In 1809, Charles Darwin was born to Mr. Robert Waring Darwin and Susannah Wedgwood in Shrewsbury England and was their second son but the fifth child. Among the family members and relatives of the Darwin household, religious convictions and the value of proper education were evident. For instance, despite the religious skepticism of some relations, the mother embraced the Unitarian religion that promoted individual experience as the determinant factor in religious beliefs, and his sister Caroline embraced traditional Christianity (Pleins 1). Meanwhile, his father was a physician and at times, Charles Darwin would accompany his father on his medical rounds. Notably, Darwin’s paternal grandfather Erasmus Darwin was a poet and an evolutionary thinker and at the same time, on his maternal side, Josiah Wedgwood was a renowned potter. To that end, it is no wonder the family was termed as “intellectual, free thinking, and scientific” as the diversity alone ensured Darwin’s ability to accept and analyze new information with ease (Browne 10).
For his studies, Darwin attended the University of Edinburgh in 1825 for medical studies and in 1828 joined his brother Erasmus in Cambridge with the aim of becoming a clergy as per his father’s wishes (Pleins 1). Through Darwin’s connection with his family and studies in both universities, three aspects preceded the writing of Origin of Species: religion, medical studies in Edinburgh, and discoveries made in Cambridge. Religion was not constant in the Darwin family, and as evidenced above, it was possible to have members question the eligibility of religious studies. Consequently, the idea of one God creating everything was worth questioning as well. Concurrently, the brutal nature of medical surgeries, where operations happened without anesthesia and patients would accidents could happen and cost a patient’s life, propelled Darwin into the pursuit of something different. It so happened that in Cambridge, the new interest was in nature. Under the influence of geologist Adam Sedgwick and the naturalist John Henslow, Darwin began to question the idea of biological evolution (Brooke 210; Pleins 1).
Conditions leading to the Writing of the Origin of Species
Twenty-two years before Darwin was to embark on a voyage aboard the HMS Beagle, the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck asserted that transmutation is possible among species when they have to adapt to their environment (Pleins 53). For example, according to Lamarck, giraffes acquired long necks because they typically reach for leaves that are high in trees. To that end, transmutation was already an idea, but there was no observable proof of the same; after all, nobody could tell whether giraffes once had shorter necks. From that point, Darwin’s experiences while journeying aboard the HMS Beagle and his reading of Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology and Alfred Russel Wallace’s ideas of “Natural Selection” propelled the theory to new heights. First, Lyell’s influence encompassed showing Darwin how geology “took up where the Bible took off” by refuting most if not all of the documented facts in the religious book (Pleins 43). For instance, according to Lyell’s writing, there was no fossil evidence of a flood covering the whole earth as the book of Genesis in the Bible records. Hence, rather than think of the world as subject to a superior being who could hold back all animals from consuming each other aboard Noah’s ark, it is more plausible that the globe was merely changing (Pleins 42).
With Lyell’s teachings in mind, Darwin viewed all persons and people he encountered between 1831 and 1836 from a new perspective. For instance, when dealing with the populations of Concepcion Chile, Darwin was aware of earthquakes being natural occurrences, but the people believed them to be a sign of witchcraft (Pleins 16). If the native tribes of Chile did not understand God in the same manner in which the English did, then it Charles Lyell was right to argue against the idea of a divine being. Therefore, a new explanation for Darwin’s observations was necessary, and Alfred Russel Wallace’s account of natural selection was a close fit. Wallace’s views on natural selection were similar to the “artificial selection” that farmers employed when breeding their animals and plants (Browne 71). In other words, there were different observable traits among organisms of the same species, and because there was no proof of God’s existence, then creation was dependent on the environment that caused said differences. There was irrefutable evidence of evolution and enough foundations for the Origin of Species.
Development of the Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection
Thomas Robert Malthus’ relevance to Charles Darwin’s work stems from his assertions that available resources will only be sufficient for a populace when people learn to restrain the number of children they beget. Apparently, as Malthus explained in his text An Essay on the Principle of Population, humans will continue to struggle for their survival unless they curb the birth rates among their numbers (Browne 43). Subsequently, not all people will survive because aside from the limited resources, other factors that include disease and famines will eradicate the weaklings. To Charles Darwin, Malthus’ perceptions were the blueprint he required for his theory. Before reading An Essay on the Principle of Population in 1838, Darwin was for the idea of reproduction being at par with existence where living things reproduced the right numbers that were necessary for a stable population (Pleins 47). However, it became apparent that all populations breed beyond the appropriate numbers and in the end, the strong survive while the weak lose in the struggle to exist.
Reactions to Darwin’s Theory
In the period between the years 1837 and 1901, otherwise dubbed the Victorian Era, Charles Darwin’s theory caused two significant concerns in the England and its territories, and they all branched from the place of God in society and racial matters. In other words, the church considered Darwin's naturalist assertions as means through which the marginalization of God and religious beliefs would be active in the English societies and other regions in which Christianity was taking roots (Brooke 207). Concurrently, skin color was the only particular feature that could separate humans and as a result, questions emerged in determining the strongest race and the one that ought to assume inferiority (Hofstadter 89). Notably, the slave system in Antebellum America revolved around the same assumptions as Caucasians subjected persons of African descent to slavery simply because of their skin color.
Now, in the church there were the Biblical literalists who assumed the forefront position to refute Darwin’s perceptions in the Origin of Species since in their understanding, just as the religious text declares, creation was subject to God alone (Pleins 43-45). To the people who also went by the name of creationists, Darwin’s theory was baseless, and the creation story in the book of Genesis was the only legitimate explanation for the origin of life. Still, the efforts of Biblical literalism did not mean that all of Victorian England disagreed with Darwin; on the contrary, sometimes the responses were “surprisingly positive” (Brooke 200). Perhaps the most profound illustration of the given claim is evident in some of the peoples' understanding of evolution as not a substitute but a method through which God perfected his creations (Brooke 200). Thus, even on its original publication date, the Origin of Species had both supporters and condemners of Charles Darwin's theory and that alone meant part of England was accepting revolution.
The Descent of Man
In 1871, Charles Darwin turned his attention from the natural selection theory of the Origin of Species, in which he sought to explain how evolution works, to that of the source of man. Apparently, for evolution to occur there must have been a source and the Descent of Man was an exploration of the same. In Darwin’s observations, just as it was for all species, all persons descended from a previous life form and developed into their current states, albeit in different ways as evidenced by the existence of multiple racial groups. Accordingly, Darwin’s agenda in the Descent of Man was to prove that animals and human beings were of one descent and were not the outcome of Biblical creation (Pleins 46). To defend his arguments, the man asserted that since humans are not deities, it means they are not different from other living beings. Subsequently, because men and apes show similar traits, it made sense when the “common descent of man and primates was on the table” and Darwin explained racial groups and different levels of civilization using the same (Pleins 46). For example, the native tribes that he encountered while traveling around the globe aboard the HMS Beagle represented humans in the primitive stages of evolution while the English were the advanced civilizations (Pleins 23).
Naturally, it made sense to Darwin when he observed that the natives who had previous contact with Christian missionaries showed more signs of civilization than their counterparts did without outside held. Hence, in what was since dubbed "Social Darwinism", primitives were hopeless and without the help of the civilized persons, they would “disappear before the advance of higher civilizations” (Hofstadter 170). Additionally, the advanced forms of religion and morality would take into account "the biological inheritance[s]" of all men before restricting them within definite boundaries of ethics. For instance, it would be morally permissible if civilizations take resources that the primitives are not aware of since they do not know their worth. The reality that Darwin was an intellectual with a good social standing in England societies influenced the theorist's viewpoints by making him aware of the apparent differences between his people and the native tribes. Expectedly, he would assert the English as the more civilized yet it is possible that in the eyes of the aboriginal groups, the arriving outsiders were the different ones who lacked decorum.
Bottled Water
In July 2006, officials of the City of Cleveland discovered that Fiji Water Company used Cleveland in its advertisement. According to the campaign, Fiji Water bottles had the name “Fiji” because the water was not “bottled in Cleveland” (Gleick 15). The apparent insult revolved around an incident that happened on July 22, 1969, when the river “Cuyahoga” caught fire after years of cities in the United States and Canada polluting “Lake Erie” (Gleick 16). The river ran through Cleveland. In the United States, and under the country’s Department of Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration is in charge of regulating bottled water as a “food product” (Gleick 34).
The fact that water companies use plastic bottles encourages considerable backlash from environmental agencies and the money spent on purchasing bottled water raises ethical questions as one could donate the funds to charity. However, when one considers the alternatives to bottled water, such arguments become baseless. To understand the given claim, one needs to recognize the truth that bottled water is cheaper and healthier than other drinks that a person can purchase and walk around with while running errands (Gleick 107). For instance, one has the option to buy juice or milk, and both drinks are more expensive than bottled water because manufacturers use more resources and emit more residues in their production. Hence, bottled water aids in the preservation of the environment and even supports healthy lifestyles. The situation is even better when the purchase of one bottle of water ensures the company’s donation of a certain percentage to the needy. In an assessment of bottled water as a commodity, Gleick explored Nestlé’s operations in McCloud (Gleick 157). Apparently, according to the agreement between the company and the town of McCloud, Nestlé was to pay the officials a mere eight cents for every gallon of water and earn five hundred million dollars per annum (Gleick 157).
Works Cited
Brooke, John Hedley. "Darwin and Victorian Christianity." The Cambridge Companion to Darwin. Ed. Jonathan Hodge and Gregory Radick. 1st. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 197-218. Web.
Browne, Janet. Darwin's Origin of Species: Books That Changed the World. New York: Grove Press, 2008. Print.
Gleick, Peter H. Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water. Washington: Island Press, 2010. Print.
Hofstadter, Richard. Social Darwinism in American Thought. Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 1992. Print.
Pleins, J. David. The Evolving God: Charles Darwin on the Naturalness of Religion. 1st. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. Print.
