Charles Darwin
/ˌtʃɑːlz ˈdɑːwɪn/
/ˌtʃɑːrlz ˈdɑːrwɪn/
- (1809-82) the English naturalist who developed the theory of evolution by natural selection. As a young man he spent five years on a British ship, HMS Beagle, visiting coasts and islands in the southern part of the world. The different types of animals and plants that he found, especially on the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific, led him to believe that living things develop differently in different places over long periods of time. At that time, most western people believed that all things were created by God in seven days. Darwin returned to England in 1836 and spent the next 23 years collecting evidence to support his theory. When he published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) it caused much argument and anger because it seemed to disagree with the story of creation in the Bible. Most people now accept the main points of Darwin's theory, and many see it and the Bible as two ways of saying the same thing, but others, especially in the US, interpret the Bible account literally and believe that only creationism, also called creation science, should be taught in schools.
查尔斯·达尔文（1809-82）是英国自然主义者，他通过自然选择发展了进化论。年轻时，他在英国海军HMS Beagle号船上度过了五年的时光，参观了世界南部的海岸和岛屿。他发现的不同类型的动植物，尤其是在太平洋的加拉帕戈斯群岛上，使他相信，长期以来，不同地方的生物发展都不同。当时，大多数西方人相信万物都是上帝在七天内创造的。达尔文于1836年返回英国，并在随后的23年中收集了支持他的理论的证据。当他发表《自然选择的物种起源》（1859年）时，引起了很多争论和愤怒，因为它似乎与圣经中关于创造的故事不同。