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Charles Darwin

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developed an early fascination with natural history

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educated at Edinburgh and Cambridge

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advisers encouraged him to explore his world

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a world that was becoming both interconnected and interdependent

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an example in which the worlds horizons were opening up

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technological revolutions

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French Revolution

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advent of free trade

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embarked on a five year journey

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H.M.S. Beagle

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South America

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Galapagos Islands

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Australia

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gathered evidence of

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fossils

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marine invertebrate

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fascinated by artifacts he gathered from various places in the world

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a good observer of animal behavior

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last book was a book about earth worms

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1839 The Voyage of the Beagle

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on trip, he took notes and he doodled

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1850 On the Origin of Species

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note the singular origin to the plural species

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he wanted to help explain diversification in nature

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variation and adaptation take place over time

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concluded that insects became more speciated over time

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they were not born different, they evolved to become different

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1871 The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex

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his major work

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based on his lifetime of observation of

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orchids

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moths

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animals from around the world

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argued for a concept of human evolution and sexual selection

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all humans are one species

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all species share some fundamental propensities

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from common descent we get diversity

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humans among other species belong to a single animal kingdom

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"Man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system, with all these exalted powers, man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin."

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powerful and revolutionary words

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and you can imagine the brouhaha that would be produced by words such as these

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this was a blow to theories about

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living beings

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humanity

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global history

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until Darwin came along, the prevailing dogma was that humans were fundamentally different

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different species obeyed different laws

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people came from entirely different origins

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this idea of a fundamental species differentiation among humans was a theory called pluralism

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used phrenology to examine skulls to determine which race people belonged to

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put negros at the bottom of the ladder of superiority and inferiority

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people had to be kept in their places since they were meant to be separate

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racial argument for slavery

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physical characteristics of people showed that we belonged to different races which should stay separate

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along comes Charles Darwin

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argued that the laws of natural selection applied to all creatures

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arguing for a different model

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in his tree of life, humans all branch from a shared trunk

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Africans, Indians, Europeans

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it's often forgotten that he was a lifelong abolitionist and a profound humanitarian and his science buttressed his moral code

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he work in his journal The Voyage of Chronicle of the Beagle that he was shocked at the sight of slavery in Brazil and in South Africa