Summary Of Charles Darwin's Dangerous Idea

The Documentary about Charles Darwin’s “Dangerous Idea” is about the adulthood phase of Darwin's life when he is in the beginning of his research and discoveries regarding evolution and natural selection. Charles Darwin was a man who lived in highly religious times and was on the verge of discovering something that was highly unorthodox and would contradict everything the church stood for. Darwin’s brother helped him throughout his research and was sort of his right hand man. A lot of discouragement came their way and made it difficult for Darwin to talk about let alone publish anything related to his work with natural selection. He was quiet about his research for a very long time because he was at risk of ruining his own reputation along

When traveling different tropics Darwin made observations that were clear signs of natural selection with the finches relating to beak size. Different finches on different islands had developed different beak sizes because they had different food sources and needed to survive off the food source they had. Darwin developed the mechanism of natural selection after his findings. Then, there were advances in the findings regarding birds and their bill sizes and how these birds with larger bills would produce larger billed offspring because of evolution. That proved that over time species could evolve and change coming from a common ancestor. There were other ways that Darwin proved this but the finches and birds were such prominent subjects in Darwin’s studies. The tree of life was also a bit part of Darwin’s research, with the idea that everything comes from a common ancestor. That was especially not liked by people of the church, some saw it as demeaning because that meant they could have derived from something that animals came from as well. There were a lot of factors that played a part in Charles Darwin creating and pursuing his theory of natural selection and evolution.Some were positive and encouraging like his brother and his traveling to the Galapagos, while others were discouraging and negative like his wife

One major negative influence was the religious church environment he lived in. The theory of evolution seemed to go against everything the church stood for and would damage the reputation of Darwn if he came out with his findings. No matter if he could prove his theory, during this time and the environment he was in, evolution and natural selection were not topics to bring up due to the heavy influence the church had. Another negative influence was his wife. Though she did encourage him sometimes, overall she never really pushed him to release his findings and publish papers. The lack of support from his wife was not helpful for Darwin considering he was married to her and in marriage you are supposedly supposed to share everything with your