Darwin and Evolution

It has been called the most influential science book ever written. In 1859, Charles Darwin, a respectable, middle-aged British naturalist, published a book called On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. Known more commonly as The Origin of Species, Darwin's book shocked the public with his theory that living things become the way they are not as a result of divine creation or intervention, but as the result of changes, mutations, over huge spans of time that give them an advantage in the struggle for survival and reproduction. Such changes are passed on genetically over many generations. Over time, this process, which Darwin called evolution by natural selection, allows for enormous changes within populations of related living things, including, his theory initially implied, the evolution of humankind from ape like ancestors. Darwin's theory challenged virtually every existing social, religious, scientific, and cultural assumption. Its reverberations can be felt to the present day, as the teaching of evolution has become a renewed subject of educational, scientific, religious, and legal dispute in the United States. Exposure to such primary source documents as Darwin's handwritten scientific notes and observations, journal pages from his famous voyage on the Beagle to the Galapagos Islands, and his notebooks on transmutation allow students to develop their own sense of how Darwin used the scientific method of observation, inquiry, and testing to devise a theory that forever revolutionized the way we understand the world. This portfolio includes a Study Guide with reproducible student activities. 6 Illustrated Broadsheet Essays: * Young Natural History Student * Ideas About the Species * On the Beagle * Developing the Theory * The Origin and its Reception * Man and Evolution Today 8 Primary Source Documents: * Poster: Before Darwin, charts history of thought on evolution before publication of The Origin of Species * Page from Darwin's handwritten notes on birds made in Galapagos Islands * Four handwritten pages from Darwin's journal during the Beagle voyage * Poster: The Beagle and the Galapagos Islands; includes map of Beagle voyage; contemporary painting of ship; and depictions of Galapagos finches and tortoises * Four handwritten pages from Darwin's transmutation notebooks * Title page for first edition of The Origin of Species, with several pages from chapter on natural selection * Pages from The Times of London, December 26, 1859, containing Thomas Huxley's influential review of The Origin of Species * Sealed envelope with "secret" information pertaining to Darwin's theory and the royal family of Great Britain