CHARLES DARWIN (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882)
Since I don't really have a physical anthropologist to look up as a "god" in my field, I decided to write about Charles Darwin, one of the most famous biologists of all time, because even if he is not directly from my field of studies, he has made big contributions to anthropology with his work in evolution of the species.
Since I don't really have a physical anthropologist to look up as a "god" in my field, I decided to write about Charles Darwin, one of the most famous biologists of all time, because even if he is not directly from my field of studies, he has made big contributions to anthropology with his work in evolution of the species.Darwin was an english naturalist who realised and presented compelling evidence that all species of life have evolved over time from common ancestors, through the process he called natural selection. In his book On The Origin Of The Species (1859) he established evolutionary descendant with modification as the dominant scientific explanation of diversification in nature. He examined human evolution and sexual selection in The Descent Of Man, And Selection In Relation To Sex (1871), followed by The Expression Of The Emotions In Man And Animals (1872).
Darwin's theories have reached not only to anthropology, but to sociology and psychology too. But the interpretation of his biological theories haven't been always a complement to social theories in a good way thou. The natural selection theory, for example, brought support to racist theories in the 19th century. On the other hand, Darwin's theories have been a good support to cultural materialism. So, for good or bad, a lot of social theories are based on darwin's ones, and that is the importance that he has to me, because in other words, his theories, specially the ones about evolution, have given the necessary tools to anthropolgy to step in scientific fields as physical anthropology to study human evolution and culture from a different perspective.The picture above is the first sketch of an evolutionary tree of life ever done, by Darwin when he was 28 years old, in 1837, trying to figure out a way to explain his theories. The sentence "I think" can be read in the upper side of the draw.
Hi Pamela
ReplyDeleteI think that Charles Darwin's great, one of the great thinkers of history. I'd like to read "The Origin of Species" in the next months.
Pamela,
ReplyDeleteTry not to resort to the copy-and-paste practice. This is a great post, but what you are expected to do here is to express things with your own voice.
For this reason what I liked best about your post was the introductory paragraph:
Since I don't really have a physical anthropologist to look up as a "god" in my field, I decided to write about Charles Darwin, one of the most famous biologists of all timeS, because even THOUGH he is not directly from my field of studies, he has made big contributions to anthropology with his work in THE evolution of the species.