Charles Darwin Research Paper

Over the many years that Charles Darwin spent developing his theory of descent with modification, a great span of individuals influenced his ideas, however I argue that none were more fundamental to the development of his theory than the works and BLAB of William Paley, Charles Lyell, and Thomas Malthus. William Paley’s Natural Theology which was centered on a argument of perfect design from a divine Creator. The idea of physical traits existing for a set function was integral to Darwin’s theory persisting through over twenty years of developing his theory. Natural theology at the time maintained an important connection between science and religion, that unified Darwin’s curiosity of the natural world and his Anglican faith (149). Later in his life Darwin began to see issues with “the assumption [by natural theology] that each species was perfectly adapted to its environment” (151), during his travels he had seen seemingly identical environments with completely different flora and fauna (151). From this observation, Darwin concluded that these territories of differing flora and fauna must be because of some sort of competition between the species. GALAPGOS and barriers. ??? 163

Lyell’s Principle of Uniformity argued for a steady state and non-directional change through time, however, individual species may be fixed (152). While Lyell argued for regions each responsible for a group of species, Darwin could not agree that geographical division was random, and soon postulated that this variation of species must be due to barriers that prevented the movement of species. From this he reasoned that isolated populations must have had to gradually change over time until they became a new species