Charles Darwin's Endless Forms Most Beautiful

Charles Darwin conceived two great theories in his publication The Origin of Species, but many more so in his lifetime. His first great idea was not published in this novel but was developed while aboard the HMS Beagle: a theory on coral reef formations. This idea of Darwin’s was later found to be scientifically factual and only began to open his mind to many more discoveries while on this same voyage. This expedition was heavily frowned upon by his father, whom referred to the voyage as a ‘useless undertaking’; his being only 22 years of age, Darwin sought to change his father’s mind so that he could go on an adventure that would not only change the course of his life but the entirety of the future of biology. In Endless Forms Most Beautiful, Carroll states, “We are an evolved – and still evolving – species.” The progression of the study of biology would be

entirely delayed without his discoveries and writings. While Darwin was afloat the Beagle he would come to find that not only do land forms and coral reefs change, but that organisms change as well.
During his explorations, Darwin encountered strange things he later reflected on: fossils of animals that were around longer than he’d previously thought the world to be and flightless birds that made him ask even more questions about his previous beliefs.

Once in the Galapagos Islands, he encountered what would later be referred to as Darwin’s finches: a group of Galapagos birds that had many varieties of beak structures although appearing to be the same type of bird. Around this time, he started a collection of notebooks where he recorded his findings in secret because he feared speaking of scientific evolution would discredit everything he and his family religiously believed in. After Darwin’s five-year voyage ended, the secret notebooks were stashed away; however, he later started pigeon breeding, which led him to reflect on his findings from Galapagos. What he discovered with his pigeons at home was that he could create immensely varying types of pigeons through breeding them. These breakthroughs were also recorded and stashed away for his own pleasure and not yet prepared for sharing with the

public.
Upon receiving a letter from Wallace, Darwin feared his life work would be published without him, so he and Wallace printed their findings together and this led to Darwin finally putting together the book Origin of Species. In this work he shared two main ideas that have been proven and still are studied today: descent with modification and natural selection. Descent with modification was the idea, before Mendel’s discoveries, that offspring inherit certain characteristics from their parents. “This preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations I call Natural Selection,” wrote Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species. He shed a light on the idea that organisms adapt to survive in their environment.
Darwin’s findings led to research that back his beliefs even today, 150 years later. Some examples are that todays organisms all descend from past ancestors that underwent many genetic changes throughout generations, new species forming from speciation, and natural selection is the reason for the majority of mutations. The facts he discovered in his lifetime and explorations really enlightened me because humans observe the changes throughout history when studying biology and still choose to think that evolution is just an “idea”. I previously subscribed to the belief that evolution was something I “believed in” as if it is like a religion; however, I now have learned that evolution is factual and backed by scientific evidence such as fossil records dating back hundreds of millions of years.