In 1828, with only nineteen, Charles Darwin arrived in Cambridge with the idea of \u200b\u200bgetting a degree in letters. But there known to botany professor John Stevens Henslow, who was to change the course of his life. Just four years later and saw the great interest showed by the young Darwin sciences nature, that teacher gave him the opportunity to embark, as naturalist on an expedition to map the coast of South America. So began the great voyage of the Beagle, which began to develop one of the greatest scientific theories ever gotten, that of evolution.
In ordinary language, a theory refers to a speculative knowledge. That is, when you're not sure why something happens, we tend to develop arguments that often lack experimental rigor. In science, however, call the theory the set of laws that serve to relate certain order of phenomena. The wording a theory is a rigorous process known as scientific method, in which observation, experimentation, development and testing hypotheses are responsible for disposing all proposals that do not fit the observed process. So, we know the theory of universal gravitation and the theory of relativity, whose veracity is beyond doubt. But several issues have made throughout history to the theory of evolution is not accepted by society. And is it religious prejudice or mere ignorance is sometimes a burden too heavy to continue growing in knowledge.
Evolution is a fact and so we can see almost daily. Bacteria can evolve and escape the effect of certain antibiotics, creating resistance. Viruses evolve in a surprisingly quick, as is the case of influenza, making them the need to generate new vaccines every season. And also changing the worms, flies and all parasites that attack agricultural crops and getting themselves strong against insecticides. The problem is that more complex organisms such as humans, evolution is not observable in a short period of time. To check how it has changed the volume of our head or how our larynx has evolved to acquire speech, would must go back many generations ago and this is not as simple as in the case of bacteria or viruses.
In 1859 Darwin published his great work: the Origin of Species . The book aroused such interest that the same day it was released, the 1,250 copies of the first edition were already sold. In this, proposed two major theories. On the one hand he spoke of the common origin of life on earth, bringing to it a large body of evidence that together lead to the theory of evolution and on the other, established the mechanism by which evolution works: the selection Natural. Darwin called Natural Selection
the phenomenon that occurs through the preservation of the characteristics that promote survival of a species and the destruction of those that are harmful. And this is a fact. In any ecosystem down struggles for survival, so that the end always manage to reproduce the individuals that have some element that favors them and, ultimately, are naturally selected. Some of the distinguishing features between individuals occur at random among the descendants of an organism and become heritable. This is the case of mutations, which are thus an important source of variability and that, ultimately, to contribute to the evolution of species.
With the theory of natural selection science was able to explain satisfactorily certain aspects of the biological world that until then were based on supernatural beliefs and divine. Many scientists consider this theory marked the starting point for the modern stage of a discipline such as biology, which thus became a true science.
In the Origin of Species the author would not address the question of the origin of man, as the item "so surrounded with prejudices." Today, one hundred and fifty years later, science has gained a lot of space to superstition and thus have contributed in a very important characters and Darwin.
