Darwin was born on February 12, 1909 in Shrewsbury, England. His grandfather and father were both famous local doctors. The family hoped that he would inherit the ancestral business in the future. When he was 16 years old, his father sent him to the University of Edinburgh to study medicine.
But Darwin loved nature since he was a child, especially collecting minerals and animal and plant specimens. After entering medical school, he still often went to the wild to collect animal and plant specimens. His father thought that he was "idle" and "not doing his job properly". In anger, he sent him to Cambridge University in 1828 to study theology, hoping that he would become a "distinguished priest" in the future. Darwin was very tired of fallacies such as creationism in the seminary. He still spent most of his time listening to natural science lectures and studying a large number of natural science books on his own. He is enthusiastic about collecting beetles and other animal and plant specimens, and is full of interest in the mysterious nature.
One day in 1828, he was wandering around an old tree in a forest outside London. Suddenly, he found insects crawling under the bark of the tree that was about to fall off. He quickly peeled off the bark and found two strange beetles crawling forward quickly. He immediately drew his bow from left to right, grabbed it in his hand, and watched excitedly. At this moment, another beetle jumped out of the bark of the tree. He was caught off guard. He quickly hid the beetle in his mouth and reached out to catch the third beetle. Looking at these strange beetles, he really couldn't put them down. He was so proud of admiring the beetles in his hands that he had long forgotten which one was in his mouth. The beetle in his mouth couldn't bear it anymore, so it released a pungent venom, which stung his tongue numb and painful. Only then did Darwin remember the beetle in his mouth, opened his mouth and spat it out into his hand. Then, regardless of the pain in his mouth, he walked triumphantly to his school, Cambridge University. Later, people named it "Darwin" to commemorate the beetle he first discovered.
In 1831, Darwin graduated from Cambridge University. He gave up his lucrative career as a priest and remained passionate about his natural science research. In December of that year, the British government organized a global expedition by the warship HMS Beagle. Darwin was recommended by someone, and as a "naturalist", he boarded the ship at his own expense and began a long and arduous expedition around the world.
Every time Darwin visited a place, he always conducted careful investigation and research, interviewed local residents, sometimes asked them to be guides, climbed mountains and waded in rivers, collected minerals, animal and plant specimens, and excavated biological fossils, and discovered many unknown things. New species recorded. During the day, he collected cereal rock specimens and animal fossils, and at night he was busy recording the collection process. In January 1832, the Beagle anchored at Santiago Island in the Cape Verde Islands in the Atlantic Ocean. The sailors all went to investigate the flow of sea water. Darwin and his assistants carried backpacks and geological hammers and climbed up the mountain to collect rock specimens.
During the investigation, Darwin pondered a question all day long based on the changes in species: How did the strange flowers and trees in nature and all human beings come into being? Why do they change so much? What are the connections between them? These questions became more and more profound in his mind, gradually making him doubt creationism and species immutability.
At the end of February 1832, the "Beagle" arrived in Brazil. Darwin went ashore for inspection and proposed to the captain that he wanted to climb the Andes Mountains in South America. When they climbed to a mountain more than 4,000 meters above sea level, Darwin accidentally discovered shell fossils on the top of the mountain. Darwin was very surprised. He thought in his mind: "How can the shells on the seabed run to the mountains?" After repeated thinking, he finally understood the principle of the rise and fall of the earth's crust. Darwin's mind was churning, and he had a better understanding of his conjecture: "Species are not static, but vary according to different objective conditions!" [Later, Darwin sailed across the Pacific on a ship, passing through Australia, Indian Ocean, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and returned to Britain in October 1836. During his five-year expedition around the world, Darwin accumulated a large amount of data. After returning to China, he sorted out these materials and went into practice. At the same time, he consulted a large number of books to find basis for his theory of biological evolution. In 1842, he wrote a brief outline of "The Origin of Species" for the first time. In November 1859, Darwin's scientific masterpiece "The Origin of Species", written after more than 20 years of research, was finally published.
In this book, Darwin clearly put forward the idea of ??"evolution", explaining that species are in constant change, an evolution process from low-level to high-level, from simple to complex.
The publication of this work established biology on a completely scientific basis for the first time, and overturned the theory of "creationism" and the immutability of species with a brand-new idea of ??biological evolution. "The Origin of Species" is a masterpiece of Darwin's theory of evolution, marking the official establishment of the theory of evolution.
The publication of "The Origin of Species" caused a sensation in Europe and even the entire world. It dealt a heavy blow to the foundation of theocratic rule, and everyone from the reactionary church to the feudal imperial literati was furious. They attacked in groups, slandering Darwin's theory as "blaspheming the Holy Spirit" and violating the "divine right of kings," and being incompatible with human dignity.
In contrast, progressive scholars represented by Huxley actively promoted and defended Darwinism. Pointed out: The theory of evolution has opened up people's ideological shackles, inspired and educated people to liberate themselves from the shackles of religious superstition.
Immediately afterwards, Darwin began writing his second masterpiece "The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestic Culture", further elaborating his views on evolution with indisputable facts and rigorous scientific judgments. He put forward important arguments on species variation and inheritance, the struggle for survival of organisms, and natural selection, and soon published this masterpiece. In his later years, although Darwin was frail and sick, he tenaciously persisted in scientific research and writing with amazing perseverance, and published many works such as "The Descent of Man" in succession. Darwin himself believed that "his main pleasure and only career in life" was his scientific works. There are also some of the most important scientific results obtained through direct investigation during the trip, such as the famous "Expedition Diary" and "The Geology of the Beagle" and "The Zoology of the Beagle" written by Darwin himself. Among his works, "The Origin of Species" is of particularly great historical significance, which shows the gradual development process of Darwin's evolutionary thoughts and natural selection theory. The publication of "The Origin of Species" is a major event of world significance, because the publication of "The Origin of Species" marked a profound change in the views of most educated people in the 19th century on the biological world and the status of human beings in the biological world. changes. The publication of "The Origin of Species" triggered a fierce attack on Darwinism by creationists and scientists with teleological sentiments (and these people constituted the vast majority). It also triggered a corresponding struggle to defend Darwinism. Actively participate in this movement. In addition to Darwin himself, the struggle included progressive naturalists; everywhere they became enthusiastic supporters of Darwin's theory.
On April 19, 1882, this great scientist died of illness. People buried his body next to Newton's tomb to express their respect for this scientist.