Historical Influences on Darwin

There are many people who influenced Charles Darwin’s hypothesis, but I believe that one scientist in particular contributed the most to Darwin’s work. Charles Lyell was a geologist and was known to be “obsessed with the implications of the evolutionary theory. Not only was Charles Lyell “one of the first prominent scientists to support The Origin of Species,” but he was also a close friend of Darwin’s. Just by being friends with him, I feel that Lyell had such a great influence on Charles Darwin because they worked together frequently. They enjoyed each other’s company and debates about the theory of evolution. Charles Lyell lent a book that he wrote to Darwin called Principles of Geology while on the HMS Beagle in order to give him an idea of his own theory on the process of evolution. This trip is now famous because it is known that Darwin created his theory of natural selection while on this trip. Lyell’s theory in his book explains how new species would appear as older ones became extinct, one species could not evolve into another over time. Although this is quite the opposite of what Darwin proposed later on, I believe that Lyell’s opinion had a huge effect on Darwin’s thoughts because after reading this book, Darwin came up with his own theory of natural selection. This is the point of Darwin’s work that was greatly affected by Charles Lyell. Darwin was able to realize the flaws in Charles Lyell’s hypothesis and create his own as well as convince Lyell that his idea was much more practical and even managed to change Lyell’s beliefs completely. I do not think that Darwin would have been able to develop his theories of natural selection without the help of Charles Lyell. I feel that his theory of natural selection was able to be fathomed because he read Lyell’s book and without it, would not have had the idea of natural selection in his mind. The attitude of the church, which was an obvious amount of anger and disapproval, seemed to have a positive effect on the eventual publication of Charles Darwin’s book The Origin of Species. There were protests and negative public statements, but the book was repeatedly sold out. It seems to me that all of the unintended publicity that the church was giving to Darwin helped him raise awareness about his book and hypothesis.

Sources:

http://www.victorianweb.org/science/lyell.html

http://www.lycos.com/info/charles-lyell--charles-darwin.html