Charles Darwin’s legacy is everywhere you look.
The entire field of evolutionary biology rests on his work alone. Charles Darwin was born in a fascinating century, one that would yield other great thinkers as Albert Einstein, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud. Yet it is Darwin’s influence that has the greatest hold on the modern world.
Technology has transformed our world in ways no one would have predicted. So it was with the theory of natural selection that Darwin unleashed onto the world in 1859 that was like nothing that had been seen before. You could say we have Charles Darwin to thank for the great shift in modern thought which has floated our boat, much like the HMS Beagle once took him to faraway places, where new ideas and controversial thought processes consumed his life.
Here are the some of lessons we can learn from the extraordinary life of Charles Darwin:
Remain Humble with Humility
“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.” — Charles Darwin
Despite being born in a rich family. Darwin was humble and lived his whole life simply. His father, Robert Darwin, and mother Susannah Wedgwood both were wealthy doctors and financiers.
Darwin had all the privileges of an upper-class life; there were many times he asked his father for money in order to finance his projects, well into his 20s and 30s.
In fact, his father even funded him to go on the voyage, which was set to take at least 2 years where all the thoughts about evolution and discovery began.
Being a rich and influential family in the city, he had access to everything from the top colleges to hospitals and many influential persons.
However, despite being grown up with a silver spoon Darwin never invested his inheritance into any personal pleasure. He only cared about his projects, books, and research. His whole life he remained simple and humble.
Have the courage to think and be different
Back in the 1850s all leading thinkers of the day, philosophers, and scientists alike were Christian Men. The world in which they lived had been created by God, and that was that. God had brought about the perfect adaptation of all organisms to one another and to their environments.
So, Darwin proceeded to believe that the world did not need God to be the creator or designer of how the world continued to recreate itself. Darwin being a naturalist, saw no need for God to be the interventionist people believed He was.
Eliminating God from science made room for scientific explanations based on strictly natural phenomena. This, in turn, gave rise to a powerful spiritual and intellectual revolution whose effects are still with us today.
At this time as well, the world of Science was being newly developed; naturalists and other scientists were questioning held beliefs and why they must continue to be so. Add to this many Western countries experiencing revolutions of their own makings, and the fact that new thoughts, new ways of living, and new philosophies were humanity forward.
His observations in South America, particularly those of the mockingbirds on the different islands of the Galapagos, gave him the very first thoughts that would ultimately lead to The Origin of Species which he would publish in 1859.
Tinker with the ideas and thoughts
While studying at Cambridge, Darwin would travel out into the countryside every chance he got looking for beetles.
In his autobiography, Darwin recounts how he came across two rare beetles and quickly grabbed them in his hand. Then he saw a third beetle which he couldn’t pass up. So he popped one of the other beetles into his mouth. Immediately, it ejected some kind of fluid, which burnt his tongue; he was forced to spit it out. Of course, the beetle was lost.
Even during the world trip, young Darwin would be on land collecting specimens and investigating all there was to see, and taking copious notes.
While traveling in South America, Darwin made a find of fossil bones from huge extinct mammals. These bones had been found near recent seashells, which led Darwin to believe that this animal was recently extinct with no sign of a catastrophe or climate change. He spent 2 years studying these bones during periodic trips to the cliffs there at Bahia Blanca.
Remain Curious and Optimistic
Darwin still had questions about so many things he had seen.
In his Autobiography, he wrote
- Was each mockingbird found in the Galapagos a naturally produced one?
- Why did ground sloths become extinct?
Darwin came away with a head full of observations and ideas, all of which would carry him through for the decades to follow. Darwin began thinking that species do start to turn into another, based on what he saw of living species and also of extinct ones.
Darwin questioned not only experts but other people familiar with soil, such as farmers and those who kept pigeons. For all his life, Darwin include speculations from everyone he knew or met.
Your education and rank doesn’t matter to become one of the influential people
The school as a means of education to me was simply a blank. During my whole life, I have been singularly incapable of mastering any language. Especial attention was paid to verse-making, and this I could never do well.
— Darwin on his biography
Darwin had difficulty working on any subject.
Once his father said, “You care for nothing but shooting, dogs and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family.”
But he always admired his father, he also added his father who was the kindest man I ever knew and whose memory I love with all my heart, must have been angry and somewhat unjust when he used such words.
Don’t stick to one thing, try multiple things
I was fond of reading various books, and I used to sit for hours reading the historical plays of Shakespeare, generally in an old window in the thick walls of the school.
I read also other poetry, such as Thomson’s “Seasons,” and the recently published poems of Byron and Scott. I mention this because later in life I wholly lost, to my great regret all pleasure from poetry any kind, including Shakespeare.
— Charles Darwin on his AutoBiography
Darwin even was passionately fond of shooting:
I do not believe that anyone could have shown more zeal for the holiest cause than I did for shooting birds. How well I remember killing my first snipe and my excitement was so great that I had much difficulty in reloading my gun from the trembling of my hands. This taste long continued, and I believe a very good shot. When at Cambridge I used to practice throwing up my gun to my shoulder before a looking-glass to see that I threw it up straight.
— Charles Darwin in AutoBiography
However, later in his life he discontinued hunting and continued collecting more. He was always fond of collecting and observing things. He loved collecting all manner of bug specimens.
No poet ever felt more delight at seeing his first poem published than I did at seeing in Stephen’s Illustrations of British Insects the magic words
You don’t need to be perfect to do something
Darwin was not really an experienced botanist, but he learned and collected specimens so well while on the trip that he may as well have been a seasoned naturalist.
He was able to keep large amounts of notes even while suffering badly with seasickness.
Dedication towards your passion
Charles Darwin went into the sea voyage on a rather light note, he took his work seriously and loved getting off the boat to do extensive note-taking. In fact, during the five years, he made the round the world excursion, he spent only about 18 months onboard the ship.
Darwin traveled from a frying hot island to a volcanic mountain. He deeply admired his work and dedicated his whole energy to filling his curiosity.
By the end of the voyage, Darwin had written a 770-page diary and had cataloged 5,426 skins, bones, and carcasses. Yet he still wondered about everything he had discovered. When the captain wrote his official narrative of the Beagle voyages, he included Darwin’s diary into its account.
Have great friends that support and encourage you.
He met Charles Lyell for the first time on October 29, 1836, before publishing the book. Darwin has introduced to Richard Owen an anatomist. His facility, the Royal College of Surgeons, worked on the fossils bones brought back by Darwin.
From Charles Lyell, Charles Babbage, Joseph Dalton Hooker to Richard Owen, Darwin had exceptional friends from a different field, who always made him thoughtful, encouraged, and supported him for his work.
Charles Darwin and Charles Babbage
Charles Babbage believed in the natural law and all creatures being made by God. This was the way of the upper classes in England at the time; The Whig way. The Whigs were the powerful political party in England up until the 1850s. God was seen as the divine programmer, and it was something every Whig heartily believed in.
Darwin, a Whig reformer, accepted Babbage’s belief that the creator creates by law. Yet, his notebooks and his observations left him with more questions than answers.
It takes time to create something great. Have Patience
He waited more than 20 years to publish his groundbreaking theory on evolution.
Darwin’s five-year voyage around the world on HMS Beagle, which ended in 1836, provided him with invaluable research that contributed to the development of his theory of evolution and natural selection.
Concerned, however, about the public and ecclesiastical acceptance of his deeply radical idea, he did not present his theory on evolution until 1858 when he made a joint announcement with British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who was about to go public with a similar concept to Darwin’s. The next year, Darwin published his seminal work, “The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.”
It was 1839, and Charles Darwin finally had his theory. His prime hobby, as he would call it, was natural selection. He would now turn his attention to experimental selective breeding of animals and plants. He started finding evidence that species were not in a fixed state and did extensive research fine-tuning all the details.
For 15 years, he worked on his natural selection theory but didn’t give it his full attention. That would go into publishing articles from his Beagle diaries and writing geologic reports.
Life-long learning is important
He graduated tenth in his class in 1831 in his ordinary degree course. He even joined Medical School, encouraged by this father to be like him. However, he was truly not interested in learning medicine. He eventually dropped out after 2 years.
He went to study for a Bachelor of Arts at Cambridge but he always enjoyed being outdoors more than hitting the books.
Later on in his life during Cambridge, Darwin read some interesting books and treatises, one such being “Natural Theology or Evidence of the Existences and Attributes of the Deity” by William Paley.
Paley argued that the same complexity and functionality found in a watch, for instance, can also be found in the natural world. To assume that all these things were created by God is a natural and correct assumption.
Charles Darwin was a great believer in Paley’s arguments. Here were his beginning thoughts about the adaption of all species as God acting through the laws of nature. This would become a new way of thinking, one that would lead Darwin to go abroad to study natural history. He joined a course in geology which saw him traveling to Wales to map out rocks and soil.
Even after becoming popular and well recognized, Darwin continued writing and publishing books on geology and even became interested again in marine invertebrates, something which he hadn’t given much thought to since his school days.
He was always fascinated with nature, he always had a mindset, it’s never enough with these things, there is always more to discover and learn.
Attentive Father
With the birth of their first child, William in 1839, Darwin started taking notes on the natural history of babies, starting with his own. He tracked and recorded William’s sneezing, yawning, stretching, hiccupping, sucking, screaming, and laughing right from the first day.
Darwin was a devoted father and very attentive to his children. Whenever one of them fell ill, he feared for their lives. Because he had married his first cousin, which was acceptable in those days, Darwin believed his children may have inherited genetic weaknesses which would compromise their health. He even wrote about this in his many writings, contrasting it to how specific traits crossed in many different organisms.
Three of their sons, George Francis and Horace, would become Fellows of the Royal Society, distinguished as an astronomer, botanist, and civil engineer respectively.
The fourth son, Leonard would become a soldier, politician, economist, eugenicist, and mentor of biologist Ronald Fisher. He lived up to age 93.
Making simple ideas into big
Darwin’s ideas were simple enough; how random mutations of species which were better suited to their environments than others would be more likely to breed and succeed. This didn’t go down very well in a 19th-century culture that couldn’t bring itself to think beyond how life was ordered by a divine creator.
TL;DR
- Remain humble with humility.
- Have the courage to think and be different.
- Your education and rank don’t matter to become one of the influential people.
- Don’t stick to one thing, try multiple things in life.
- You don’t need to be perfect at something to conquer something.
- Dedication towards your passion.
- Surround yourself with supportive friends.
- Have Patience.
- Life-long Learning.
- Attentive Father.
- Making simple ideas into big.
Thanks for reading.
