Charles Darwin and 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...

... middle of paper ...

..." 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.

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