"Write a report on each; I'll only require you to read the introduction," he insisted.
I wonder if he knew the introductions would be a few hundred pages long. I was feeling tired and seasick and weary, and did not desire to any kind of cognitive work at all. However, as I kept reading the text got more exciting. Or, in lieu of sounding too enthusiastic, they were less dreadful than I expected.
The first was a collection of essays written by Charles Lyell. He's an English geologist who criticized the catastrophic theory, which stated that the earth formed from many catastrophic geologic events (to accommodate things like the Great Flood, of course). Instead, he brought about the idea of uniformitarianism, or the gradual change of the earth. I could see how Darwin was integrating his theories into his own paper - after all, he has to prove that the earth has a a very long lifespan in order for evolution to occur.
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| Charles Lyell |
The second book was a biography on Thomas Malthus, who Darwin greatly admires. Malthus theorized that organisms have a tendency to overpopulate. He passed only a year before our journey began across the world. It's so interesting to think that Darwin is being influenced by the work of half a century ago!
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| Thomas Malthus |
More report work to do - I will write later.