Charles Darwin:�a Life and Times
Brian Regal, PhD
Professor for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Department of History
Kean University
Hist 3832
Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
Charles Darwin (1809-1882) time line
Born February 12, 1809
Father Robert (Doctor) Uncle Erasmus
(Doctor/philosopher)
1822 – Sets up chemistry lab in the family shed
w/ brother Erasmus
1825 – Enters Edinburgh University, Scotland to study
medicine
1827 – Friends with Prof Robert Grant (radical
Scots botanist political liberal)
- leaves medical school for Cambridge
1828 – Enters Christ College, Cambridge
Erasmus Darwin (grandfather) (1731-1802)
Medical doctor, political and
religious radical, author of
Zoonomia (1794)
Joseph Priestly (1733-1804)
Josiah Wedgewood’s chief chemist
Member of the Lunar Society
Discoverer of Oxygen
Political radical/Liberal forced to flee
The UK to go to America, becomes
friends with Ben Franklin
University of Edinburgh, Scotland
University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1826)
Satirical cartoon of Gall, 1806
Phrenology
University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
Christ College, Cambridge
Darwin’s dorm room, Christ College, Cambridge
Darwin’s dorm room, Christ College, Cambridge
Reading the correspondence
1. Who is the author?
2. Who is the recipient?
3. What dates are involved?
4. What is the subject of the letter?
5. What are the details?
6. What meaning can we discern from the letter?
8. Is this a ‘one off’ or does it form a continuum with other letters?
7. How does the letter fit into wider historical context?
Robert Grant (1793-1874)
Edinburgh marine biologist,
Botanist, political and religious
radical, ‘Free Thinker,’
goes to Cambridge
same time as CD
John Stevens Henslow (1796-1861)
Carl Von Linne (1752-1840) ‘Linnaeus’
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840)
Human diversity theories
William Paley Natural Theology (1802)
James Cowles Pritchard Researches into the Physical History of Man (1813)
Josiah Clarke Nott and George Glidden Types of Mankind (1854)
Arthur de Gobineau Inequality of the Races (1854)
Catastrophism: George Cuvier
Uniformitarianism: Charles Lyell et al.
Monogenesis: single origin Pritchard and William Lawrence (1783-1869) did
comparisons between humans and primates
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1820s) xz
Polygenisis: many origins
Early Islamic Human diversity theories
Al-Jahiz (9th century AD)
“Animals engage in a struggle for existence, and for resources, to avoid being eaten, and to breed. Environmental factors influence organisms to develop new characteristics to ensure survival, thus transforming them into new species. Animals that survive to breed can pass on their successful characteristics to their offspring.“
Muhammad al-Nakhshabi (10th Century AD)
“While man has sprung from sentient creatures [animals], these have sprung from vegetal beings [plants], and these in turn from combined substances; these from elementary qualities, and these [in turn] from celestial bodies”
Others in the Arab and Indian world wrote of similar ideas.
Human diversity theories
Homo diluvii testis
HMS Beagle
Pringle Stokes (1793-1828) first captain of the Beagle
Pringle Stokes (grave site, Patagonia)
HMS Beagle
HMS Beagle
HMS Beagle – Robert Fitzroy (second captain)
Was meteorologist on 1st Beagle voyage
HMS Beagle
A Fujian
Was Darwin the Beagle’s ‘naturalist’?
Robert McCormick (1800-1890)
(ship’s surgeon/naturalist)
He left the Beagle half way through
Because he felt he could not
Compete with Darwin.
Conrad Martens (ship’s artist)
Replaced the first artist,
Augustus Earle, after he became ill
And left the Beagle for home.
Alexander Von Humboldt (1769-1859)
Scientific travel literature
HMS Beagle voyage 1831-1836
HMS Beagle voyage 1831-1836
HMS Beagle voyage 1831-1836
Darwin’s finches
HMS Beagle voyage 1831-1836
Modern Iguana and fossil Mylodon
HMS Beagle voyage 1831-1836
Fossil Glyptodont
Darwin’s study at Down House
Notebook ‘B’ (1837)
Notebook ‘B’ (1837)
Darwin’s Sand Walk - then
Darwin’s Sand Walk - now
Charles Lyell (1797-1875)
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844)
Robert Chambers (1802-1871)
Thomas Malthus (1766-1834)
Principles of Population (1798-1826)
Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913)
Linnaean Society, London, July 1, 1858
On the Origin of Species (November 1859)
On the Origin of Species title ideas
On the Geological Antiquity of Man and On the Descent (origin) of Species by Variation
On the Origin of Species remaining mss page
On the Origin of Species original manuscript, kids drawings
T.H. Huxley (1825-1895) – Richard Owen (1804-1892)
T.H. Huxley (1825-1895)
H.M.S. Rattlesnake
Huxley’s line up (1863)
Huxley’s line up, later interpretation
Huxley’s line up, later interpretation
Victorian Monkeyana
Victorian Darwiniana
Victorian Darwiniana
Neanderthal Man – early views as monster
Crania Americana (1868) Samuel George Morton
Crania Americana (1839) Samuel George Morton
Types of Mankind (1868) Samuel George Morton
Types of Mankind (1865) Nott & Gliddon
Human evolution since Darwin
1856, local schoolteacher Johann Fuhlrott recognized bones from Feldhofer Cave in Neander Valley
Human evolution since Darwin
More Neanderthals discovered:
Dinant, Belgium 1866
Spy, Belgium 1886
Krapina, Croatia 1899
Ehringsdorf, Germany 1908
La Chapelle-aux-Saints (Church of the Saints), France 1908
La Chapelle described by Henri Breuil (1877-1961) and Marcellin Boule (1861-1942)
Les Eyzies, France Cro-Magnons 1868
Human evolution since Darwin
Piltdown Man, England 1912
Found by Charles Dawson, amateur scientists and lawyer
Brought to and conformed by:
Grafton Elliot Smith
Arthur Smith Woodward
Arthur Keith
Nebraska Man, 1906
Found by Richard Gilder, journalist
Henry Fairfield Osborn
Human evolution since Darwin
Java Man
Eugene Dubois (1858-1940) found fossils near Trinil, Java 1890
Peking Man, China
All members of Homo erectus
Human evolution since Darwin
Ancient Humans in Africa:
Taung Child, 1924, Australopithecus africanus
Found by Raymond Dart, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa
Human evolution since Darwin
Ancient Humans in Africa:
Louis Leakey
Olduvai Gorge, Great Rift Valley
1959 Zinjanthropus, Tanzania/Kenya
1960 Homo habilis (the handy man) toolmaker, 1.78 MYO
1974 Lucy (same as Taung Child)
1980s- : Homo erectus, 1myo-200tyo
Homo sapiens, 200tyo to present