CHARLES DARWIN

Why did I choose Darwin?

First of all, because when I was a girl the book "On the Origen of  Species" were always going round my home though I never read it. I guess it was from one of my four sisters and now that each of us live in different houses I wonder where the book will be, if exists.

Secondly, since I have never read the book, my conscience told me that, at least, I should research  about the author, so I did.

Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire on the 12th of February of 1809 (by the way, I was living very near there for six months). Since he was a child he was interested in nature and after studying at Cambridge University he was invited to sail on the HMS Beagle on an expedition to chart the coastline of South America. He spent most of that time on land investigating geology and making natural history collections.

He established that  all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, a process that he called natural selection. He published his theory in his 1859 book On the Origen of Species.

The Church of England's response was mixed. There were some liberal clergymen that interpreted natural selection as an instrument of God's design and other people like the Bishop of Oxford, that argued against Darwin's explanation and human descent from apes.

He thought of religion as a tribal survival strategy, but still believed that God was the ultimate lawgiver. In 1879 he wrote that "I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God. -I think that generally ...an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind".

Charles Darwin got married with his cousin Emma Wedgwood, they had ten children two of whom died in infancy. It made that his faith in Christianity faded. He suffered years of illness. He had stomach problems, headaches and heart symptoms. He died at the age of 73.

Cartoonist parodied animal ancestry in an old tradition of showing humans with animal traits, and in Britain these droll images served to popularise Darwing´s theory in an unthreatening way.

Note: The shopping centre in Shrewsbury is called "Darwin shopping center".