Wanting a respectable future for his son, Darwin’s father sent him to the University of Cambridge to study for the ministry.
His medical interests did not last long, and after only one year he dropped out of school. Expected to follow in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps, Darwin was sent to the University of Edinburgh to acquire the knowledge to become a physician. In all, to comprehend the complete work of Darwin it is essential to know not only his scientific achievements, but social influences as well.Ĭharles Darwin was born in 1809 to a wealthy middle-class English family (Wall 2003). Having been opposed to the theory of special creation or creation by design, which was widely accepted during 19th century Britain, Darwin’s thoughts were seen as anti-religious and the cause of great debates.
Darwin was also given much criticism in the social realm. Hence, regardless of whether the characteristics were being favored or not, no one believed that certain “preferred” traits would have a higher possibility of being selected to be inherited more frequently than other “unfavorable” ones. Most scientists during that era had grown comfortable with the reductionist approach of all events and models being fixed and deterministic, thus Darwin’s theory was rejected because it seemed to rely only on chance events and not on pure physical laws. Darwin’s theory was met with disapproval in two major areas, the scientific and the social. His theory of natural selection as a mechanism for change over time in all species of life brought him a lifetime of praise and admiration, in addition to a great deal of criticism. As a naturalist, Darwin was not only responsible for the theory of evolution as we know it today, but also the foundation that biological sciences are based on. To this matter one will almost always become familiar with Charles Darwin, perhaps the greatest of all contributors. And in investigating the course of this field one major subject of concentration, aside from looking at the greatest contributions made into this area and the scientists that made them, is the history of evolutionary thought. In studying the history of science, biology is often a matter of special examination.