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Aspects of scientific revolution
Contribution of Darwin to the scientific revolution
Discuss the scientific revolution
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In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a new way of thinking resulted from the Scientific Revolution. It was an important time in which many people turned away from the church and looked towards logic and reason for the answers to questions about life, death, and the universe. The Scientific Revolution was the key to new discoveries and it allowed many scientists such as Charles Robert Darwin to continue thinking and striving for the truth as other scientists, such as Galileo and Newton, had done before him. It was clear that logic and reasoning was becoming more popular than faith. The Scientific Revolution was well underway before Darwin was even born, but it was his
studies which allowed us to conclude that "the world is governed entirely by natural forces, including the struggle for existence in which the fittest members of a varying population survive, reproduce, and pass on their traits to the next generation."1 The impact that Darwin made in the science field was great since his ideas and theories formed a foundation that today's scientists constantly build on.
Darwins's "Origin of Species" was widly disputed. When he studied the root of humans, his conclusions went against the original widespread beliefs that God had created man. He claimed that the human origin actually evolved from an ancestor. After comparing humans with several species in the primate animal group, he noticed that "the relative position of our features is manifestly the same; and the various emotions displayed by nearly similar movements of the muscles and skin, chiefly above the eyebrows and around the mouth."2 It was not too long later when monkeys and apes were considered to be the ancestor of man. With the technology now, it is...
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..." The World & I; (Aug 1999):
v14n8, p.18.
- Hyman, Stanley Edgar. Darwin For Today. New York: The Viking Press, 1963, p. 252.
- See Graham, Peter W. p 28.
- de Beer, Sir Gavin. Charles Darwin: A Scientific Biography. New York: Doubleday &
- Company, Inc., 1963, p. 180.
- See de Beer, Sir Gavin. p. 198.
- See Graham, Peter W. p. 20.
- See Hyman, Stanley Edgar. p. 87.
- See Graham, Peter W. p. 23.
- See de Beer, Sir Gavin. p. 192.
- See Hyman, Stanley Edgar. p. 85.
- See Hyman, Stanley Edgar. p. 85.
- Dennett, Daniel C. Darwin's Dangerous Idea. New York Academy of Sciences: v35n3,
1995. Database on-line. Available from http://gort.ucsd.edu/jhan/ER/dd.html. Accessed
27 October 1999.
- See Graham, Peter W. p. 20.
- See de Beer, Sir Gavin. p. vii.
- See Hyman, Stanley Edgar. p. 17.
Zhao, Buyun. "Charles Darwin & Evolution." Charles Darwin & Evolution. Christ's College, 2009. Web. 04 May 2014.
The evolution of man is constantly in question. While we are reasonably sure that modern humans and primates are both related to the same common ancestor, there is constant debate over what initially caused the two species to split into early hominids and apes. According to some, our longest and most popular theory on the division of man and ape is profoundly wrong. However, those same individuals usually offer an equally controversial theory as a substitute, one that is almost impossible to scientifically test or prove. Both the Savanna Theory and the Aquatic Ape Theory offer solutions to how and why humans evolved into bipedal toolmakers. But with enough questioning, each loses its accountability to rhetorical science.
Porter, Duncan M. and Graham, Peter W. The Portable Darwin. New York: Penguin Books, 1993.
Charles Darwin, the Father of Evolution, was a British scientist who laid the foundations of the theory of evolution, transforming the thinking of the entire world about the living things around us (Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882)). After working on his theory for nearly 20 years, he published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1859. As soon as the book was released, the controversy began with each sides gaining followers until the climax on July 10, 1925. The idea that animals could “evolve” and change into new species, including humans, was one that challenged not only how people thought about the natural world, but challenged the story of the creation from the Bible itself. Even though Darwin himself never said that humans “evolved” from apes, everyone took it as a logical extension of his new theory. It went against the idea of argument for design that had unified theology and science for decades (Moran 5). This new threat to Christianity and the social culture of the time was one that would transform state laws on their educational curriculum.
Darwin: A Norton Critical Edition, Second Edition ; ed. by Philip Appleman; copyright 1979, 1970 by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Charles Robert Darwin was an English naturalist who was born in Shrewsbury, England on February 12, 1809. He was the second youngest of six children. Before Charles Darwin, there were many scientists throughout his family. His father, Dr. Robert Darwin, was a medical doctor, and his grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, was a well-known botanist. Darwin’s mother, Susannah Darwin, died when he was only eight years old. Darwin was a child that came from wealth and privilege and who loved to explore nature. In October 1825 at age sixteen, Darwin enrolled at Edinburgh University with his brother Erasmus. Two years later, Charles became a student at Christ’s College in Cambridge. His father wanted him to become a medical doctor, as he was, but since the sight of blood made Darwin nauseous, he refused. His father also proposed that he become a priest, but since Charles was far more interested in natural history, he had other ideas in mind (Dao, 2009)
Anyone with even a moderate background in science has heard of Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution. Since the publishing of his book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1859, Darwin’s ideas have been debated by everyone from scientists to theologians to ordinary lay-people. Today, though there is still severe opposition, evolution is regarded as fact by most of the scientific community and Darwin’s book remains one of the most influential ever written.
Charles darwin was more than definitely a revolutionary. According to dictionary.com a revolution is “a forcible overthrow of government or social order in favoring a new system”. A revolutionary is someone that is pushing this overthrow with information. Charles darwin had done this with his theory of Evolution. The revolution that Charles was a revolutionary in was both government and social order. The government part was the fact that he was going against the church and the social part was going and telling everyone what they were taught was completely wrong.
The Scientific Revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries changed the way people viewed the world. Scientific philosophers, such as Galileo and Descartes, rejected the old teachings of the church and introduced new ways of thinking. These men sought to prove that rational thought could demonstrate the existence of God. They also argued that understanding a series of rational thoughts, rather than faith, would lead to an understanding of how the world worked. Traditional ways of thinking were ultimately challenged by logical and sensible reasoning.
The argument of whether or not humans evolved from monkeys is constantly tossed around in our society with the emergence of more and more scientific discoveries. Evolution across such a broad spectrum is known as macroevolution, or changes that happen at or above the species level. Both popular and academic discourses debate the religious and moral issues associated with macroevolution and its propositions. The main person behind the idea of evolution was Charles Darwin who theorized that everything comes from a common ancestor. In the magazine article “Was Darwin Wrong?” featured in a 2004 issue of National Geographic, David Quammen discusses whether or not Darwin’s findings in evolution theory were correct. This article was targeted for
The impact these men had on religious thought was tremendous. Some of them are the starting points for many of the controversies existing today. Of all the scientists, historians, and philosophers in the nineteenth century, the most influential and controversial was Charles Darwin. Born in 1809, Charles Darwin always had an interest in the nature, so he chose to study botany in college. His strengths in botany led him to become the naturalist on the H.M.S. Beagle. On a trip to South America, he and the rest of the crew visited the near by Galapagos Islands in the Pacific Ocean. It was there he noticed many different variations of the same general plants and birdshe saw previously in South America. He also observed ancient fossils of extinct organisms that closely resembled modern organisms. By 1859, all of these observations inspired him to write down his theories. He wanted to explain how evolution had occurred through a process called natural selection. In his published work, On the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, or On the Origin of Species for short, Darwin stated that, "new species have come on the stage slowly and at successive intervals."(1) He also said, "old forms are supplanted by new and improved forms," and all organisms play a part in the "struggle for life.
Charles Darwin has had the greatest influence on the world by proving the evolution of living things. Charles Darwin had first noticed the similarities of plants and animals when he took a five-year cruise on the H.M.S. Beagle, which was available to him through a friend from school. During the cruise Charles Darwin started becoming interested with the similarities between the plants and animals that were similar on different islands with similar climates, so he decided to study them more closely.
Darwin, Charles. From The Origin of Species. New York: P.F. Collier and Son Corporation, 1937. 71-86; 497-506.
Klin, Candyce. “Darwinism as A Cultural Issue” Cedar Crest College, 2 June 2001. Web. 17
Over the course of the years, society has been reformed by new ideas of science. We learn more and more about global warming, outer space, and technology. However, this pattern of gaining knowledge did not pick up significantly until the Scientific Revolution. In the sixteenth and seventeenth century, the Scientific Revolution started, which concerned the fields of astronomy, mechanics, and medicine. These new scientists used math and observations strongly contradicting religious thought at the time, which was dependent on the Aristotelian-Ptolemy theory. However, astronomers like Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton accepted the heliocentric theory. Astronomical findings of the Scientific Revolution disproved the fact that humans were the center of everything, ultimately causing people to question theology’s role in science and sparking the idea that people were capable of reasoning for themselves.