Charles Darwin Evolution

Popularly referred to as the father of evolution, Charles Darwin was the fifth child of Robert Darwin and Susannah Wedgewood born the same year and day as Abraham Lincoln- a historical icon, February 12, 1809. He had four sisters, three older than him and one younger while his brother was older than he was and they belonged to a privileged, wealthy and well-known family. He held his father, Robert Waring Darwin, in high regard and he was a renowned physician with connections among the local gentry and new industrialists. Notably also, his grandfather- Erasmus Darwin, was a physician and poet with a liking to natural philosophy where his patients were from affluent backgrounds one of them being Josiah Wedgewood. Erasmus Darwin put forward a natural explanation for the origin and development of life where in his book Zoonomia, published in 1974, he looked into the domestication of animals, cross-fertilization of plants along with movement of climbing plants. Various works of his discussed the mechanism of inheritance and made observations on sexual selection. It is important to acknowledge the intellectual atmosphere that Charles and his father grew up in (Berra, 2009).

He was born in Shrewsbury, England during the period of King George the third and Jane Austen and being from the upper class households, this meant that his family’s social life was centered on conversations regarding politics and literature, dinner with neighbors, correspondence and books. Because of the fact that Josiah Wedgewood was a close friend of the family, the Darwin’s and Wedgewood’s maintained a mutual respect for each other and both participated in the anti-slavery movement. He suffered the loss of his mother at the early age of eight years but luckily, ...

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...ribution to the field of psychology particularly through the actual observation of his own son. This shed light into the subject of developmental psychology where he likened the stages that children go through to the stages of the evolutionary process. Notably also, he brought focus into the emotional expressions of human beings and some animals by suggesting that they were traces of movements that had a practical function earlier on. His findings and observations have provided a new basis for the field of psychology where scholars and researchers began to look into emotional aspects of human beings from the perspective of evolution. In his short publication based on observing his son stated that certain emotions experienced by children, being unaffected by experience, were inherited effects of real dangers and hopeless superstitions during ancient, primitive times.