History of Science - 9
History of Science - 9.
Charles Lyell - (1797-1875).
William Buckland - (1784-1856).
William Smith - (1769-1839).
Robert Darwin - (1682-1754).
Erasmus Darwin - (1731-1802).
Jean Baptiste Pierre Lamarck - (1744-1829).
Charles Darwin - (1809- 1882).
Thomas Malthus - (1766-1834).
Alfred Russel Wallace - (1823-1913).
There were many dramatic developments in science in the 19th century.
The most important was the theory of natural selection.
It offered for the first time, a scientific explanation of evolution.
Charles Lyell was born in 1797.
Charles grew up in England along with two brothers and 7 sisters.
He developed an interest in Botany and insects, while attending school.
He was groomed to follow in his father’s footsteps, for a career in law.
Charles went to Oxford in 1816.
Oxford was beginning to shake off its reputation, as an institution,
only fit for education of country parsons.
He became interested in geology, after reading a book on geology by Bakewell.
Bakewell advocated James Hutton’s ideas.
He also read Playfair’s book.
This was the first time he had any clue, that a subject like geology existed.
He attended some lectures on mineralogy by William Buckland.
William Buckland was inspired by the work of William Smith.
William Smith was an expert in the use of fossils,
to indicate the relative ages of different strata of the Earth.
William Smith is now regarded as the father of english geology.
He published the first geological map of England in 1815.
Charles’s interest in geology did not please his father.
In 1819, Charles at the age of 21, graduated from Oxford.
He was elected a Fellow of the geological society of London.
Charles took up his legal studies in 1820.
He was bothered with problems with his eyesight, and had severe headaches.
He doubted whether he could read handwritten documents, required in the legal profession.
In 1822, he ceased being a lawyer, and began serious investigation,
of the geology of south east England.
It became obvious to him that rock layers had been twisted and bent, after they were laid down,
by immense forces.
He supposed that these forces, which had lifted what was once seabeds, high above sea level,
were associated with earthquakes.
Other geologists held different views.
In 1823, Charles went to Paris.
This trip was significant because it was the first time, that Charles crossed the English channel,
in a steamship, which took him directly from London to Calais in just 11 hours,
without waiting for a fair wind.
It was the first sign, of speeding up global communications, that was about to change the world.
He later became the president of the geological society.
Charles went on his famous geological expedition in 1828.
Very little had changed in geology since the botanical expedition by John Ray, in the previous century.
He travelled along the mediterranean coast to northern Italy,
and made extensive notes on the geological features.
He went to Sicily near the location, where there was volcanic and earthquake activity.
He became convinced that the Earth had been formed by the same processes that was at work today,
operating over immense spans of time.
He found sea beds raised 700 feet above sea level.
He wrote a book on geology with his findings.
Charles realised that Sicily was relatively young, and the plants and animals found there,
must be a species that migrated from Europe or Africa, and adapted to the new conditions.
He realised that the planet is adapting to changing environments,
and life itself must be moulded in some way by geological forces.
He published a comprehensive book on geology, called ‘Principles of geology’ in 1830.
The book was a success, and made him financially independent,
though his father still provided him an allowance.
In 1831, a chair of geology was established at king’s college in London.
Charles got the job, in spite of opposition from the church, regarding his views on the age of the Earth.
He gave highly successful lectures in college.
For the first time, some women were allowed to attend some of the lectures.
He later resigned to devote himself to writing.
He became the first person who made a living as a science writer.
In 1832, he married Mary, the daughter of a geologist, who shared his geological interests.
Charles’s father increased his allowance to Charles from 400 to 500 pounds a year.
Mary bought with her, investments worth 120 pounds a year.
This was in addition to the income from writing by Charles.
At the end of 1830, half a century of Tory rule came to an end in Britain,
and a whig government came to power, promising to reform parliament .
In 1830, agricultural workers in England rioted in protest of the loss of work,
caused by the introduction of machinery in farms.
Charles turned his attention to the species puzzle.
He proposed that species have been created in succession, in different periods of time.
He noted that many species that once lived on Earth, have gone extinct,
and replaced by the other species.
He did reserve a special place for humankind, regarding our species as unique and distinct,
from the animal kingdom.
He did suggest that species went extinct because of competition for resources such as food.
His book was updated frequently with new editions.
The twelfth and final edition, was published posthumously, in 1875.
The elements of geology, published by Charles in 1838,
is considered as the first modern text book on geology.
Charles was the leading geologist of his time.
He was knighted in 1848, and became a baronet in 1864.
He went by steamship for a year long visit to north America in 1841.
He encountered new geological evidence of the antiquity of the Earth,
in places like the Niagara Falls.
He became an outspoken supporter of the union, during the American civil war.
Charles Darwin owed an enormous debt to Charles Lyell’s work and books.
There was nothing new about the idea of evolution, by the time Charles Darwin came on the scene.
Francis Bacon and Leibnitz, had discussed this idea.
Buffon had speculated that the North American bison, might have descended,
from an ancestral form of European ox, that migrated there.
Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, came up with a sound scientific theory,
of why evolution occurred.
Erasmus Darwin was the grandfather of Charles Darwin.
Robert Darwin the father of Erasmus lived from 1682 to 1754.
Robert had noticed that an unusual fossil, which we now know was from the jurassic period.
The fossil was presented to the Royal society, who invited him to attend a meeting.
Robert met Newton who was then the president of the Royal society.
Erasmus Darwin was born in 1731.
He went to Cambridge in 1750, partly financed by a scholarship, of 16 pounds a year.
He had a reputation as a poet, but he had to choose a profession, where he could make a living.
He studied medicine, and obtained his MB, from Cambridge in 1755.
He established a flourishing practice as a doctor, near Birmingham.
He published scientific papers on steam engines, and the way clouds form.
He had a son called Robert, who was the father of Charles Darwin of evolution fame.
Erasmus Darwin became a Fellow of the Royal society in 1761.
He mingled with scientists like James Watt, Benjamin Franklin, and Joseph Priestly.
He published many scientific papers.
He translated the botanical works of Linnaeus into English, and introduced this terms stamen and pistil,
into the language of botany.
Robert Darwin the son of Erasmus married Susannah.
Susannah inherited 25000 pounds, the equivalent of 2 million pounds today.
This ensured that her son Charles Darwin, would never have to worry about earning a living.
Erasmus Darwin published a poetical work, called ’The loves of the Plants’.
He seemed to have influence on later poets like Shelley, Coleridge, Keats, and Wordsworth.
He then published the poetic book ‘Botanic garden’.
In 1794, Erasmus published his first prose work, called Zoonomia.
In Zoonomia he set out his ideas on evolution.
He drew attention to the way changes have been produced in plants and animals by humans,
for example, breeding faster race horses, and developing more productive crops by artificial selection.
This was a key feature in the theory of his grandson, Charles Darwin.
Interestingly he had mentioned that some birds, have acquired harder beaks to crack nuts,
as the parrot.
Others have acquired beaks to break the harder seeds, as sparrows.
Dramatically he came out with the belief that all life on Earth, including humans,
descended from a common source.
He proposed that once life existed, it evolved and adapted in accordance with natural laws.
Erasmus did not know, what that natural laws, that governed evolution were.
He published ’The temple of nature’, in which he set out,
how life evolved from a microscopic speck to the diversity of the present day.
His ideas however were condemned by society at that time.
Erasmus died in 1802, at the age of 70.
Jean Baptiste Pierre Lamarck was born in France in 1744.
Initially he studied to become a priest.
He later became a soldier, when he joined the army fighting in the low countries,
during the 7 year war.
When the war ended in 1763, he became interested in botany.
He published the book ‘French flora’, which became the standard text for French plants.
He was elected to the Academie, with the help of Buffon.
Apart from botany, his interest included meteorology, physics and chemistry.
He became a professor and studied, what was then called ‘insects and worms’.
He gave the name invertebrates to this species.
His ideas on evolution gradually evolved.
His ideas were upside down.
He thought that the simplest animals evolved from the more complex.
He published his ideas in seven volumes between 1815 to 1822.
He became blind at the age of 78.
He set out 4 laws in his book.
1. The volume of organic bodies increase in evolution.
2. The production of new organs results from new experienced needs.
3. The development of organs has a relationship to the use of the organs.
4. Everything that has been acquired or changed is transmitted to the next generation.
Lamarck’s ideas were downright wrong or vague.
Lamarck died in 1829, at the age of 85.
Charles Darwin was born in 1809, to Susannah and Robert Darwin.
His sister Caroline taught him the basics of reading and writing at home till he was 8 years old.
Susannah died in 1817 at the age of 52.
Robert Darwin went into a depression for the rest of his life.
At the age of 9, Charles Darwin went to boarding school.
He developed interest in natural history.
He took long walks to observe natural surroundings, and collecting specimens.
He pored over books in his father’s library.
He had an elder brother, called Erasmus, who developed a short lived interest in chemistry.
Erasmus setup a laboratory with 50 pounds given by his father.
Charles Darwin became the assistant.
Erasmus was more interested in extracurricular activities, rather than academics,
and had a bad influence on Charles Darwin.
Charles Darwin preferred sports to academic work, and showed signs of becoming a wastrel.
His father took him out of school and made him his own assistant, in medicine.
He then sent him to Edinburg for medical education.
He was uncomfortable with the dissection of corpses.
He witnessed an operation carried out on a child.
At that time there was no anaesthetic.
The child was screaming in pain.
Charles Darwin could not bear to see the sight, and rushed away.
He never attended further operations.
This incident had a bearing in Charles Darwin losing interest in medicine as a profession.
He enrolled for classes in natural history and geology.
He came under the influence of Robert Grant, an expert on marine life, who was fascinated by sea slugs.
In geology Charles Darwin learnt about the arguments of the Neptunists,
who thought that the Earth’s features had been shaped by water, and the Vulcanists,
who thought that the heat was the driving force.
He left Edinburg in 1827, at the age of 18, without any formal qualification.
His father insisted that he goes to Cambridge, and get a degree to become a country clergyman.
He joined Christ college in Cambridge in 1828.
He neglected his official studies, and pursued what really interested him, the natural world.
John Henslow was his professor of botany, who also became his friend.
He studied geology, but rejected the ideas of Scott James Hutton and Charles Lyell.
In spite of his distractions, he completed his degree, and stood 10th out of 178 in his class, in 1831.
It seems he was on his way to become a country parson.
He went on what he thought was his last geological expedition in 1831.
At this time he got an unexpected invite to join a surveying expedition, in the HMS Beagle,
under the command on Robert Fitzroy.
Robert wanted him to study the natural history and geology of South America.
He also wanted a gentlemen, a member of his own class, to keep him company, during the journey.
Charles Darwin had to pay for his own way, for the journey in HMS Beagle.
His father initially objected, to what he thought was a madcap scheme.
He eventually managed to make the trip.
HMS Beagle was just 90 feet long, and set sail in 1831.
Charles Darwin was about 22 years old.
The five year long voyage went round the world.
Charles Darwin went on long expeditions, in South America,
when the ship was docked for surveying work.
He made a name for himself as a geologist, not as a biologist,
through the fossils and other samples he sent back to England during the voyage.
Charles Darwin experienced a large earthquake in Chile.
He had taken the book, principles of geology by Charles Lyell, with him.
The earthquake raised the land, with shellfish beds, several feet above the shoreline.
This was a confirmation of Lyell’s ideas.
Later Charles Darwin wrote, that he felt his books came out of Lyell’s brain.
Charles Darwin returned to England with much acclaim.
He met Charles Lyell and other geological luminaries.
He read a paper to the geological society, of the coastal uplift in Chile.
He was elected as a Fellow of the geological society.
In 1839, he became a Fellow of the zoological society.
In the same year, he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Along with his fame as a geologist, Charles Darwin received acclaim as a writer.
He wrote about his HMS Beagle voyage, in a book called the ‘Voyage of the Beagle’.
In 1839, he married his cousin Emma, at the age of 30.
There was political turmoil at that time.
Charles Darwin moved out of London to a village in Kent.
Charles Darwin and Emma had a long and happy marriage, though he had recurring illness.
Some children died early.
He had several living children, some of whom went on to achieve eminence, in their own right.
When he returned from his voyage, Charles Darwin was convinced that evolution was a fact.
The puzzle was to find a theory of how evolution worked.
He started his first notebook on ’The transformation of species’ in 1837.
He developed his evolutionary ideas privately while publishing geological papers.
In 1838, he read the famous ‘Essay on principle of population’, by Thomas Malthus.
Malthus studied in Cambridge, and wrote the first version, when he was a curate.
He later became a famous economist, and Britain’s first professor of political economy.
He pointed out that human populations, have the power to grow geometrically,
doubling in a certain interval of time, and doubling again, in another interval of time.
At that time, the population of North America was doubling every twenty-five years.
He reasoned that, the population, is held in check by pestilence, predators,
and the limited amount of food.
Malthus’s ideas were used by 19th century politicians,
to say that efforts to improve the lot of the working classes, were doomed to failure.
They said improvements in living conditions, would result in more children surviving,
and the resulting increase in population, would swallow up the improved resources,
and leave even more people, in the same abject state of poverty.
Charles Darwin came to different conclusions in 1838.
He thought that in the struggle for survival among the same species,
only the best adapted individuals would survive.
He sketched out his ideas in a document in 1842.
The theory of evolution by natural selection, was complete even before he moved to Kent.
He discussed it with trusted colleagues including Charles Lyell.
Unfortunately, Lyell was not convinced.
Charles Darwin was afraid of the public reaction to his theory.
He was also worried about upsetting Emma, who was a very conventional christian.
Charles Darwin sat on his idea for 2 decades.
He had written a manuscript in 1844, with a note to Emma, requesting that it be published,
after his death.
He decided that if his ideas has to be accepted, he had to make a name for himself as a biologist.
He began an exhaustive study of barnacles, to complete a three volume work in 1854.
It earned him the Royal medal of the Royal Society, which was the highest award for a naturalist.
He was now established as a eminent biologist, with a thorough understanding of the subtle differences,
between closely related species.
Charles Darwin hesitated to publish his findings on evolution.
He was finally forced to publish, when another naturalist came up with the same idea.
The other naturalist was Alfred Russel Wallace, based in the Far East.
In 1844, he developed the extended outline of his theory.
Charles Darwin’s privileged life was in striking contrast to the struggle for survival of Wallace.
Wallace was born in 1823, the eighth of nine children.
He had to leave school at the age of 14 to earn a living.
He read voraciously from his father’s large collection of books.
In 1837, he went to work with his elder brother, who was a surveyor.
He was fascinated by the different kinds of rock strata, uncovered during canal and road building.
He was intrigued by the fossils that was revealed.
The brothers turned their attention to designing and building structures.
They had no training in architecture, and relied on what they could learn from books.
Alfred Wallace became more and more interested in the study of the natural world.
He began a scientific collection of wild flowers.
In 1843, the survey work dried up, when there was an economic decision.
Wallace managed to get a job, as a teacher, for a salary of 30 pounds a year.
He read Malthus’s essay on population.
He met another naturalist Henry Bates, whose interest in entomology,
complemented his interest in flowers.
His brother William died from pneumonia in 1845.
Wallace took over his surveying work.
This time there was plenty of work, because of the railway boom at that time.
He branched out into architecture and building work.
Over time he lost interest, in his surveying work.
In 1847, he proposed to Henry Bates, that they should have a two man expedition to South America.
They wanted to fund their work on natural history by sending back specimens to Britain,
which could be sold to museums, and wealthy private collectors.
He spent four years exploring and collecting specimens, in the jungles of Brazil,
often under conditions of extreme hardship.
He gained a reputation as a naturalist, through papers that he published.
On the way home from South America, the ship that Wallace was travelling caught fire and sank,
and he lost all his precious specimens.
The crew and passengers spent 10 days in open boats, before being rescued.
Wallace returned to England in 1852, almost penniless .
He published papers, and a book, which was modestly successful.
Wallace met Charles Darwin, in 1854, and the two started corresponding.
Charles Darwin became a customer for Wallace’s specimens, sent from the Far East.
Wallace went to the Far East, because he thought that would be the best way to pursue his interest,
in the species problem, by visiting a region of the globe, not explored by other naturalists.
Also the specimens he sent home would be more valuable, and would be able to support him.
In 1854, he scrapped together enough money, to set out to the Malay Archipelago.
The expedition lasting 8 years, was an unqualified success.
He published more than 40 scientific papers, and brought back his specimens intact to England.
Wallace developed the idea of evolution, as like the branching of a huge tree,
different branches growing from a single trunk, which represent the diversity of all living species.
He presented his ideas in a paper published in 1855, without offering an explanation,
for how or why speciation occurs.
Charles Darwin and his friends welcomed the paper.
Some friends including Lyell, became concerned that Charles Darwin might be pre-empted by Wallace,
if he did not publish soon.
Charles Darwin failed to see the urgency, and continued to evaluate the evidence in support,
of the idea of natural selection.
He dropped hints to Wallace in his correspondence, about his work.
This stimulated Wallace to develop his own ideas further.
The breakthrough came in 1858, while Wallace had a fever, in the Molucca islands.
He thought about the work of Malthus.
He realised that the individuals in a species, who survived and lived to reproduce,
are the ones best suited to the environmental conditions, at that time.
He realised in a flash, that this would improve the race, because in every generation,
the inferior would die, and the superior would live.
In other words, the fittest would survive.
Species change to match the new environmental conditions, which give rise to new species.
What he and Charles Darwin did not know, was how heritability occurred.
This knowledge came much later in the 20th century.
Wallace wrote a paper in 1858, on his new idea of evolution.
He sent this to Charles Darwin, to ask him for his opinion.
Charles Darwin was shocked, that his ideas had been pre-empted.
A joint paper of Charles Darwin’s ideas and Wallace’s ideas,
was offered to the Linnean Society, for publication.
Wallace was not upset about his paper being used, in fact he was delighted.
He was glad that his paper compelled Darwin to publish ‘Origin of Species’, without further delay.
It was published in 1859, and made a big impression, on the scientific community, and the world at large.
He went out to write other important books, accumulate more wealth,
and enjoy old age, surrounded by his family.
He died in 1882.
Wallace also wrote more books, and prospered modestly.
He became an enthusiast for spiritualism, which tainted his scientific reputation.
He thought human beings are touched by God, and not subject to evolutionary laws, as other species.
At the age of 43, he married Annie, who was 18 years old.
They had two children, but they were beset by financial worries.
With the help of Charles Darwin and others,
Queen Victoria granted Wallace a pension of 200 pounds a year.
He was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society in 1893.
He received the order of merit in 1910.
He died in 1913.