CHARLES DARWIN &
THE GALAPAGOS ISLANDS

Alfred Russell Wallace, a British naturalist, theorized and extracted conclusions of every animal he saw. On his work he paid especial attention to isolated populations due to geography, so he did most of his research on the Malay Archipelago. As a castaway he also had the chance to observe isolated populations in islands and theorized about all his conclusions. In 1858, he finished a scientific paper that he humbly sent to a senior and world respected Naturalist: Charles Darwin.
This paper contained the mechanism by which the evolution of living species can be explained, the tendency of species to form varieties, and the perpetuation of varieties and species by natural means of selection. Wallace developed then an original branch of evolution, which is Island Evolution. Certain animals and plants are present in some areas of the world, but not in others. Some of them are unique to a particular place (we call them endemic to that place) and have no chance to survive anywhere else. Such an irregular distribution of species became a very interesting subject, and Wallace was the one to make it into a science: Biogeography.

When Charles Darwin received Wallace’s work, he found himself in the position of publishing his junior’s ideas or publishing his own ideas, which came to be almost the same with slight variations on the perspective. Most of Darwin’s supporters got a bit upset when they heard about this, but Wallace was the one ready to publish his work, and got all the credit for the Theory of Evolution, which is considered a masterpiece of our culture. On the other hand, Darwin was just too shy to reveal his ideas; but finally, supported by some colleagues, he wrote an abstract of his secret ideas that had a lot of similarities with the work he had in his hands for months. Many say that Darwin had many more samples and evidence from his journeys than Wallace, so he deserves the tittle of the man who changed the world’s view.

Thomas Henry Huxley was an English biologist-anatomist, part of the British Scientific Community, philosopher and a passionate follower of Darwin’s theory. He was one of the first people who found Darwin’s revelations difficult to believe, and even though it went against his religious formation, he ended up becoming one of his greatest devotees, who was even called Darwin’s Bulldog. He was a man who would trust what he would see, but his philosophy wouldn’t completely make up his mind. He would face many groups and even the Bishop, Samuel Wilberforce, supported what everyone considered the anti-biblical beliefs of evolutionary naturalism. Darwin called him “my good and admirable agent for the promulgation of damnable heresies”. The insinuation that man was not created, but was something like a developed ape, brought a big deal of controversy. His contribution to history could be understood as the link between the conservative religious beliefs and the scientific evolutionary ideas.

Charles Lyell was a British geologist and lawyer that developed his most known theory of uniformitarianism, and revealed the idea that the earth was older than the biblical beliefs, giving names to the geological eras.
He strongly influenced Darwin with the concept that constantly geological variations occur with small slight changes over a large period of time. This information was the link that Darwin was missing in some of the evolutionary processes he was trying to understand. Lyell supported Darwin’s theory on the publication of his work in 1858 even though it went against his religious point of view. After the Theory of Evolution saw light, Lyell’s theory was better accepted and even he published information revealing man had existed on earth long time ago.

Thomas Malthus was an English cleric and economist. The concepts exposed on his work “An Essay to the Principle of Population” (1798) suggested that population growth and success was related to the availability of resources. He stated that population growth would always overpower the food supply growth, resulting in competition and struggle for survival. Lyell thought this was a mechanism used by God to control the population and encourage man to work. Darwin saw a different outcome from this dynamic, adding the fact that the environmental conditions would let some (the fittest), but not all organisms survive.
“In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long- continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The results of this would be the formation of a new species. Here, then I had at last got a theory by which to work”. (Charles Darwin)