Charles Darwin: The Naturalist Who Started a Scientific Revolution (2002) By Cyril Aydon

Like many biographers, author Cyril Aydon fawns over his subject, Charles Darwin. but It’s easy to understand why.  Darwin’s famous journey on the second Voyage of the HMS Beagle, encapsulates everything a wide-eyed person could ask for: adventure, discovery, nature and science – an early example of “join the Navy, and see the world.” 

From a wealthy family, and well educated, Darwin was not a sailor.  He earned his place on the Beagle because of its need for a trained geologist – the primary purpose of the voyage was to survey the coasts of South America and the South Pacific – areas “discovered” by earlier explorers, including: William Dampier, Captain James Cook, and Sir Francis Drake.  Darwin would keep a journal of the voyage and serve as collector of animal specimens, duties that would earn him a place in history.  

The log ended up covering five years, 1831 to 1836, as the ship circled the globe, though what is remembered most by history is the five weeks spent surveying the Galapagos Islands, 600 miles west of Ecuador.  His specimen collections and keen observations on the oddity of the animal wildlife in the Galapagos would linger in his mind.  Later, after returning to Scotland, those memories would form the thesis of what is arguably the most important scientific book of the all-time, On the Origin of Species, first published in late 1859.  The impact of the book was the development of the theory of evolution – still debated, by some, to this day.

Last summer I blogged on The Immense Journey (1957) Part I from the Library of America book Loren Eiseley: Collected Essays on Evolution, Nature, and the Cosmos.  Like Darwin, Eiseley was multi-faceted, an anthropologist, naturalist, and budding astronomer. Parts II and III of the Collected Essays, The Firmament of Time and The Unexpected Universe contain several of Eiseley’s essays dissecting the evolutionary debate as it continued into the middle of the 20TH Century.  These essays compliment the Darwin biography quite well.

Recommendation:  Yes, definitely. The first half of the Darwin biography covers the voyage and reads like a first-class adventure novel, and the second half, covering the publication of On the Origin of Species and its explosive reception in the scientific community is equally compelling.  And I’ll also give a second favorable recommendation to Loren Eiseley: Collected Essays.