Charles Darwin: Naturalist and Leader in Science

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Over the course of this analysis, I will use information from Gardner’s Changing Minds (Gardner, 2006) and Uzzi and Dunlap’s How to Build Your Network (Uzzi, 2005) to assess Charles Darwin’s influence as a non-positional leader. I will also show a historical analysis, including my reasons for choosing Darwin as my subject, his background, the success and failures of his influence, as well as his legacy. Finally, I will submit my vision of non-positional leadership and mechanisms for leaders to explore their non-positional roles.

Charles Darwin’s influence uses some of Gardner’s “levers” or factors that are at work in the case of Darwin’s scientific theories changing minds (Gardner, 2006), and so there is a good level of measure for Darwin’s successes and failures as a non-positional leader. Part of the reason Darwin was able to reach many people was the initial network of scientists and other leaders Darwin had created in his life, and so Uzzi and Dunlap’s network analysis (Uzzi, 2005)will help define the reach of Darwin’s contacts.

The historical analysis of Charles Darwin includes my rationale for choosing him as my topic, his background, the elements of his successes and failures of his influence, and his legacy. I have chosen Charles Darwin for the subject of my research paper because of his influence on science through his theory of evolution. He is a clear example of change in thought, as Gardner points out in our text (Gardner, 2006), but besides that, I have always had an interest in his work. I took a course on the English of Biology and read Origin of Species (Darwin, 1982) which continued to interest me in his work. Charles Darwin and his theories are often cited and used for various purposes, so I feel his influence...

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...l essay. (n.d.). Retrieved from Darwin Correspondence Project: http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/

Darwin, C. (1982). Origin of Species. East Rutherford: Viking Penguin.

Darwin, C. (1958). The Autobiography of Charles Darwin. (N. Barlow, Ed.) London: Collins.

Drucker, P. F. (1999). Managing Oneself. Harvard Business Review , 100 - 109.

Eldredge, N. (2005). Darwin: Discovering the Tree of Life. New York : W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Gardner, H. (2006). Changing Minds. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press.

Hewlett, M. (2005). Evolution: The Controversy with Creationism. In E. L. Jones, Encyclopedia of Religion (2 ed., Vol. 5, pp. 2907-2913). Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA.

Uzzi, B. &. (2005). How to build your network. Harvard Business Review , 53-60.

I hereby affirm I have neither given nor received help with this assignment.

nicole e. crawford

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