Charles Darwin

At 73 years old, Charles Darwin has this physical status:

Charles Robert Darwin (1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist best known for his contributions to evolutionary research.

His claim that all forms of life have descended from common ancestors is now widely accepted and considered a basic science principle.

He proposed his scientific claim that this branching pattern of evolution evolved from a process he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to selective breeding's artificial selection.

Darwin was regarded as one of the most influential figures in human history, and he was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey.

Evolution had been accepted as a fact by the scientific community and a majority of the educated population by the 1870s.

However, some favoured competing explanations that gave only a small part to natural selection, and it wasn't until the advent of the modern evolutionary synthesis in which natural selection was the primary source of evolution that was not until the time.

Early life and education

Charles Robert Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, on February 1209, at his family's house, The Mount. He was the fifth of six children of wealthy society doctor and financier Robert Darwin and Susannah Darwin (née Wedgwood). Erasmus Darwin and Josiah Wedgwood, two of his grandfathers, were both influential abolitionists. In his Zoonomia (1794), a poetic fantasy of gradual evolution with undeveloped ideas anticipating the concepts his grandsons had advanced, Erasmus Darwin praised general theories of evolution and common descent.

Both families were largely Unitarian, though the Wedgwoods were adopting Anglicanism. Charles Darwin, himself a freethinker, was baptized in November 1809 in the Anglican St Chad's Church in Shrewsbury, but Charles and his siblings went to the Unitarian chapel with their mother in the Anglican St Chad's Church. When he first joined the day school run by the eight-year-old Charles in 1817, he already had a fascination for natural history and collecting. His mother died in July. He began attending Anglican Shrewsbury School as a boarder from September 1818. In the winter, his pastimes at the school included playing bandy.

Darwin spent the summer of 1825 as an apprentice doctor, assisting his father in the care of poor people in Shropshire, before moving to Edinburgh Medical School with his brother Erasmus in October 1825. Darwin found lectures dull and surgery painful, so he cancelled his studies. He learned taxidermy in around 40 hours per day from John Edmonstone, a freed black slave who had accompanied Charles Waterton in the South American rainforest.

He joined the Plinian Society, a student natural-history group in which radical democratic students with materialistic convictions challenged orthodox scientific beliefs of science. He aided Robert Edmond Grant's investigations into the anatomy and life cycle of marine ebbers in the Firth of Forth, and he announced the eggs of a skate leech in a black spore found in oyster shells on March 27, 1827. Grant lauded Lamarck's evolutionary theories for a single day. Darwin was astound by Grant's audacity, but he had recently read similar articles in his grandfather Erasmus' journals. Darwin was actually bored by Robert Jameson's natural-history course, which included geology, including the discussion between Neptunism and Plutonism. He learned about plants and assisted with research at the University Museum, one of Europe's largest museums at the time.

Darwin's lack of medical research stung his father, who had shrewdly arranged him to Christ's College, Cambridge, in January 1828, to study for a Bachelor of Arts degree, the first step toward becoming an Anglican nation parson. Darwin was unqualified for Cambridge's Tripos exams, and instead, he was required to enroll in the normal degree program. He preferred riding and shooting rather than learning.

William Darwin Fox, his second cousin, was still attending Christ's College for the first few months. Fox introduced Darwin to entomology and encouraged him to start beetle collecting. He did this zealously and had some of his findings published in James Francis Stephens' Illustrations of British Entomology (1829–32).

Darwin met Darwin through Fox as a close friend and follower of botany professor John Stevens Henslow. He met other respected parson-naturalists who saw scientific inquiry as a field of sacred theology, and became known to these dons as "the man who walks with Henslow." Darwin applied himself to his studies and was captivated by William Paley's Evidences of Christianity (1795). Darwin did well in his final examination in January 1831, ranking tenth out of 178 candidates for the ordinary degree.

Darwin had to stay at Cambridge until June 1831. He analyzed Paley's Natural Theology or Evidence of the Deity's Existence and Attributes of the Deity (first published in 1802), which argued for divine design in nature, describing evolution as God acting through laws of nature. He read both John Herschel's book, Preliminary Discourse on Natural Philosophy (1831), which characterized the highest aim of natural philosophy as the study of new laws by inductive reasoning based on observation, and Alexander von Humboldt's Personal Narrative of scientific travel in 1799–1804. Darwin, inspired by "a burning desire" to help, went to Tenerife with some classmates after graduation to study natural history in the tropics. He started with Adam Sedgwick's geology course in preparation, and then accompanied him on August 4th to spend a fortnight mapping strata in Wales.

Darwin spent a few days at Barmouth after leaving Sedgwick, Wales. He returned home on August 29th to find a letter from Henslow suggesting him as a well-funded supernumerary place on HMS Beagle, a position for a gentleman rather than "a mere collector." The ship was scheduled to dock in four weeks on a trip to chart the coast of South America. Robert Darwin objected to his son's planned two-year voyage, dismissing it as a waste of time, but his brother-in-law, Josiah Wedgwood II, persuaded him to (and fund) his son's participation. Darwin chose to keep control of his collection in a private capacity rather than aiming for a large scientific institution.

After delays, the voyage began on December 27th, 1831, and it lasted almost five years. Darwin spent the majority of the time on land researching geology and making natural history collections, as FitzRoy had intended, while HMS Beagle surveyed and charted coasts. He took careful notes of his findings and theoretical speculations, and at times during the journey, his specimens were sent to Cambridge along with letters containing a copy of his journal for his family. He had some experience in geology, beetle collecting and dissecting marine invertebrates, but in those other areas, he was a newbie and collected specimens for expert evaluation. Despite being ill from seasickness, Darwin took copious notes when on board the ship. The bulk of his zoology reports are about marine invertebrates, beginning with plankton collected during a slow spell.

Darwin discovered seashells in a white band atop the volcanic rock cliffs on their first stop ashore in Cape Verde. FitzRoy had received the first volume of Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology, which introduced uniformitarian theories of land rises or declines over long stretches of time, and Darwin understood how Lyell's way was important in researching and writing a book on geology. Darwin was delighted by the tropical rainforest, but they protested the sight of slavery and denied Fitzroy's claim.

In Patagonia, the survey continued to the south. They stopped in Bahoa Blanca and discovered fossil bones of massive extinct mammals alongside modern seashells, indicating recent extinction with no signs of change or disaster. Bony plates are a giant version of the armour on local armadillos found by the narrator. He identified the massive Megatherium from a tooth and a tooth, but Cuvier's description indicated that the armour was derived from this animal. The finds were sent to England, where scientists discovered fossils of great interest.

Darwin gained socioeconomic, political, and anthropological insights into both native and colonial populations during a period of change, as well as discovering that two sorts of rhea existed in parallel yet overlapping territories. As erected beaches at a variety of elevations, he saw stepped plains of shingle and seashells. He read Lyell's second book and accepted the species's "centres of creation" view, but Lyell's findings and theorizing of species threatened Lyell's theories of smooth continuity and species loss.

Three Fuegians on board, who had been captured on board during the first Beagle voyage but who had been given Christian education in England, were returned with a missionary. Darwin found them friendly and civilized, but he encountered "miserable, degraded savages" at Tierra del Fuego, who are very different from domesticated animals. Despite this plurality, he remained convinced that all humans were interconnected with a common origin and potential for change toward civilisation. Unlike his scientists, he now thinks there is no unbridged divide between humans and animals. The mission had been postponed a year ago. Jemmy Button, the Fuegian, lived like the other natives, had a wife, and had no desire to return to England.

In 1835, Darwin experienced an earthquake in Chile, which included mussel-beds remaining stranded over high tide. On a sand beach in the Andes, he found seashells and several fossil trees that had grown on a sand beach. He predicted that as the land rose, oceanic islands sank, and coral reefs surrounding them grew to form atolls.

Darwin looked for signs connecting wildlife to an older "centre of development" on the Galápagos Islands, but found mockingbirds similar to those in Chile but with different islands, from island to island. He knew that slight differences in the shape of tortoise shells indicated which island they came from, but they were unable to locate them even after eating tortoise shells as food. The marsupial rat-kangaroo and the platypus in Australia were so bizarre that Darwin thought it was almost as if two separate Creators were at work. The Aborigines were "good-humoured & pleasant," according to him, after their numbers were depleted by European settlement.

FitzRoy investigated how the Cocos (Keeling) Islands had formed, and the study supported Darwin's claims. FitzRoy began writing the official Narrative of the Beagle voyages, and after reading Darwin's diary, he suggested including it in the account. Darwin's Journal was eventually rewritten as a distinct third volume on geology and natural history.

John Herschel, a young man who had recently written to Lyell in Cape Town, South Africa, marveled his uniformity, the replacement of extinct species by others as "a natural in contrast to a miraculous process." Darwin wrote down when arranging his notes as the ship sailed home that if his growing concerns about the mockingbirds, the tortoises, and the Falkland Islands fox were correct, "such observations undermine the species's longevity," he said slowly, "would" before "undermine." "It's to me that they might shed some light on the origins of species," he later said.

Without telling Darwin, extracts from his letters to Henslow were circulated in scientific journals and distributed in journals, including The Athenaeum. Darwin first heard of this at Cape Town, and Sedgwick's prediction that Darwin "would have a prominent place among the Naturalists of Europe" on Ascension Island.

Beagle anchored in Falmouth, Cornwall, on October 2nd, 1836. Darwin travelled by long coach to Shrewsbury to visit his house and see relatives. He then hurried to Cambridge to see Henslow, who advised him on finding reputable naturalists to catalog Darwin's animal collections and examine the botanical specimens. Darwin's father arranged investments to enable his son to be a self-funded scholar scientist, and an ecstatic Darwin went round the London institutions being honored and asking experts to describe the collections. Due to natural history research being encouraged throughout the British Empire, British zoologists at the time had a backlog of work, and there was a danger of specimens being stored in storage.

Charles Lyell eagerly met Darwin on October 29th and introduced him shortly to up-and-coming anatomist Richard Owen, who had the Royal College of Surgeons' facilities to work on Darwin's fossil bone specimens. Owen's surprising finds included more extinct ground sloths than Darwin's, a nearly complete skeleton of the mysterious Scelidotherium, and a huge capybara. As Darwin had expected, the armour fragments were actually from Glyptodon, a large armadillo-like animal. These extinction animals were closely related to South American mammals.

Darwin stayed in Cambridge in mid-December to conduct expert classification of his collections and conduct his own study for publication. When FitzRoy accepted Broderip's suggestion to make it a separate volume, he began working on his Journal and Remarks.

Darwin's first paper revealed that the South American landmass was gradually increasing, and with Lyell's enthusiastic support he read it to the Geological Society of London on January 4th, 1837. He presented his mammal and bird specimens to the Zoological Society on the same day. The Galapagos birds that Darwin had expected were a mix of blackbirds, "gros-beaks," and finches, according to ornithologist John Gould. There are, in fact, twelve distinct species of finches. Darwin was elected to the Council of the Geological Society on February 17th, and Lyell's presidential address outlined Owen's findings on Darwin's fossils, stressing species continuity as favoring his uniformitarian theories.

Darwin's early in March, the scientist and researcher who wrote about God as a programmer of laws, migrated to London to be near this work. Darwin stayed with his freethinking brother Erasmus, a member of this Whig circle and a close friend of writer Harriet Martineau, to prevent welfare from causing overpopulation and more poverty. Grant and younger surgeons who were influenced by Geoffroy welcomed the radical implications of species transmutation. Transmutation was anathema to Anglicans protecting the social order, but respected scientists openly discussed the issue, and there was a lot of curiosity in John Herschel's letter praising Lyell's proposal as a natural cause of new species.

Gould told Darwin that the Galápagos mockingbirds from various islands were distinct species not just varieties, not just varieties, and that Darwin's "wren" was in the finch group. Darwin had not identified the finches on land, but FitzRoy's notes informed him that species were not mapped to islands. Darwin described how the two rheas were different species on March 14th, revealing how their distribution changed going southwards.

Darwin was writing in his Red Notebook in mid-March 1837, just six months after his return to England, about the possibility that "one species does change into another" to reveal animal distributions such as the rheas and extinct ones, such as the mysterious stumbling mammal Macrauchenia, which resembles a giant llama cousin. He wrote in his "B" notebook his observations on longevity and change throughout generations, revealing the differences he observed in Galápagos tortois, mockingbirds, and rheas around mid-July. He sketched descent and then a genealogical branch of a single evolutionary tree, in which "it is absurd to talk about one animal being higher than another," rejecting Lamarck's notion of independent lineages progressing to higher levels.

Darwin became mired in more work as he began this intensive study of transmutation. He began editing and releasing expert papers on his collections, and with Henslow's help, the Voyage of H.M.S. would have been funded by a Treasury grant worth £1,000. Beagle, a sum equal to about £115,000 in 2021. He pushed the funds to include his proposed books on geology as well as agreeing to unrealistic deadlines with the publisher. Darwin continued writing his Journal as the Victorian Age began, and he began correcting printer's proofs in August 1837.

Darwin's health suffered as he went about it. He had "an uncomfortable palpitation of the heart" on September 20th, so his doctors advised him to "knock off all work" and live in the country for a few weeks. After visiting Shrewsbury, he joined his Wedgwood relatives at Maer Hall, Staffordshire, but they were too eager for tales of his travels to inspire him. Emma Wedgwood, his charming, intelligent, and cultured cousin, who is nine months older than Darwin, was caring for his sick grandmother. Josiah's uncle pointed out a portion of ground where cinders had fallen under loam and suggested that this might have been the work of earthworms, sparking "a new and important theory" on soil formation that Darwin presented at the Geological Society on November 1, 1837. His Journal was published and ready to publish by the end of February 1838, as was the first volume of the Narrative, but FitzRoy was still struggling to finish his own volume.

Darwin was pushed by William Whewell to assume the Geological Society's Secretaryships. He accepted the position in March 1838 after initially declining the position. Despite the grind of writing and editing the Beagle stories, Darwin made significant strides on transmutation, questioning both expert naturalists and, more importantly, people with practical expertise in selective breeding, such as farmers and pigeons. His research progress drew on details from his relatives and children, the family butler, neighbors, colonists, and former shipmates. He included humanity in his speculations from the start, and a look at an orangutan in the zoo on March 28 showed its childlike behavior.

The strain had a toll by June, when he was being held for days at a time with stomach cramps, headaches, and heart disease. He was consistently incapacitated by stomach pains, vomiting, swollening, trembling, and other signs, particularly during times of stress such as attending meetings or making social visits. Darwin's illness was undiagnosed, and treatment attempts were limited to ephemeral triumph.

He took a break and went "geologising" in Scotland on June 23. In glorious weather, he toured Glen Roy to see the parallel "roads" cut into the hillsides at three different heights. He later stated that these were marine raised beaches, but that they were then required to acknowledge that they were shorelines of a pro-coastal lake.

He returned to Shrewsbury in July after being 100% recovered. He scrawled ramblings about animal breeding on two scraps of paper, one with columns headed "Marry" and "Not Marry." "Constant companion and a friend in old age, who's still happy, compared to items such as "less money for books" and "terrible loss of time." He discussed it with his father before heading to visit his cousin Emma on July 29. He didn't get around to proposing, but against his father's advice, he shared his thoughts on transmutation.

Darwin's wide reading included the sixth edition of Malthus's An Essay on Population Dynamics, which continued his research in London. On September 28, 1838, he stated that human "population" increases, when unchecked, increases in a geometric average of 20 years, or increases in a geometric ratio, suggesting that population growth would soon outscapinates food supply in what is described as a Malthusian tragedy. Darwin was able to compare this to Augustin de Candolle's "warring of the species" of plants and the struggle for survival among wildlife, demonstrating how populations of a species remained relatively stable, while others remained stable. As species always breed outside of available habitats, suitable variations would make organisms more capable of surviving and passing the genetic codes on to their offspring, while undesirable variations would be lost. "The "final cause of all this flogging must be to figure out correct system and adapt it to changes," he said, meaning that "one could say there are a thousand wedges pushing into every kind of evolved system, or even creating more gaps by pushing out younger ones." New species will be born as a result of this.

As he later wrote in his Autobiography:

Darwin observed a similarity between farmers selecting the best stock in selective breeding and a Malthusian Nature selecting from chance variants, so that "every portion of the newly acquired system is absolutely effective and refined," according to this comparison. He referred to his theory natural selection later in life as an analogy to selective breeding's "artificial selection."

He returned to Maer and proposed to Emma on November 11th, offering her his thoughts for the first time. She accepted, and then demonstrated how she cherished their transparency in revealing their differences while still expressing her strong Unitarian convictions and fears that his honest doubts could distinguish them in the afterlife. Though he was house hunting in London, bouts of sickness arose and Emma wrote a letter urging him to rest, saying, "I don't feel well any more until I am with you to care." In Gower Street, he discovered what they'd dubbed "Macaw Cottage" (because of its gaudy interiors) and subsequently moved his "museum" in December. Darwin was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on January 24th, 1839.

Darwin and Emma Wedgwood were married in Maer in an Anglican ceremony, and then jumped on the train to London and their new home.

Darwin now had the framework of his natural selection "by which to work" as his "prime hobby." His study involved extensive experimental selective breeding of plants and animals, finding evidence that the species were not stable and investigating many complex ways to refine and substantiate his belief. This work, as well as his main focus of writing about geology and publishing expert reports on the Beagle collections, particularly the barnacles, has been in the background for fifteen years.

In May 1839, FitzRoy's long-awaited Narrative was published. As the third volume, Darwin's Journal and Remarks received rave reviews, and on August 15, it was published on its own. Darwin wrote about his ideas to Charles Lyell in 1842, who wrote that his ally "denies ever seeing a start to any species."

Darwin's book The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs based on his model of atoll formation was published in May 1842, after more than three years of research, and he later wrote his first "pencil sketch" of his natural selection theory. The family migrated to rural Down House in Kent in September to escape London's pressures. Darwin wrote with melodramatic humour on January 11, 1844, describing his theorization to botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker "it is like confessing to a murder." "There may have been a string of productions on different locations, as well as a gradual evolution of species," Hooker said. I'd be interested to hear how you think this change occurred, as no one in fact grounded my views on the topic.

Darwin had turned his "sketch" into a 230-page "Essay" by July, allowing him to expand with his study findings if he died prematurely. The anonymously published Vestiges of Creation, a pioneer of transmutation, sparked a lot of curiosity in transmutation in November. Darwin scorned the country's amateurish geology and zoology, but he carefully considered his own claims. Despite scientists' dismissal of science, the controversy erupted, and it continued to thrive.

In 1846, Darwin published his third geological book. He has revived his interest and expertise in marine invertebrates, dating back to Grant's student days, by dissecting and classifying the barnacles he had collected on the journey, enjoying scenic architecture and considering comparisons with allied buildings. Hooker read the "Essay" and sent notes to Darwin that provided him with the calm critical feedback he needed, but he refused to commit himself or question Darwin's opposition to continuing acts of creation in 1847.

Darwin went to Dr. James Gully's Malvern spa in 1849 in an attempt to improve his chronic illness. Annie, his treasured daughter who was 19 years old in 1851, died after a long string of crises.

Darwin's theory helped him to discover "homologies" demonstrating that little altered body parts were utilized to accommodate new conditions, and in some genera, showing a new stage in evolution of distinct sexes. It earned him the Royal Society's Royal Medal in 1853, which made his reputation as a biologist. In 1854, he became a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, gaining postal access to the library. He started a major revision of his species theory in November, and discovered that divergence in the appearance of descendants could be explained by them becoming adapted to "multicultural settings of nature."

Darwin was examining whether eggs and seeds could travel across oceans to spread species across oceans by the start of 1856. Hooker's conventional view that animals were standardized became more insecure, but Thomas Henry Huxley, their childhood friend, was still opposed to species transmutation. Lyell was intrigued by Darwin's theories, but he didn't know how much they were. When he read a paper by Alfred Russel Wallace entitled "On the Law that has Regulated the Introduction of New Species," he noticed similarities with Darwin's ideas and advised him to publish to establish precedence.

Though Darwin saw no danger, he began writing a short paper on May 14th, 1856. Finding answers to tense questions kept him up often, and he revised his plans to a "large book on species" titled Natural Selection, which would include his "note on Man." Wallace, a Borneo scientist, continued his studies by obtaining facts and specimens from naturalists around the world, including Wallace.

He began a section heading in mid-1857, but did not include text; "Theory applied to Races of Man" was the subject, but did not have any. Darwin sent Asa Gray, an American botanist, a comprehensive summary of his theories, including an abstract of Natural Selection that rejected human origins and sexual selection. Darwin received a letter from Wallace in December asking if the book would investigate human origins. He replied that he would avoid that area "so surrounded by prejudices," while encouraging Wallace's theorizing and saying, "I go much farther than you."

Darwin's book was only partially published when he was sent by Wallace in 1858, describing natural selection. Darwin said he had been "fortally" wounded and delivered it to Lyell on the day, as Wallace had requested, and Darwin suggested that it be sent to any journal that Wallace desired, although Wallace had not ordered for publication. His family was in need of children in the village of scarlet fever, and he put the matter in the custody of his relatives. Following some debate, Wallace, Lyell, and Hooker decided on a joint presentation at the Linnean Society on the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and Perception of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection. Darwin's baby boy died of scarlet fever after about a week of severe illness, but he was too ill to attend on the evening.

This information was not immediately apparent; the president of the Linnean Society remarked in May 1859 that no notable discoveries had been made during the year. Only one review was good enough for Darwin to remember it later; Dublin's Professor Samuel Haughton said that "all that was new in them was false, and what was true was old." Darwin suffered for thirteen months to produce an abstract of his "big book," suffering from poor health but receiving regular support from his scientific colleagues. Lyell arranged for it to be published by John Murray.

The Origins of Species book was unexpectedly popular, with the entire stock of 1,250 copies oversubscribed when it was first released to bookellers on November 22, 1859. Darwin argued "one long argument" of detailed observations, inferences, and consideration of prospective objections in the book. He used evidence of homologies between humans and other animals to support common descent. He'd suggested that sexual selection could reveal subtle differences among human races. He avoided explicit discussion of human origins but implied the importance of his work with the sentence: "Light will be shed on man and his history." In the introduction, his argument is simply stated: '

He said, at the end of the book, he came to the conclusion:

In the first five editions of the book, the last word was the only variant of "evolved." At that time, "evolutionism" was associated with other terms, most often with embryological development. Darwin first used the term evolution in The Descent of Man in 1871, before adding it to the 6th edition of The Origin of Species in 1872.

The book ignited international interest, but there was less controversy than had greeted the Popular and less scientific Vestiges of Creation's Evolution. Despite Darwin's illness, he eagerly scrutinized the scientific response, advising on press cuttings, studies, essays, and caricatures, and corresponded with colleagues around the world. The book did not explicitly discuss human origins, but it did contain a number of hints about the ancestry of humans from which the inference could be made.

"If a monkey has become a man, what will not be a man become?" the first review stated. It was said that this should be left to theologians because they are too risky for ordinary readers. Huxley's reviews slammed Richard Owen, the head of the scientific institution that Huxley was attempting to overthrowrown.

Owen's paper in April attacked Darwin's associates and condescendingly dismissed his theories, angering Darwin, but Owen and others began to promote notions of supernaturally guided evolution. Patrick Matthew drew attention to his 1831 book, which had a brief appendix introducing the idea of natural selection leading to new species, but he had not developed the theory.

The Church of England's reaction was mixed. Sedgwick and Henslow, Darwin's old Cambridge tutors, dismissed the theories, but liberal clergymen interpreted natural selection as a sign of God's creation, with the cleric Charles Kingsley's understanding of it as "nothing as noble a vision of Deity." The publication of Essays and Reviews by seven liberal Anglican theologians diverted Darwin's clerical interest in 1860. The church authorities have branded it's views, which included higher condemnation, as heresy. Baden Powell argued that miracles broke God's rules, so belief in them was atheist, and that "Mr Darwin's masterly volume [supporting] the fundamental principle of nature's self-evolving powers of nature."

Natural Selection is not inconsistent with natural theology, asa Gray discussed teleology with Darwin, who produced and sold Gray's pamphlet on the evolutionary transition. During a public 1860 Oxford evolution discussion, where the Bishop of Oxford Samuel Wilberforce, though not opposed to transmutation of species, argued against Darwin's explanation and human descent from apes. Joseph Hooker argued favourably for Darwin, Thomas Huxley's legendary retort, that he'd rather descend from an ape than a man who misappropriated his gifts, which would have signified a triumph of science over faith.

And Darwin's close friends, particularly younger naturalists, had reservations but gave them a lot of support. Gray and Lyell longed for peace with faith, while Huxley portrayed a polarization between faith and science. He fought vehemently against the priesthood's role in education, seeking to reverse the role of clergymen and aristocratic amateurs under Owen in favour of a new generation of academic scientists. Owen's assertion that brain anatomy revealed humans to be a distinct biological order from apes was proved to be inaccurate by Huxley in a long-running debate that discredited Owen Owen as the "Great Hippocampus Question" in a long running controversy parodied by Kingsley.

Darwinism emerged as a movement encompassing a variety of evolutionary theories. Lyell's Geological Evidence of Man in 1863 popularized prehistory, but Darwin's caution against evolution disappointed Darwin. Humans are apes anatomically, according to Huxley's Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature, then Henry Walter Bates' Naturalist on the River Amazons provided empirical proof of natural selection. On November 3, 1864, Lobbying received the Royal Society's Copley Medal, Darwin's highest scientific award, which was awarded on November 3rd. Huxley held the first meeting of what became the "X Club" devoted to "science, pure and free, untrammelled by religious dogmas" on the day. Evolution occurred by the end of the decade, most scientists agreed that evolution took place, but only a minority supported Darwin's interpretation that the primary mechanism was natural selection.

The Origins of Species was translated into many languages, making it a staple scientific text attracting thoughtful attention from all walks of life, particularly the "working guys" who flocked to Huxley's lectures. Darwin's theory fit with a variety of movements at the time and became a staple of popular culture. Cartoonists parodied animal ancestry in an old tradition of showing humans with animal characteristics, and in Britain these droll images helped to popularize Darwin's theory in an uninhibitive way. Darwin noticed his beard when he returned to public in 1866, and he helped to define all aspects of evolution with Darwinism.

Darwin's career continued despite repeated bouts of illness over the course of his life's first twenty-two years. He continued with experiments, analysis, and writing of his "big book" after he had written On the Origins of Species as an abstract of his theory. He covered human descent from earlier animals, including evolution of culture and mental skills, as well as describing aesthetic beauty in wildlife and diversifying into innovative plant research.

In 1861, insect pollination was leading to the discovery of wild orchids, showing how orchids could be adapted to attract particular moths to each species and ensure cross fertilisation. Fertilization of Orchids, 1862, gave his first clear demonstration of the power of natural selection to reveal tangled ecological relationships, as well as scientific predictions. As his health deteriorated, he lay in his sickbed in a room packed with inventive experiments to track climbing plant movements. Ernst Haeckel, a zealous proponent of Darwinism, incorporated Lamarckism and Goethe's enthusiasm, was one of the admiring visitors. Wallace remained helpful, but Spiritualism began to grow.

Darwin's book The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication (1868) was the first part of his intended "big book" and included his failed hypothesis of pangenesis, which was attempting to explain heredity. Despite its size, it came in first and was translated into many languages. He wrote the majority of a second part on natural selection, but it wasn't published in his lifetime.

Lyell had already popularized human history, and Huxley had discovered that anatomically humans are apes. Darwin established that humans are mammals, with a specific species of humans, demonstrating continuity of physical and mental characteristics, and sexual classification, while still insisting that humans are humans.

In his 1872 book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, one of the first books to feature printed photographs, his research using images was expanded. Both books were highly popular, and Darwin was taken aback by general assent with which his views had been shared, remarking that "everybody is talking about it without being shocked." "This man with all his noble attributes, as well as compassion for the most debased, has benevolence that has not limited to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect, which has penetrated into the solar system's movements and constitution"—with all these exalted attributes—Man still has in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origins."

His evolution-related experiments and studies resulted in books on Insectivorous Plants, The Effects of Cross and Self Fertilization in the Vegetable Kingdom, several species of flowers on plants, and The Power of Movement in Plants. He continued to gather data and exchange views from scientific reporters around the world, including Mary Treat, who was encouraged to continue researching her scientific careers. He was the first one to understand the importance of carnivory in plants. His botanical writing was interpreted and popularized by writers including Grant Allen and H. G. Wells, and he helped pioneer plant science in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century.

In 1882, he was diagnosed with "angina pectoris," which meant coronary thrombosis and heart disease. The physicians diagnosed "anginal attacks" and "heart-failure" at the time of his death, but there has since been rumors regarding Charles Darwin's long-term health.

He died at Down House on 19 April 1882. His family sent Emma "I am not afraid of death"; remember what a wonderful wife you have been to me; tell all my children how wonderful they have been to me." Although she slept, Henrietta and Francis said, "It's almost worth it to be sick to be nursed by you."

Darwin had intended to be buried in Downe's churchyard, but Darwin's associates, William Spottiswoode (President of the Royal Society), honoured Darwin by burial in Westminster Abbey, close to John Herschel and Isaac Newton. Thousands of people attended the funeral, including family, friends, scientists, scholars, and dignitaries, according to the funeral, which took place on Wednesday, April 26th.

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