Darwin and Evolution

Darwin’s theory challenged virtually every existing social, religious, scientific, and cultural assumption. Its reverberations can be felt to the present day, as the teaching of evolution has become a renewed subject of educational, scientific, religious, and legal dispute in the United States. Exposure to such primary source documents as Darwin’s handwritten scientific notes and observations, journal pages from his famous voyage on the Beagle to the Galapagos Islands, and his notebooks on transmutation allow students to develop their own sense of how Darwin used the scientific method of observation, inquiry, and testing to devise a theory that forever revolutionized the way we understand the world.

Broadsheets

The Young Natural History Student
Ideas About the Species
On the Beagle
Developing the Theory
The Origin and its Reception
Man and Evolution Today

Primary Source Documents

Poster: Before Darwin; charts history of thought on evolution before publication of The Origin of Species
Page from Darwin’s handwritten notes on birds made in Galapagos Islands
Four handwritten pages from Darwin’s journal during the Beagle voyage
Poster: The Beagle and the Galapagos Islands; includes map of Beagle voyage; contemporary painting of ship; and depictions of Galapagos finches and tortoises
Four handwritten pages from Darwin’s transmutation notebooks
Title page for first edition of The Origin of Species, with several pages from chapter on natural selection
Pages from The Times of London, December 26, 1859, containing Thomas Huxley’s influential review of The Origin of Species
Sealed envelope with "secret" information pertaining to Darwin’s theory and the royal family of Great Britain
Transcripts of Exhibits 2, 3, and 5

Reproducible Student Activities