Charles Darwin And His Scientific Research

Charles Darwin and his scientific research

There is an apparent contradiction between how Darwin proceeded in his scientific research and how he described it for public consumption, between what he said in his writings published about his scientific methodology and what he wrote in his notebooks, correspondence and autobiography: when he was aboardH.M.S. Beagle, as a naturalist, is impressive certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America and in the geological connections of the then with the past settlers of that continent. These facts seemed to shed some light on the origin of the species, that mystery of mysteries, as one of our greatest philosophers has called it. Darwin claims to have followed the prevailing inductionist cannon between contemporary British philosophers and economists, such as John Stuart Mill, and preliminary hierarchies, specifically the French statesman and philosopher Francis Bacon in his novum orga-num. The inductionist canyon asked that observations be made without prejudice to what they might mean and that observations related to a particular issue would be accumulated, so that from them a universal declaration or conclusion could arise.

Darwin considered natural selection, rather than his demonstration of evolution, his most important discovery and designated it as "my theory", a designation that he never used when referring to the evolution of organisms. The discovery of natural selection, Darwin’s awareness that it was a very significant discovery, because it was the response of science to Paley’s argument, from design, and Darwin’s designation of natural selection as ‘my theory and’It can be tracked in the ‘Red Notebooks’ and’ Darwin Transmutation Builders, which began in March 1837, not after returning (on October 2, 1836) of the five -year trip in Beagle, and endedAt the end of the year of 1839.

In the years of 1837-1839, Darwin records his discovery of natural selection and repeatedly refers to it as ‘my theory’. Since then until his death in 1882, Darwin’s life would dedicate himself to substantiaavailable. Natural selection became a ‘theory to work’. Relentlessly pursued the observations and carried out experiments to prove the theory and solve the alleged objections. These studies were reported in innumerable documents and volumes dedicated to perclabes (fossils and living), orchids and their insect fertilization, insectivorous and climbing plants, worms, etc. 

This is how Darwin describes his discovery of natural selection in autobiography: ”In October 1838, that is, 15 months after having started my systematic research, it caught my attention that under these circumstances (the struggle for existence, asIn Maltus) the favorable variations would tend to preserve themselves, and the unfavorable to be destroyed. Here he had finally achieved a theory to work with, but he was so anxious to avoid prejudice, that he determined not to write for some time even the shortest sketch.

Darwin had an explanatory hypothesis in natural selection to explain the adaptations of organisms that would allow him to design observations and experiments to prove the validity of the hypothesis. What Darwin wanted to say with a theory to work with was nothing less than natural selection and try to derive, such as "predictions", the expected consequences of the inaction of natural selection for long periods of time. 

From the natural selection, Darwin tried to derive those same basic patterns that he had seen in the natural world ‘despite Darwin’s occasional statements that he proceeded according to the principles of Bacon or that he accumulated in its entirety withoutNo preconceived idea of what the term implied, Darwin was an excellent practitioner of the hypothetical-deductive method of science. Such statements are little more than a ‘showcase’ that tries to dissipate the concerns of their contemporaries, whether philosophers or other possible critics, which would surely find difficult to accept their theory of natural selection, and that they would rush to denounce it as an abstractionharmful, without empirical foundation. 

In his correspondence and in his autobiography, Darwin recognized the primary role of the theory and, when he ran into the hypothesis of natural selection in 1838, he realized his enormous explanatory power to account for the adaptations of organisms and theirdiversification. He would devote much of his scientific activity during the rest of his life to develop the theory of natural selection considering possible objections and submitting it to severe evidence, investing precisely those adaptations (behavioral, sexual, anatomical) that would seem more artificial by preconceived design than thenatural selection adaptations. 

Darwin’s 4 monographs on perclabes and their books on the fertilization of orchids, human evolution and sexual selection, climbing plants, insectivorous plants, the formation of vegetable mold by worms, and others, must be conceived as severe testsof natural selection, carried out precisely by investigating biological phenomena, including some seemingly peculiar, which would seem, at least at first sight, incomprehensible with their theory of natural selection. Darwin’s contributions can be divided into the following points: structural diversity, competition, adaptation, natural selection, change over time.

In a population of organisms we can find that some present certain differences in their structures, peak, fur, size, coloration, although all in essence have the same body, that variation in the form is the product of the variability in their genes this means thatWhen a small change in the agency’s genes occurs, it will present a variation in its structures known as mutation and it is the principle of every evolutionary process also these changes will be of great importance when competing for survival. The condition of an organism with a genetic and morphological variant that allows him. Thus the atmosphere and nature only select. to the organisms that are most appropriate to it and eliminate those opponents who are not, due to this selection process, those who manage to perpetuate their genes to future generation will mold the new genetic composition of the increasingly adapted populationto its environment.

To conclude, we see that the evolutionary process is a long process that can last hundreds or perhaps thousands of generations. Although before Darwin there was an idea that organisms could change, Darwin’s contributions were a determining step towards understanding how, that is, mechanisms and why populations change, as well as new species may arise.

Bibliography

1. Jaksi, f., & Lazo, I. (2015). Darwin theories. Chilean Magazine of Natural History, 20.
2. Cardenas, m. (April 19, 2017). Dialnet. Retrieved on October 19, 2019, from https: // dialnet.united.is/servlet/article?CODE = 6122988
3. Silva, c. (2017). Contributions of Charles Darwin. In Charles Darwin (p. 61). Madrid: Sinlib.