Charles Darwin's education gave him a foundation in the doctrine of Creation prevalent throughout the Western world at the time, as well as knowledge of medicine and theology. More significantly, it led to his interest in natural history, which culminated in his taking part in the second voyage of HMS Beagle and the eventual inception of his theory of natural selection. Although Darwin changed his field of interest several times in these formative years, many of his later discoveries and beliefs were foreshadowed by the influences he had as a youth.
Background and influences
A child of the early 19th century, Charles Robert Darwin grew up in a conservative era when repression of revolutionary Radicalism had displaced the 18th century Enlightenment. The Church of England dominated the English scientific establishment. The Church saw natural history as revealing God's underlying plan and as supporting the existing social hierarchy. It rejected Enlightenment philosophers such as David Hume who had argued for naturalism and against belief in God.
The discovery of fossils of extinct species was explained by theories such as catastrophism. Catastrophism claimed that animals and plants were periodically annihilated as a result of natural catastrophes and then replaced by new species created ex nihilo (out of nothing). The extinct organisms could then be observed in the fossil record, and their replacements were considered to be immutable.
Darwin's extended family of Darwins and Wedgwoods was strongly Unitarian. One of Darwin's grandfathers, Erasmus Darwin, was a successful physician, and was followed in this by his sons Charles Darwin, who died in 1778 while still a promising medical student at the University of Edinburgh, and Doctor Robert Waring Darwin, Darwin's father, who named his son Charles Robert Darwin, honouring his deceased brother.
Erasmus was a freethinker who hypothesised that all warm-blooded animals sprang from a single living "filament" long, long ago. He further proposed evolution by acquired characteristics, anticipating the theory later developed by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Although Charles was born after his grandfather Erasmus died, his father Robert found the texts an invaluable medical guide and Charles read them as a student. Doctor Robert also followed Erasmus in being a freethinker, but as a wealthy society physician was more discreet and attended the Church of England patronised by his clients.
Childhood
Charles Robert Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England on 12 February 1809 at his family home, the Mount, He was the fifth of six children of wealthy society doctor and financier Robert Waring Darwin, and Susannah Darwin (née Wedgwood). Both families were largely Unitarian, though the Wedgwoods were adopting Anglicanism. Robert Waring Darwin, himself quietly a freethinker, had baby Charles baptised on 15 November 1809 in the Anglican St Chad's Church, Shrewsbury, but Charles and his siblings attended the Unitarian chapel with their mother.From Charles Darwin: a life in pictures at Darwin Online, the parish register of St. Chad's gives Darwin's date of baptism as 15 November 1809, a date supported by "England, Births and Christenings, 1538–1975," index, FamilySearch, accessed 18 July 2012), Charles Robt. Darwin, 1809. The date is given as 17 November in Freeman (2007) p. 106, and .
As a young child at The Mount, Darwin avidly collected animal shells, postal franks, bird's eggs, pebbles and minerals. He was very fond of gardening, an interest his father shared and encouraged, and would follow the family gardener around. Early in 1817, soon after becoming eight years old, he started at the small local school run by a Unitarian minister, the Reverend George Case. At home, Charles learned to ride ponies, shoot and fish. Influenced by his father's fashionable interest in natural history, he tried to make out the names of plants and was given by his father two elementary natural history books. Childhood games included inventing and writing out complex secret codes. Charles would tell elaborate stories to his family and friends "for the pure pleasure of attracting attention & surprise", including hoaxes such as pretending to find apples he'd hidden earlier, and what he later called the "monstrous fable" which persuaded his schoolfriend that the colour of primula flowers could be changed by dosing them with special water. However, his father benignly ignored these passing games, and Charles later recounted that he stopped them because no one paid any attention.
In July 1817 his mother died after the sudden onset of violent stomach pains and amidst the grief, his older sisters had to take charge, with their father continuing to dominate the household whenever he returned from his doctor's rounds. To the -year-old Charles this situation was not a great change, as his mother had frequently been ill and her available time taken up by social duties, so his upbringing had largely been in the hands of his three older sisters who were nearly adults by then. In later years he had difficulty in remembering his mother, and his only memory of her death and funeral was of the children being sent for and going into her room, and his "Father meeting us crying afterwards".
As had been planned previously, in September 1818 Charles joined his older brother Erasmus Alvey Darwin (nicknamed "Eras") in staying as a boarder at the Shrewsbury School, where he loathed the required rote learning, and would try to visit home when he could, but also made many friends and developed interests. Years later, he recalled being "very fond of playing at Hocky on the ice in skates" in the wintertime.Chris Middlebrook: "It's True - Charles Darwin Actually Played Bandy!", worldbandy.com, , read 23 October 2022 He continued collecting minerals and insects, and family holidays in Wales brought Charles new opportunities, but an older sister ruled that "it was not right to kill insects" for his collections, and he had to find dead ones. He read Gilbert White's The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne and took up birdwatching. Eras took an interest in chemistry and Charles became his assistant, with the two using a garden shed at their home fitted out as a laboratory and extending their interests to crystallography. When Eras went on to a medical course at the University of Cambridge, Charles continued to rush home to the shed on weekends, and for this received the nickname "Gas". The headmaster was not amused at this diversion from studying the classics, calling him a poco curante (trifler) in front of the boys. At fifteen, his interest shifted to hunting and bird-shooting at local estates, particularly at Maer in Staffordshire, the home of his relatives, the Wedgwoods. His exasperated father once told him off, saying "You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family."
His father decided that he should leave school earlier than usual, and in 1825 at the age of sixteen Charles was to go along with his brother who was to attend the University of Edinburgh for a year to obtain medical qualifications. Charles spent the summer as an apprentice doctor, helping his father with treating the poor of Shropshire. He had half a dozen patients of his own, and would note their symptoms for his father to make up the prescriptions.
University of Edinburgh
In October 1825, Darwin went to Edinburgh University to study medicine, accompanied by Eras doing his external hospital study. For a few days, while looking for rooms to rent, the brothers stayed at the Star Hotel in Princes Street. They took up an introduction to a friend of their father, Dr. Hawley, who led them on a walk around the town. They admired it immensely; Darwin thought Bridge Street "most extraordinary" as, on looking over the sides, "instead of a fine river we saw a stream of people".. Town plans of the time show South Bridge Street crossing above the Cowgate, a main thoroughfare, and North Bridge Street with views west down to the green market and Shambles, and east to "Old Physick Garden" – see Lothian's plan of the city of Edinburgh and its vicinity (1825) and
The brothers found comfortable lodgings near the University at 11 Lothian Street, on 22 October Charles signed the matriculation book, and enrolled in courses. That evening, they moved in.
Darwin attended classes from their start on 26 October. By early January he had formed opinions on the lecturers, and complained that most were boring. Andrew Duncan, the younger, taught dietetics, pharmacy, and materia medica. Darwin thought the latter stupid, and said Duncan was "so very learned that his wisdom has left no room for his sense". His lectures began at 8a.m. – years later Darwin recalled "a whole, cold, breakfastless hour on the properties of rhubarb!", but they usefully introduced him to the natural system of classification of Augustin de Candolle, who emphasised the "war" between competing species.
From 10a.m., the brothers greatly enjoyed the spectacular chemistry lectures of Thomas Charles Hope, but they did not join a student society giving hands-on experience. Anatomy and surgery classes began at noon, Darwin was disgusted by the dull and outdated anatomy lectures of professor Alexander Monro tertius, many students went instead to private independent schools, with new ideas of teaching by dissecting corpses (giving clandestine trade to bodysnatchers) – his brother went to a "charming Lecturer", the surgeon John Lizars. Darwin later regretted his own failure to persevere and learn dissection. The city was in an uproar over political and religious controversies, and the competitive system where professors were dependent on attracting student fees for income meant that the university was riven with argumentative feuds and conflicts. Monro's lectures included vehement opposition to George Combe's daringly materialist ideas of phrenology, but Darwin found "his lectures on human anatomy as dull, as he was himself, and the subject disgusted me." Eventually, to Darwin's mind there were "no advantages and many disadvantages in lectures compared with reading."
Darwin regularly attended clinical wards in the hospital despite his great distress about some of the cases, but could only bear to attend surgical operations twice, rushing away before they were completed due to his distress at the brutality of surgery before anaesthetics. He was long haunted by the memory, particularly of an operation on a child.
At the end of January, Darwin wrote home that they had "been very dissipated", having dined with Dr. Hawley then gone to the theatre with a relative of the botanist Robert Kaye Greville. They also visited "the old Dr. Duncan", who spoke with the warmest affection about his student and friend Charles Darwin (Darwin's uncle) who had died in 1778.Woodall, Edward (1884) "Charles Darwin. A paper contributed to the Transactions of the Shropshire Archæological Society. London: Trubner. p. 18. Darwin wrote "What an extraordinary old man he is, now being past 80, & continuing to lecture", though Dr. Hawley thought Duncan was now failing. Darwin added that "I am going to learn to stuff birds, from a blackamoor... he only charges one guinea, for an hour every day for two months". These lessons in taxidermy were with the freed black slave John Edmonstone, who also lived in Lothian Street. Darwin often sat with him to hear tales of the South American rain-forest of Guyana, and later remembered him as "a very pleasant and intelligent man."