Up@dawn 2.0

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Charles Darwin

Part 1- A brief background on Darwin and the Theory of Evolution

Charles Darwin is someone who came up in our philosophy class on multiple different occasions, and I believe that I have not given him enough recognition for his intellectual contributions to the world enough credit. I am assuming that is because to me, he was only known for his theory of evolution. Do not get me wrong, this is arguably his biggest contribution, but he made many more contributions to science, as well as philosophy, than just that theory. Charles Darwin was born in 1809 in Shrewsbury, England. He died in 1882, and his 73 years he spent on Earth were spent contributing in the previously mentioned subjects. He attended the University of Edinburgh Medical School before attending the University of Cambridge, which many of the people we discussed in class also attended. At Edinburgh, he initially started studying medical science but neglected it mainly due to his interest in nature, which unsurprisingly led to many of his contributions in natural science. Also, weirdly enough, as he neglected his work in Edinburgh, he learned taxidermy. After his first year at Edinburgh, his father decided to send him to Cambridge to get an Arts degree and become a parson instead. While at Cambridge, he continued to ignore his studies for activities such as riding and shooting. His cousin, William Darwin Fox, unsurprisingly, got Charles into beetle collecting which only further increased his interest in the natural sciences. Fast forward a couple years, and Charles Darwin is now on a survey voyage on the HMS Beagle. During this voyage, Darwin went to multiple different locations and explored with the captain Robert FitzRoy. This trip provided Darwin with so much new information about nature that he ends up using in a lot of his work. This trip is what manifested Darwin's theory of evolution. As he went from location to location, he noticed that many animals, specifically the mockingbirds in Chile, were similar, but different from island to island. Darwin started putting two and two together and realized that these birds were evolving in different ways to best fit their conditions on each island. Logically, Darwin begins to theorize that these birds have a common ancestor and over time, flocks of these birds have migrated to these different islands and adapted, or evolved into different sub-species to help them survive. Darwin's theory of evolution goes on to talk about the evolution of humans. If birds, or other animals, can evolve over time, surely humans are too. Darwin believes that the closest relative of us is the monkey family. He believes we have common ancestors with them as well, and that we have just evolved differently than a lot of the other sub-species have. If you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. Monkeys have a lot of similar behavioral and physical characteristics as us humans. Unlike a very large majority of animals, they walk on two feet and also have thumbs, just like we do, as well as similar body structures. Darwin was really on to something with this theory possibly, and I will discuss further in part 2.


3 comments:

  1. Link to first comment on a peers essay. https://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-philosophies-within-dark-souls.html?showComm

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  2. Second link. https://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2018/04/dungeons-and-dragons-game-for.html?showComment=1524620674774#c1025841711207168111

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  3. " was really on to something with this theory possibly" - ya think?

    It's been called the best idea anybody ever had, by philosopher Daniel Dennett and others. Biology makes no sense without it.

    And yet, so many are so hostile to it because they think it rules out a religious interpretation of life. His own view was that ultimate origins are beyond our finite human comprehension. And yet, we've figured out quite a lot. Darwin thought it best to err on the side of presuming that things ARE explicable by science, rather than closing our minds to the possibility. Hard to argue with his results, although a Know Nothing on our campus recently proclaimed, stupidly, "evolution is stupid"... in time, perhaps we'll evolve beyond such ignorance.

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