Charles Darwin is without a doubt the world’s most well-known naturalist. He is the first naturalist to understand how evolution takes place and was able to explain the process of natural selection using a straightforward and powerful theory. Darwin planned to become a cleric in his youth, but fate made him shift his vision of the world in 1831 when he was commissioned to accompany Captain Robert FitzRoy aboard the HMS Beagle. They circumnavigated the hemisphere during their five-year voyage. Unfortunately for Darwin, he was seasick most of the time. While FitzRoy explored the coasts, mapping the geology,

Darwin studied the animals of the different regions, many of which were unknown to Europeans, such as the giant sloths that inhabited South America until 10,000 years ago. He gathered enormous collections of fossils and desiccated animals, sending them back to England for further study. Today, these collections are in the English museums of natural history.

Two of the books that inspired Darwin to understand how species evolved were:

• Principles of Geology, by Charles Lyell (1797-1875). Lyell was an English geologist who proposed that the Earth had experienced enormous changes throughout its history and for extended periods of time. The same geological forces produced the changes we witness today, such as earthquakes, floods, volcano eruptions, and erosion.

• An Essay on the Principle of Population, by Thomas Malthus (1766-1834). Malthus was an English cleric and economist who argued that while the human population grows geometrically, food availability grows arithmetically.4 This leads to a moment when there will not be enough food to feed the entire population. 

Darwin became interested in the study of nature as a result of his voyage on the Beagle and the influence of these books. When he returned to England, he became a naturalist. For the next twenty years, he developed multiple hypotheses that irreversibly distanced him from his religious beliefs.

Darwin discovered that a fellow naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, had arrived at a theory nearly equivalent to his own while traveling in Brazil and Southeast Asia. Darwin panicked when he realized Wallace might beat him to the punch and present his findings first. He rushed back to London to present his work at the Linnean Society in 1858 – along with Wallace’s. In 1859, he published his masterpiece, On The Origin of Species.

More than any other idea ever conceived, the theory of evolution by natural selection has impacted human beings’ vision of themselves, their origin, and their place in the universe. It undermines the myths of the Abrahamic religions where humans play a dominant role in the universe because they were created by a higher being. Darwin’s conclusions leave no doubt that human beings are but one species among many, the product of evolution.

Interestingly, Darwin used the word “evolution” only once in his book, On The Origin of Species, in the last paragraph. “There is grandeur in this view of life… whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”