition reached its peak, and little Charles passed away. Despite his sadness, Darwin took the time to write a letter to his friends Lyell Charles and joseph hooker, expressing his willingness to make way for Wallace, but he said that if he did, it would mean that all his work "would be wasted, no matter how great this achievement was". Lyle and Hook found a way to kill two birds with one stone. They submitted a summary of Darwin's and Wallace's views to a meeting of the Linnaean Society, which tried to restore its status as a scientific authority. On July 1858, Darwin's and Wallace's theories were made public. Darwin himself did not attend the meeting. On the day of meeting, he and his wife were burying their little son.
Darwin-Wallace's paper was one of the seven papers submitted that night-one of the other six papers was about Angolan flora-and about 30 listeners attended the meeting. Even though they realized that they were witnessing the most exciting moment in science of that century, they didn't show it. There was no discussion afterwards, and it did not cause much repercussions in society. Darwin was pleased to note that only one person mentioned these two papers in the article. He is a professor named Hafton in Dublin. His conclusion is: "In these two articles, the new one is absurd and the old one is correct."
Wallace was still in the Far East, and it took him a long time to know all this. He is very calm and seems very happy to be included in the discoverer of evolution. Since then, he even called this theory "Darwinism".
There is another person who poses a much greater threat to Darwin's qualification to discover evolution first. This man is Patrick Matthew, a gardener in Scotland. Surprisingly, he put forward the theory of natural selection as early as the year when Darwin started the voyage of Beagle. Unfortunately, he put forward these ideas in a book called Naval Timber and Forest Cultivation, which Darwin did not read and the whole world did not notice. When he saw that Darwin was hailed as the discoverer of evolution, and this theory was actually put forward by him first, he immediately took action and wrote a letter to the artist's chronicle. Darwin did not hesitate to apologize, but he also stated: "I don't think anyone will be surprised. I and any other naturalist have never heard of Mr. Matthew's point of view, because his words are very simple and appear in the appendix of a book about naval timber and forest cultivation. "
Wallace remained a naturalist and thinker for about 50 years, occasionally doing well, but gradually lost interest in science and turned his research to spirituality and the possibility of other life in the universe. So Darwin had the right to invent the theory of evolution alone mainly because others gave it up.
Darwin spent his whole life agonizing over his views. He called himself "the priest of the devil" and said that exposing evolution made him feel like "admitting that he was a murderer". In addition, he also deeply hurt his pious wife. Nevertheless, he immediately set about expanding his manuscript into a book. At first, he named the book "Introduction to the Origin of Species and Diversity of Natural Selection", which was too long and vague. John Murray, who published this book, decided to print only 500 copies. But after getting the manuscript and making the title slightly attractive, Murray decided to increase the print run of the first edition to 1250 copies.
The Origin of Species was an immediate commercial success, but it didn't cause much response. Darwin's theory faces two thorny problems: on the one hand, it will take many years to get the final approval of Lord Kelvin; On the other hand, fossils provide little evidence. Some thoughtful critics have raised the question, where is the form of species transition so clearly emphasized in Darwin's theory? If species are constantly evolving, there must be many intermediate forms in the process of evolution in fossils, but there are not. In fact, the fossils discovered at that time (and many years later) showed that there was no life on earth before the famous Cambrian explosion.
Without any evidence, Darwin insisted that there must be rich and colorful life forms in the early ocean, but we haven't found them yet. This is because, for whatever reason, they have not been preserved. Darwin thought this was the only reasonable explanation. "This situation cannot be explained clearly at this stage, but it can be regarded as a reasonable view compared with the existing view." He admitted this frankly, but refused to consider other possibilities. To explain, he reasoned that it was original, but it was not correct. Perhaps the Precambrian seawater was too clear to deposit any matter, so the fossils were not preserved.
Even Darwin's best friends were uneasy about some of his arbitrary conclusions. Adam sedgwick, Darwin's teacher at Cambridge University, took him to Wales for a geological survey in 1887. He said that Darwin's books gave him "more pain than pleasure". Louis Agassiz, an outstanding Swedish paleontologist, refused to accept his view as pure fantasy. Even Lyle came to the conclusion that Darwin had gone too far.
T.H. Huxley doesn't like Darwin's view that evolution takes a long geological time, because he is a catastrophist, that is, he thinks that evolution happens suddenly, not gradually. Catastrophists (the word comes from the Latin word "jump") can't believe that complex organs will gradually appear in stages. One tenth of the wings, or half of the eyes, what's the use of such an organ? In their view, this organ only makes sense if it appears in a complete form.
This cataclysm advocated by Huxley is extreme, which is a bit surprising, because it is easily reminiscent of an extremely conservative religious concept first put forward by the British theologian William Paley in 1802, which is called "argument from design". Paley believes that if you find a pocket watch on the ground, even if you have never seen such a thing, you will immediately realize that it is made by a talented person. He believes that nature is the same, and its complexity is the proof of careful design. This idea had a great influence in the19th century, which also made Darwin feel uneasy. "Until today, I have a cold war when I think about my eyes." In a letter to a friend, Darwin wrote. In the Origin of Species, he admitted that natural selection can produce such organs in a gradual way. "Frankly speaking, this seems to be an extremely absurd concept."
Even so, Darwin not only insisted that all changes were gradual, but also almost every time the Origin of Species was reprinted, it increased the length of time he thought the evolution process needed, which led to the strong resentment of his supporters, and fewer and fewer people supported his theory. "Finally," according to scientist and historian Jeffrey Schwarz, "Darwin lost the only support of his fellow naturalists and geologists."
Ironically, Darwin named his book The Origin of Species, but he couldn't explain how species originated. Darwin's theory puts forward a mechanism to make species stronger, better or faster-in a word, more adaptive-but it doesn't explain how new species are born. Fleming Jan Jin, a Scottish engineer, investigated this problem and pointed out a serious flaw in Darwin's argument. Darwin believed that the (favorable) characteristics that appeared in one generation of species would be passed on to the next generation, thus making the species stronger.
Jenkin pointed out that the (favorable) features in the previous generation will not dominate the subsequent generations when passed on to the next generation, but are actually diluted in the process of mixing. If you pour a glass of water into whiskey, you won't make it stronger, but dilute it; If you pour another glass of water into the diluted whisky, it will become weak. Similarly, the favorable characteristics passed on from the previous generation of parents to the next generation will gradually weaken in the subsequent continuous reproduction until they finally disappear completely. So from a dynamic point of view, Darwin's theory is obviously untenable, and it can only explain static things. In the process of evolution, special phenomena happen from time to time, but they will soon disappear, because creatures always tend to make everything return to normal. If natural selection is to work, it needs some undiscovered alternative mechanisms.
What Darwin and everyone else didn't know was that a lonely monk named Gregory Mendel would provide the answer to this question in an obscure corner of Central Europe about 1200 kilometers away.
Mendel 1822 was born in a poor peasant family in a remote town in the Austrian Empire (now Czech Republic). Middle school textbooks once described him as a simple and observant country monk, and many of his discoveries were accidental to some extent-he found some interesting genetic characteristics when planting peas in the monastery garden. In fact, Mendel is a well-trained scientist-he studied physics and mathematics at the Olmerz Institute of Philosophy and the University of Vienna-and he sorted out and summarized everything he studied very scientifically. And since 1843, the monastery where he worked has become a very famous academic center. The monastery has a library with 20,000 books and a rigorous scientific research tradition.
Before starting the experiment, Mendel spent two years cultivating the specimens needed for the research. He chose seven different peas, and after ensuring that they were pure, with the help of two full-time assistants, he began to repeatedly plant these peas and hybridize 30 thousand of them. This is an extremely meticulous job. In order to prevent accidental pollination, they must take pains to record the small differences in growth process and appearance of pea seeds, pods, leaves, stems and flowers. Mendel was well aware of the significance of what he had done.
He never used the word "gene"-it first appeared in a British medical dictionary in 19 13 years-although he invented the concepts of "dominance" and "inferiority". His achievement is that he found that every seed contains two "genetic factors" or what he called "responsibility"-one is superiority and the other is inferiority. Once these factors are combined with each other, they will produce predictable genetic forms.
He converted the result into an accurate mathematical formula. Mendel spent eight years in this research, and then carried out similar experiments on flowers, corn and other plants to test the correctness of his conclusion. To make matters worse, Mendel's research method is very scientific. When he read his paper at the monthly meeting of the Natural History Society of Brno in February and March of 1865, about 40 listeners listened to his speech politely, but they were obviously indifferent, although for many of them, plant cultivation was actually a matter of great interest to them.
After Mendel's report was published, he couldn't wait to send a copy to the great Swiss botanist Carl Wilhelm von negri. In a sense, negri's support plays a vital role in the future of Mendel's theory. Unfortunately, negri didn't realize the importance of Mendel's discovery. He suggested Mendel cultivate Salix plants. Mendel did as he said, but he soon found that Salix psammophila did not have the necessary characteristics to study heredity. Obviously, negri didn't read his paper seriously, or even read it at all. Frustrated, Mendel gave up genetic research, planted improved vegetables for the rest of his life, and engaged in the research of bees, mice and sunspots. Finally, he was elected as the abbot.
Mendel's discovery was not completely ignored as sometimes thought. His research achievements were gloriously included in the Encyclopedia Britannica, a book that recorded scientific thoughts at that time, and its importance far exceeded today's status, and it was cited many times in an important paper written by German William Olbers Fogg. In fact, Mendel's thoughts have never sunk in the Wang Yang sea of scientific thoughts, so when the world has the conditions to accept them, they will be easily rediscovered.
Darwin and Mendel laid the foundation of all life sciences in the 20th century, but neither of them realized it. Darwin found that all living things are interrelated, and in the final analysis, they all "originated from a common ancestor"; Mendel's work explains how all this happened from the mechanism. They could have helped each other. Mendel has a German version of On the Origin of Species, which he is said to have read, so he must have realized that his work is applicable to Darwin's theory, but he seems to have failed to get in touch with Darwin. What about Darwin? People know that he studied Fogg's very influential papers, which repeatedly mentioned Mendel's works, but he did not associate these papers with his own research.
In the eyes of ordinary people, the view that man evolved from apes is an important feature of Darwin's theory, but it is not at all. This view is only mentioned by the way in Darwin's theory Even so, you don't need much imagination to understand the significance of human development from Darwin's theory, which soon became a hot topic.
On Saturday, June 30th, 1860, at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Oxfordshire, it was time for a showdown. Huxley attended the meeting at the invitation of Robert Chambers, the author of The Remnants of Created Natural History, but Huxley didn't know the relationship between Chambers and that controversial work at that time. As usual, Darwin did not attend. The meeting was held at Oxford Animal Museum. More than 1000 people crowded into the venue, and hundreds more could not enter. Everyone realized that an important event was about to happen, although they had to listen to the sleepy opening speech of john williams draper of new york University for two hours. The topic of his speech is "On the intellectual development in Europe and Mr. Darwin's views".
Finally, Samuel wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, stood up to speak. The night before, richard owen went to wilberforce's home. Richard owen is a fanatical anti-Darwinist, and he got in touch with wilberforce (everyone thinks so anyway). Like many sensational events, people have different views on what happened. The most popular version, however, is that wilberforce, who is well-dressed and dignified, turns to Huxley and smiles and asks him if he dares to claim that he evolved from apes through his grandmother or grandfather. Wilberforce tried to make a quip, but it was misunderstood as an aggressive provocation. According to Huxley himself, he turned to his neighbor and whispered, "I saved him from God."