Charles Darwin – The 200th Anniversary

Every age in the history of civilized men was dominated by a specific set of ideas or ideologies. However, Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) must be certainly mentioned as the top of the list. The year 2009 marks the 200 anniversary of Darwin’s birth and the sesquicentennial of the Origin’s publication. Scientists, universities, natural history museums, and other sorts of people, various institutions all over the world are celebrating this anniversary by organizing scientific lectures, symposia, exhibitions. Charles Robert Darwin, the scientist, had produced a fertile collection of work during his lifetime. Of his 19 books, his most prominent and remarkable work, On the Origin of Species, was published in 1859 when he was exactly 50 years old. There have been many theories concerning the reason why he waited so long to publish his thoughts on the origin of species, after he arrived from his voyage in 1836. Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, England, on February 12, 1809, in the same day with Abraham Lincoln. His father, Robert Darwin, was a rich physician with one of the most extended medical practices outside London. His paternal grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, was both a physician and a famous nature novelist. As a young boy, Darwin showed an interest in natural history but started his superior schooling in Medicine, in Edinburgh, a science he shortly learned to dislike. Later, at Cambridge, where he went to arrange for a profession in the clergy, he showed no interest in his theological studies, but became familiar with a botany professor, the Reverend John Henslow, who was to become his mentor and to have a thoughtful effect on his life. It was Henslow who encouraged Darwin to take an extended sea journey and exploration of the world outside of England, after his graduation from Cambridge. Darwin was primarily a naturalist. His preferred method was that of the naturalist. He made a series of observations and developed an inference from this fact. He considered this approach to be the inductive technique. He recorded the fact that he considered himself a true adept of Bacon in his autobiography. Darwin was a very enthusiastic observer, and there is no doubt that observation was his most prolific approach. However, he was also a skilled experimentalist and he led numerous experiments mainly in his botanical researches.