Week 3: Naturally Selected (post 5)

Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury on February 12th, 1809. He states, "My mother died in July 1817, when I was a little over eight years old, and it is odd that I can remember hardly anything about her except her deathbed, her black velvet gown, and her curiously constructed work-table" (p.3). Darwin also said that he was a much slower learner than his younger sister, and he was a rebel. Darwin loved collecting things as a kid like, coins, plants, shells, and franks. Darwin even explains how as a young boy he beat a puppy for the sense of power, but he doesn't think that the beating was severe because the puppy did not howl, and he said that this act layed on his conscience and he even remembered where this action took place.

He even talks about running to school to be on time as a teen which was about a mile away from his home and he would pray to God that he would arrive on time, and attributed his success on his prayers and not his quick running. He attended the university of Edinburgh where he studied geology, natural sciences and zoology. His father had found out that he didn't like the thought of being a physician, so he proposed the idea of him becoming a clergyman. He was married on January 29, 1839 and later had children.

His main enjoyment in life has been scientific work, and he loved observing plant and animal habits. He then wrote a book titled, Origin of Species in 1859,and he states that 1250 copies were sold on the day of publication; 3000 copies sold afterwards and at that moment in time in 1876 sixteen thousand copies have been sold in England. Darwin was a man of science and came very far in his studies and interests in his career. Darwin ends by stating, "Therefore my success as a man of science, whatever this may have amounted to, has been determined, as far as I can judge, by complex and diversified mental qualities and conditions" (p.67).