Charles Darwin – In LondonDarwin now realized that the Galapagos Islands represented a remarkable ‘natural
experiment’, the ancestral finches which had arrived from the South American
mainland had filled every small-bird niche on the islands and in the process acquired
a whole range of un-finch-like beaks. As he wrote:
By far the most remarkable feature in the natural history of this archipelago is that the
different islands to a considerable extent are inhabited by a different set of beings. My
attention was first called to this fact by the Vice-Governor Mr Lawson, declaring that the
tortoises differed from the different islands, and that he could with certainty tell from which
island any one was brought. I did not for some time pay sufficient attention to this statement,
and I had already partially mingled together the collections from two of the islands, about
50 or 60 miles apart, and most of them in sight of each other, formed of precisely the same
rocks, placed under a quite similar climate, rising to nearly equal height.Within months of his return Darwin achieved his ambition of joining the elite world
of British science as he was elected to the Royal Society, the Geological Society, the
Zoological Society and the Royal Geographic Society. At the Geological Society, he
delivered three short papers describing some of his geological observations during his
voyage. It was there that he met Charles Lyell for the first time. They discussed his
Principles of Geology and despite the age difference they began a lifelong friendship.
Darwin wrote, ‘I saw more of Lyell than any other man both before and after my
marriage ... he was very kind-hearted and thoroughly liberal in his religious beliefs or
disbeliefs; but was a strong theist’. Lyell also gave Darwin some professional advice
in this letter:
Don’t accept any official scientific place if you can avoid it, and tell no one I gave you this
advice ... I fought against the calamity of being President [of the Geological Society] as
long as I could ... Work as I did, exclusively for yourself and for Science for many years,
and do not prematurely incur the honour or the penalty of official dignities. There are people
who may be profitably employed in such duties, because they would not work if not so
engaged.Darwin had absorbed Lyell’s Principles of Geology and had used his geological
ideas to explain the landforms and rock outcrops he saw on his voyage around the
world, especially in his Geological Observations on South America. He adopted
Lyell’s creed of gradual change and began to believe that gradual change was also
important in the biological sciences. For the rest of his life he believed in the power of
small and gradual changes, and saw it as one of the most important conceptual steps
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