Charles Darwin and Charles Lyell
I believe Charles Lyell has the most influence over Darwin’s development in a positive way. To begin Charles Lyell theorized that geologic processes at the beginning of time were the same ones that were happening during current time. He said that there was a series of slow changes that eventually built up over time. This is how he influenced Darwin, Darwin thought that the life process was the same as Lyell’s geologic process theory. Another reason he had a positive impact on Darwin’s theory was because Lyell had a good friendship with a captain named Fitzroy was was the pilot of the HMS Beagle when Darwin was sailing to the Galapagos. Fitzroy was the one who introduced Lyell’s theories to Darwin and this led Darwin to study all of Lyell’s geologic theories. The slow changed of time Lyell theorized then became the explanation for Darwin’s evolution theory.
The one bullet point that most correlates with Lyell is the one that says if the environment changes, the traits that are helpful or adaptive to that environment will be different. Lyell believed that small changes happened over time and eventually just built up. Darwin supports this because he explains that things adapt to what is around them slowly thus small changes. Then once they go through all these small changes they build up.
I believe that Darwin eventually could have developed his theory of natural selection without Lyell, but Lyell’s theory helped him out to figure it out a lot quicker and easier.
The attitude of the church made Darwin hold back on published his work more than 20 years after he created it. He was afraid of backlash from the religious Britain’s. His theory questioned everything that the church fought and believed in and he was scared that he would get rejected.
In general, very good summary of Lyell's contribution, and good point on Fitzeroy. There is another point that must be made, however. Lyell's work demonstrated that these process occurred over a very long period of time, which was very significant to Darwin. Before Lyell, it was generally accepted that the earth was only a few thousand years old. Lyell demonstrated that the earth was at least millions of years old (we now know it is billions of years old). So how does that impact Darwin? Well, natural selection is a slow process. It would not have been possible for natural selection to produce not only the extant organisms in a few thousand years but also all of the extinct organisms. With Lyell's concept of "deep time", suddenly Darwin had the geological time he for his theory to work. Lyell, quite literally, gave Darwin the gift of time. Without that, Darwin's theory would not have worked.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your choice of bullet point. It was a bit trickier to make this choice for Lyell, given that he wasn't directly involved in evolutionary theory, but this one fits best. Perhaps more importantly was the contribution of the concept of "deep time" as without that, Darwin's theory wouldn't have worked.
"I believe that Darwin eventually could have developed his theory of natural selection without Lyell"
Okay, but does the evidence back that up? Consider, for example, the concept of "deep time" I described above. Would Darwin's theory have had any chance of working, of being mechanized, if it didn't have enough time to work? Furthermore, Lyell gave his book outlining uniformitarianism to Darwin as he left on his voyage on the Beagle, so everything Darwin learned on that trip was built on that geological foundation. Fortuitous, don't you think? Additionally, it is worth recognizing that Darwin and Lyell were close friends and Lyell was instrumental in persuading Darwin to finally publish. I don't think we can underestimate just how important Lyell was to Darwin.
"He was afraid of backlash from the religious Britain’s."
I agree that was a concern, but can we dig a little deeper into this? What were Darwin's concerns? And was he only worried about himself or was he also worried about how his family might be impacted by publishing? Remember that his wife was very devout. How might she have been impacted if the church responded negatively to Darwin? Remember that scientists don't work in a vacuum. They can be influenced not just by academics but also by social, cultural and personal issues.
Hi! I also wrote that Lyell was the most influential towards helping Darwin and I found your explanation very interesting. I agree with you that traits are passed down to help species adapt to the slowly changing environment. Great job proposing the fact that Fitzroy helped Lyell introduce his research to Darwin as that was something I did not mention. I also agree with you in the sense that Darwin most likely would have published his research without Lyell, but Lyell definitely helped Darwin validate his evidence that the earth is millions of millions of years old and that evolution occurs slowly and overtime.
ReplyDelete