Hooker was a young naturalist himself. The two had briefly met before. Hooker went on a voyage similar to that of the Beagle, in which Darwin asked him to look closely at the Galapagos plants. Hooker enthusiastically replied, even mentioning that the “island-by-island diversity was… ‘a most strange fact.’ So strange, he volunteered, that it ‘quite overturns all our preconceived notions of species radiating from a centre’” (p. 65). Of course, upon reading that, Darwin was hopeful that he had finally found someone he could share his ideas with. Hooker was just the kind of person he was looking for: intelligent, from a scientific family, and not completely closed to letting go of theistic ideas as long as there was evidence to back it up. Darwin
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Grant was conservative on the outside, but adventurous in his thoughts. He was the teacher of invertebrate anatomy in Edinburgh. He selected students that he wanted to specifically mentor, and one of these students was Darwin. While they were out together one day, Grant spoke all about Lamarck and his evolutionary theory. Even then Darwin looked at Lamarck’s theory with resistance. Darwin ran into Lamarckism again on the Beagle voyage, when he read the second volume of Lyell’s Principles of Geology. Lyell’s first volume argued that geological processes were gradual and took long amounts of time. Darwin highly regarded this theory. Lyell’s second volume had some different ideas. This volume looked into the transition among the animal and plant kingdoms. The first two chapters of the novel were completely devoted to Lamarck, and then Lyell went on to declare that transmutation of species does not exist, especially not by Lamarck’s …show more content…
It covered many subjects, including the transmutation of species. Written by an anonymous author who wrote well but had no idea of actual scientific processes, the novel became a hit. Vestiges theistically proclaimed “it has pleased Providence to arrange that one species should give birth to another” (p. 80). Darwin and Hooker both read the book within two months of its initial publication. Hooker told Darwin that he had enjoyed reading it, something that Darwin didn’t necessarily agree with. He admitted that the organization of the book was well done, but the zoology facts were completely misinformed. The novel would also make it harder for Darwin to publish his theory. Though Darwin may have hoped that Vestiges would prepare the public for a real theory about the transmutation of species, this didn’t happen. Darwin returned to other work, and pushed his theory aside for the time
Grant was conservative on the outside, but adventurous in his thoughts. He was the teacher of invertebrate anatomy in Edinburgh. He selected students that he wanted to specifically mentor, and one of these students was Darwin. While they were out together one day, Grant spoke all about Lamarck and his evolutionary theory. Even then Darwin looked at Lamarck’s theory with resistance. Darwin ran into Lamarckism again on the Beagle voyage, when he read the second volume of Lyell’s Principles of Geology. Lyell’s first volume argued that geological processes were gradual and took long amounts of time. Darwin highly regarded this theory. Lyell’s second volume had some different ideas. This volume looked into the transition among the animal and plant kingdoms. The first two chapters of the novel were completely devoted to Lamarck, and then Lyell went on to declare that transmutation of species does not exist, especially not by Lamarck’s …show more content…
It covered many subjects, including the transmutation of species. Written by an anonymous author who wrote well but had no idea of actual scientific processes, the novel became a hit. Vestiges theistically proclaimed “it has pleased Providence to arrange that one species should give birth to another” (p. 80). Darwin and Hooker both read the book within two months of its initial publication. Hooker told Darwin that he had enjoyed reading it, something that Darwin didn’t necessarily agree with. He admitted that the organization of the book was well done, but the zoology facts were completely misinformed. The novel would also make it harder for Darwin to publish his theory. Though Darwin may have hoped that Vestiges would prepare the public for a real theory about the transmutation of species, this didn’t happen. Darwin returned to other work, and pushed his theory aside for the time