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Everything he had seen of indigenous peoples from those of remote Tierra del Fuego to Tahitian islanders to Aboriginal communities in Australia had convinced him, unlike so many others of his time, that all humankind belongs to a single species whatever their stage of development, a view from which he never deviated. And random digressions into which European first sighted which piece of land, the horror they brought with them, then the next guy, the evil of enslaving people either figuratively by requiring 12 hours of hard labor and then 6 hours of church or literally, and then what happened next, and none of it seems to be important to the story of the Beagle. Or Darwin’s evolution. A very British lens also, it could have used more sensitivity to the people of the world that will read this. The historian Diana Preston travelled around the world to retrace Charles Darwin’s momentous voyage aboard the HMS Beagle for her new book, The Evolution of Charles Darwin. She tells Historia about her own voyage of discovery in his wake. While much has been written about Darwin’s revolutionary scientific achievements on this journey, historian Preston sheds light on the voyage itself, its captain and crew, and the Native populations they encountered.”— Booklist (starred review)
In this well-written and absorbing book, Diana Preston provides a chronological narrative of these crucial eight days.”— Airmail Lively and nuanced . . . Shrewd on the main personalities . . . Preston goes beyond the horse-trading of three old men, with vivid scene-setting of the tsarist palaces where the conference took place.”— Times (UK)
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Like many of his contemporaries, Darwin was cheerfully and unashamedly chauvinistic, nationalistic, and sexist, as the diary he kept aboard the Beagle as well as his subsequent writings reveal. However, though far from radical, his political views were liberal for the time and deep-seated. He opposed slavery, and during the voyage his abhorrence was reinforced by seeing slave-owning societies at first hand. While he believed that different peoples—such as the indigenous Aboriginal peoples of Australia and the Fuegians subsisting near-naked in twig wigwams in chill Tierra del Fuego—might be at differing stages of “civilization,” he never wavered from the belief that all humankind belongs to a single species.
When twenty-two-year-old aspiring geologist Charles Darwin boarded HMS Beagle in 1831 with his microscopes and specimen bottles ― invited by ship’s captain Robert FitzRoy who wanted a travel companion at least as much as a ship’s naturalist ― he hardly thought he was embarking on what would become perhaps the most important and epoch-changing voyage in scientific history. Nonetheless, over the course of the five-year journey around the globe in often hard and hazardous conditions, Darwin would make observations and gather samples that would form the basis of his revolutionary theories about the origin of species and natural selection. Because of its twin scientific and philosophical consequences for humanity, the voyage of HMS Beagle was to become one of the most important ever undertaken, arguably surpassing the expeditions of Leif Erikson, Ibn Battuta, Zheng He, Ferdinand Magellan, Christopher Columbus, and James Cook, and even the first moon landing. Yet when the Beagle departed England, little suggested the intellectual revolution to follow. Charles Darwin was a conventional young man, but as the voyage progressed, he began to develop unconventional ideas. The theories that grew from his research on the voyage would redefine perceptions of humanity and its relationship to other species, showing it had evolved from earlier life forms and was not the divinely created and ordained apex of an unchanging hierarchy. Darwin’s thinking would consign the first chapter of Genesis, and with it Adam and Eve, to a mythological limbo, though he himself would never become a declared atheist. Darwin often left the ship to climb mountains, navigate rivers, or ride hundreds of miles, accompanied by local guides whose languages he barely understood, across pampas and through rainforests in search of further unique specimens. Thirty-five years before, in 1796, having observed that milkmaids who had contracted cowpox appeared immune from smallpox, Edward Jenner had created a vaccine using cowpox. Though people were initially skeptical, by the 1830s vaccination was well established in England. Because of its twin scientific and philosophical consequences for humanity, the voyage of HMS Beagle was to become one of the most important ever undertaken, arguably surpassing the expeditions of Leif Erikson, Ibn Battuta, Zheng He, Ferdinand Magellan, Christopher Columbus, and James Cook, and even the first moon landing. Yet when the Beagle departed England, little suggested the intellectual revolution to follow. Charles Darwin was a conventional young man, but as the voyage progressed, he began to develop unconventional ideas. The theories that grew from his research on the voyage would redefine perceptions of humanity and its relationship to other species, showing it had evolved from earlier life forms and was not the divinely created and ordained apex of an unchanging hierarchy. Darwin’s thinking would consign the first chapter of Genesis, and with it Adam and Eve, to a mythological limbo, though he would never become a declared atheist himself.
At first Darwin relied almost exclusively on the company of his brother, four years his senior. However, when Erasmus left Edinburgh the following year, Charles made efforts to broaden his circle. His interest in the natural sciences was growing, and he made friends with several like-minded young men. He also began attending lectures on zoology given by the thirty-three-year-old Dr. Robert Grant, a well-traveled polymath who, while originally qualifying as a medical doctor, now lectured on invertebrate animals. Grant was interested in the connections between plants and animals and, in particular, whether primitive organisms might have the characteristics of both. Henslow believed Darwin was the ideal candidate: any thing you please may be done—You will have ample opportunities …—In short I suppose there never was a finer chance for a man of zeal and spirit. Anticipating that Darwin might harbor doubts about being adequately qualified, Henslow reassured him that "I consider you to be the best qualified person I know of who is likely to undertake such a situation—I state this not on the supposition of your being a finished Naturalist, but as amply qualified for collecting, observing, and noting any thing worthy to be noted in Natural History … you are the very man they are in search of." The voyage of the Beagle was about discovery in every sense, at every level, from self-discovery through detailed broadening of knowledge to the widest scientific revelation. This book belongs to all who sailed, but especially to Darwin, without whom the voyage would have been a footnote, albeit quite an important one, in the history of marine charting and meteorology. As he himself wrote, it was by far the most important event in my life and … determined my whole career.
Darwin never left Britain again after his return in 1836, though his mind journeyed far and wide to develop the theories that were first revealed, after great delay and with trepidation about their reception, in 1859 with the publication of his epochal book On the Origin of Species . Offering a unique portrait of one of history's most consequential figures, The Evolution of Charles Darwin is a vital contribution to our understanding of life on Earth. FitzRoy was testing Darwin in various ways, some unknown to his visitor. FitzRoy believed in physiognomy and phrenology— bumpology, he called them—a popular pseudoscience at the time whose disciples contended a man’s character could be told by the bumps in his skull or the outline of his features. As Darwin later discovered, his rather broad, fleshy nose did not at first suggest to FitzRoy that he possessed sufficient energy, determination, and endurance for a long voyage. However, as they talked, he clearly passed FitzRoy’s tests. Before long FitzRoy told him that entirely coincidentally, just five minutes before their meeting, the friend whom he had invited to accompany him had informed him that he was no longer available. With this doubtless fictional person neatly disposed of, FitzRoy assured Darwin there would therefore be room for him on the Beagle, provided he could bear being told that I want the cabin to myself when I want to be alone.—if we treat each other this way, I hope we shall suit, if not, probably we should wish each other at the Devil. If Darwin became weary of life at sea he would be free to depart. A] meticulously researched compelling narrative . . . Diana Preston’s vibrant reconstruction of Darwin’s extraordinary journey, world-changing work and the consequences he experienced makes it all accessible and new in her telling.”— Janet Somerville, Toronto Star The voyage marked an evolution in Darwin himself. The more facts he gathered—and he was, throughout his life, an inveterate list maker—the more ideas came into his head. Many of these would have seemed heretical to the embryo clergyman he had been when he sailed, not doubting the literal truth of the Biblical picture of Creation. For most of the voyage Darwin thought of himself as primarily a geologist. However, in its latter stages he turned increasingly to biology and zoology. As the Beagle finally headed for home, he was already making notes on how species changed though it would be many years before he felt confident enough to reveal his ideas about evolution publicly and face the storm of hostility he knew they would provoke. Integral to his thinking was the interrelationship between living organisms and their environment, making him a pioneer of what we today call ecology. Preston is sympathetic to Darwin's long delay in publishing his theory, until Wallace was nipping at his heels. Compare her treatment of this topic to Paul Johnson's, still my gold standard for a short Darwin bio: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
When twenty-two-year-old aspiring geologist Charles Darwin boarded HMS Beagle in 1831 with his microscopes and specimen bottles—invited by ship’s captain Robert FitzRoy who wanted a travel companion at least as much as a ship’s naturalist — he hardly thought he was embarking on what would become the most important and epoch-changing voyage in scientific history. Nonetheless, over the course of the five-year journey around the globe in often hard and hazardous conditions, Darwin would make observations and gather samples that would form the basis of his revolutionary, evolutionary theories about the origin of species and natural selection. Nonetheless, over the course of the five-year journey around the globe in often hard and hazardous conditions, Darwin would make observations and gather samples that would form the basis of his revolutionary theories about the origin of species and natural selection. One reviewer described this as an irresistible scientific biography and adventure story with a happy ending. Agreed. The argument is made that of all scientists across known time, from Aristotle to Galileo, Newton to Einstein, that Darwin could arguably be the most significant. This book chronicles the voyage of the Beagle and what it lead to. During their first meetings, FitzRoy informed Darwin that the Beagle’s departure was delayed until October 10, but that was still only a month away. Darwin stayed in London and set about his preparations enthusiastically, writing to his sister Susan to instruct their servant Nancy to make him some extra shirts, all to be marked DARWIN. He also requested a long list of other items, from his carpet slippers and walking shoes to his Spanish books to help him converse with people in South America; his new microscope, which needed to have cotton stuffed inside to protect it; his geological compass; and a small book about taxidermy, presumably a relic of his studies with John Edmonstone, which he thought was in his bedroom. He asked her to seek their father’s advice on whether he should take arsenic, the remedy Dr. Darwin prescribed for the eczema that had troubled him since soon after his mother died and that had now erupted on his hands, a possible sign of nervous excitement or apprehension about the voyage. From the Los Angeles Times Book Prize-winning historian, the colorful, dramatic story of Charles Darwin's journey on HMS Beagle that inspired the evolutionary theories in his path-breaking books On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man
Deciding to write about Charles Darwin himself was a natural progression. Just as Dampier’s transition from pirate to pioneer of descriptive zoology and botany intrigued me, so did Darwin’s personal evolution during the Beagle voyage. The more I read – especially Darwin’s shipboard diary, the small notebooks he filled during those five years and his many letters home – the clearer the impact of the voyage became. In Patagonia he witnessed the war of extermination waged by the authorities against the indigenous peoples of the pampas. In Brazil, the widespread ownership and ill-treatment of slaves appalled him as a committed abolitionist.
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I learned some new things and that's the first half of a good nonfiction book. The second half would be, Did you enjoy learning those new things? ...Yeah, mostly.
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