What did scientists think of Darwin's Theory of evolution in his day?

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As they do with any fresh insight - some quick, some slow, some resentful; but great-grandpa stocked the book and ... By and large, those who objected have faded away - largely because their expectations were based on not wanting to believe (and it’s tough, having your world turned upside down by a major paradigm shift such as that. Even Einstein couldn’t cope with the aleatory aspects of quantum mechanics ’ ’God does not play dice,’ he said at first). So there was the classic ’shock of the new’ - but then some very well-regarded scientists such as Francis Galton picked it up and started making predictions with it; and the capacity to predict in a way that can be replicated is the first test of a scientific hypothesis.

There weren’t many educated people holding out against in by the 1920s, at any rate, although there were some odd excursions; in the Soviet Union a chap called Lysenko was lioned for his (unprovable) theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, and some unpleasant fellows like Spengler - one of tler’s favourites - used various distortions of the theory to ’prove’ the superiority of the Aryan race. There’s a beautiful, sad, and very moving book called Father and Son, by Edmund Gosse; Gosse Père was a well-known paleontologist, and also a member of the very strict Exclusive Brethren, who believed in the literal truth of the Bible. The son recalls - amongst many other things, it really is a lovely book - the circumlocutions that his father went through while trying to reconcile the evidence of the age of the earth, as now demonstrated by Darwin and fossil records on the one hand, and his literalist faith on the other; his way out was to propose what’s called the omphalogical fallacy (from the Greek omphalos, meaning navel, and referring to the old question about ’did Adam and Eve have navels?

’); he maintained that the world was indeed created in 4004 BC, but God had put all those fossils and rocks in place to make it look older. The book records the growing boy’s separation from his father’s circumlocutions, and watching his father being mocked, while nonetheless loving him. It’s well worth reading as a gentle memoir from another time.My own family by marriage played a very small part.

Great-great grandfather had a bookshop in Inverurie (the family is Scottish) and was one of the first to stock The Origin of Species. In short order this brought him a visit from the local Presbyterian minister, who ordered them to be destroyed. G-g-p refused, on the grounds that he disapproved of all forms of censorship.

Minister then swept up the stock of books and burned them. Later that night, G-g-p went round and set fire to the Manse.At which point the town had one of those ’this place isn’t big enough for both of you’ meetings, and so G-g-p left town and walked to London - the family still has the stick with which he did it. The most recent attempt to pervert Darwin’s theory was probably executed by Charles Murray, about twenty years ago, when he used a version of ’social Darwinism’ to attempt to prove that black people were inherently inferior ... and developed other arguments that delighted conservatives, such as ’there’s no point putting money into Head Start programmes,’ etc. Murray’s been pretty much discredited, from many different points of view, and I've given a reference to an excellent book on the subject.

Hope that helps a little. EnglishLady's Recommendations Father and Son: A Study of Two Temperaments (Twentieth Century Classics) Amazon List Price: $14.00 Used from: $0.06 Average Customer Rating: 5.0 out of 5 (based on 4 reviews) Bell Curve Debate, The Amazon List Price: $16.00 Used from: $1.24 Average Customer Rating: 5.0 out of 5 (based on 4 reviews) .

Mostly positive Scientists mostly accepted it. Darwin wasn’t working in a vacuum (Alfred Russell Wallace made pretty much the same discovery of natural selection at about the same time). Lots of other people at the time were pursuing similar biological studies as well as geology and fossil hunting.

They had a pretty good idea that the Earth was at least millions of years old and that critters that had once existed no longer did, and some that did had not existed for very long in the past. It wasn’t a big stretch to figure out that species changed over time. Darwin’s (and Russell’s) accomplishment was figuring out the mechanism of how the changes took place."The idea of organic evolution was not new.

It had been suggested a generation earlier by Erasmus Darwin and in France by Buffon, Montesquieu, Maupertuis, Diderot, and most recently Lamarck. Lamarck had drawn the first evolutionary diagram--a ladder leading from unicellular organisms to man. But none of these earlier evolutionists had presented either a mechanism or persuasive evidence for the process.

Lamarck offered the hypothesis that spontaneous generation occurs constantly, that organisms possess an "inner feeling" toward perfection, and that the traits an animal acquires to adapt to a changing environment are passed on to its descendants. " (on hearing that Russell was close to publishing): "Darwin then began work on what he called an "abstract" of the larger manuscript that he had begun two years earlier. This abstract, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, was published on Nov. 24, 1859.

The first edition sold out immediately, and by 1872 the work had run through six editions. The theory was accepted quickly in most scientific circles. With the exception of holdouts like his old colleague Adam Sedgwick and individuals such as the biologist Richard Owen, who attacked Darwin personally, most opposition was from the clergy.

" The opposition to Darwin’s theories, then and now, was not from other scientists but from the religious types who went into a snit when the theories conflicted with their particular collections of myths and folktales. Sources: http://www.crystalinks.com/darwin.html JBENZ's Recommendations Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life Amazon List Price: $16.00 Used from: $5.00 Average Customer Rating: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 152 reviews) From So Simple a Beginning: Darwin's Four Great Books (Voyage of the Beagle, The Origin of Species, The Descent of Man, The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals) Amazon List Price: $39.95 Used from: $29.95 Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5 (based on 20 reviews) .

Scientists Were Convinced He Was Right It was religious leaders who tried to attack the idea but they failed because the evidence for evolution was overwhelming. "Science Confronts Creationism" Edited by: Andrew J. Petto and Laurie R.

Godfrey ISBN 978-0-393-33073-1 .

Why is the hypothesis of evolution still discussed today as even being possible as science has debunked its possibility.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.