外國人最想和你聊的名人話題：達爾文

　About Darwin　關于達爾文

     Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.
     He published his theory with compelling evidence for evolution in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species. The scientific community and much of the general public came to accept evolution as a fact in his lifetime. However, it was not until the emergence of the modern evolutionary synthesis from the 1930s to the 1950s that a broad consensus developed that natural selection was the basic mechanism of evolution. In modified form, Darwin's scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining the diversity of life.
     Darwin's early interest in nature led him to neglect his medical education at the University of Edinburgh; instead, he helped to investigate marine invertebrates. Studies at the University of Cambridge encouraged his passion for natural science. His five-year voyage on HMS Beagle established him as an eminent geologist whose observations and theories supported Charles Lyell's uniformitarian ideas, and publication of his journal of the voyage made him famous as a popular author.
     Puzzled by the geographical distribution of wildlife and fossils he collected on the voyage, Darwin investigated the transmutation of species and conceived his theory of natural selection in 1838. Although he discussed his ideas with several naturalists, he needed time for extensive research and his geological work had priority. He was writing up his theory in 1858 when Alfred Russel Wallace sent him an essay which described the same idea, prompting immediate joint publication of both of their theories. Darwin's work established evolutionary descent with modification as the dominant scientific explanation of diversification in nature. In 1871, he examined human evolution and sexual selection in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, followed by The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. His research on plants was published in a series of books, and in his final book, he examined earthworms and their effect on soil.
     In recognition of Darwin's pre-eminence as a scientist, he was one of only five nineteenth-century non-royal personages from the United Kingdom to be honored by a state funeral, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, close to John Herschel and Isaac Newton. Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history.
     除了生物學外，達爾文的理論對人類學、心理學及哲學的發(fā)展都有不容忽視的影響。恩格斯將"進化論"列為19世紀自然科學的三大發(fā)現之一（其他兩個是細胞學說，能量守恒和轉化定律）。
     1831年-1836年，他以博物學家的身份，參加了英國派遣的環(huán)球航行，做了五年的科學考察。在動植物和地質方面進行了大量的觀察和采集，經過綜合探討，形成了生物進化的概念。1859年出版了震動當時學術界的《物種起源》。書中用大量資料證明了形形色色的生物都不是上帝創(chuàng)造的，而是在遺傳、變異、生存斗爭中和自然選擇中，由簡單到復雜，由低等到高等，不斷發(fā)展變化的，提出了生物進化論學說，從而摧毀了各種唯心的神造論和物種不變論。他所提出的天擇與性擇，在目前的生命科學中是一致通用的理論。除了生物學之外，他的理論對人類學、心理學以及哲學來說也相當重要。