The Science of Attraction

Charles Darwin: The Father of Evolution

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that… from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

~ Charles Darwin

George Richmond, Portrait of Charles Darwin (Late 1830s).
From Origins, Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin.
In 1831, shortly after graduating from Cambridge University, a young naturalist named Charles Darwin sailed from England aboard the HMS Beagle as part of an expedition to survey the southern coasts of South America and the Galapagos Islands. The scientific discoveries he made as a result of his five-year voyage revolutionized our understanding of the natural world, as they ultimately gave rise to Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.

Many scientists before Darwin had begun to entertain the notion that species changed over time, referring to this phenomenon as transmutation. It was Darwin, however, who integrated principles of biology, geology, and even socioeconomics to demonstrate the ways in which this change occurs. He proposed, correctly, that organisms change (or evolve) over time because individuals better adapted to their environment than other members of their species are more likely to survive and reproduce. As a result, their unique traits are selected for and passed down to later generations, potentially resulting in new species being formed.

In 1859, Charles Darwin officially presented his theory to the world in his book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. Today, it is considered among the most important publications in the history of science.


Adaptive radiation in Galapagos finches (2015). Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.