Darwin and the Beagle

Rating:
Summary: Young Darwin
Review: Darwin and the Beagle is Alan Moorehead's re-telling of Charles Darwin's famous voyage around the world. It is first of all an adventure story, the sort of adventure that would intrigue a young man fresh out of school, with little ambition about his future but with abiding interest in the natural world.

The chance to sail with Captain Fitzroy and crew was an opportunity that would change young Darwin's life forever and that would transform his hobby into a vocation. It would also plant the seeds for his theories of evolution and expand his interests into zoology, botany, and geology. I was surprised to learn that Darwin had been a hunter -- of birds, no less. As resident naturalist aboard the Beagle, Darwin turned his cabin into a lab for various species of insect, bird and reptile, many found for the first time, as well as fossils of prehistoric animals.

I was impressed by Darwin's clarity and disinterest. His powers of unjaundiced observation were uncorrupted by any desire to intervene or alter the course of natural development. This was evident not only in his examinations of wildlife but in encounters with primitive, often savage, people, where the Western temptation to interfere can be very great.

Although he spent much of the trip seasick and homesick, woefully miserable and depressed, he never lost the scientific curiosity that caught fire on board the Beagle. His interests are the key to Moorehead's book, second only to reading Darwin's own firsthand account of the voyage.

After this trip, Darwin never circumnavigated the globe again. Ill-health kept him close to home, occasionally embroiled in the melodramatic debates over his discoveries. Moorehead touches on the beginnings of these conflicts, as in the occasional skirmishes with the fundamentalist Captain Fitzroy. I don't find the clash between science and religion to be all that much of a conflict -- both seek the truth -- and anyway that is not the subject of the book.

It should be read, and I think was meant to be read, as an adventure, a specific kind of adventure in which a young man, moved by pleasure, begins to find his way in the world.

Rating:
Summary: Valuable Background on How Darwin Became a Scientist
Review: Many people know more about Charles Darwin's hypothesis about the origin of species than about how he arrived at his conclusions. Unless you are a devoted scientist, you will probably never read his book, The Origin of Species, his journals, or his autobiography. Alan Moorehead has done a valuable service in providing an entertaining popular introduction to Darwin's work in this book (available now as an audio cassette).

Darwin's life is full of ironies, which are nicely developed in this book. His grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, was a well-known physician who espoused some elementary ideas about biological evolution. Is finding evolution a heritable trait?

Charles Darwin had been a poor student, and seemed only competent to become a country curate.

The position of naturalist on the Beagle was cooked up because the captain was subject to mental illness, and hoped the companionship of another educated person would help him keep his senses.

Darwin initially turned the job down because his father was opposed, and was only able to persuade his father to let him pursue this when a relative aggressively intervened.

Darwin's main qualification for the position was that his family could afford the 500 pounds it would cost to be on the voyage while conducting this unpaid position.

Also, Darwin got horribly sea sick, which meant that he sought out opportunities to be on land as much as possible (this was fortunate for the future of biology).

Finally, Darwin was a believer in strict creationism when he started the voyage. He saw his job, in part, as finding evidence for Noah's flood.

The voyage of the Beagle lasted five years, and involved circumnavigating the globe. The primary purpose of the Beagle's trip was to map coastlines for the admiralty.

Most people know about Darwin's finches (whose beaks developed in different ways in various islands in the Galapagos to reflect the local food supplies), but do not realize that he only spent a few days in the Galapagos.

He had many other important experiences in South America and on other Pacific islands that led him to appreciate how geological processes of mountain building and ocean depressing impacted species. The fossils he found in Uraguay and Argentina of extinct animals began to undermine his belief in the literal meaning of the Bible on these points. Finding other fossils from ocean creatures at 12,000 feet high in the Andes further stretched his mind. Seeing extreme volcanic action and the effects of tidal waves in Chile added to the picture.

This material would be ideal for a young person trying to find what interests them. It will encourage the idea of being open to new experiences, and learning from what you observe. Many young people would like scientific careers if they ever tried one. High school and college science classes give an incomplete and poor impression of what working in science is all about. This book nicely captures the excitement of field work and trying to figure out what the data mean.

I graded the book down for being too popularized and a little too repetitive. Readers can absorb more substantive information than Mr. Moorehead included here.

A good way to apply what you learn in this book is to observe a group of animals over time. Take notes on what you see. Find a way to determine patterns from your notes. Then consider reasons why these behaviors could be beneficial to the animals. Then ask yourself what genetic and behavioral influences may bear on this behavior. You have now created a hypothesis. How can it be tested?

An excellent book about our modern understanding of Darwin's work can be found in The Beak of the Finch, which is the first published work on how natural selection works in practice from observing many generations of Darwin's finches.

Be open to all that is around you . . . to get the most out of life!

Rating:
Summary: Young Darwin
Review: Moorehead's book is a re-telling of Charles Darwin's voyage around the world. It is the sort of an adventure that would entertain a young man fresh out of school, with little ambition about his future but with abiding interest in the natural world.

The chance to sail with Captain Fitzroy and crew was an opportunity that would change Darwin's life and that would transform his hobby into a vocation. It would also plant the seeds for his theories of evolution and expand his interests into zoology, botany, and geology. I was surprised to learn that Darwin had been a hunter -- of birds, no less. As resident naturalist aboard the Beagle, Darwin turned his cabin into a lab for various species of insect, bird and reptile, many found for the first time, as well as fossils of prehistoric animals.

I was impressed by Darwin's clarity and disinterest. His powers of unjaundiced observation were uncorrupted by any desire to intervene or alter the course of natural development. This was evident not only in the case of wildlife but in encounters with primitive, often savage, people. Although Darwin was a 19th century Englishman, he was able to be a dispassionate observer, with a great ability to judge and measure up a situation. He spent much of the trip seasick and homesick, but I suspect he never lost the holy curiosity that caught fire on board the Beagle.

In fact, he would never circumnavigate the globe again. Ill-health kept him close to home, occasionally embroiled in the melodramatic debates caused by conclusions about his discoveries. Moorehead touches on the occasional conflict between the fundamentalist Captain Fitzroy and the skeptical Darwin. But that early clash between science and religion, which I find to be not much of a conflict, is not the subject of the book. It should be read, and I think was meant to be read, as an adventure, a specific kind of adventure in which a young man, moved by pleasure, begins to find his way in the world.