Men who changed the world, part 2: the coming of evolution

Lynn Poole describes how Charles Darwin changed the world with his theory of evolution--that all forms of life evolved from lower forms through natural selection. Poole briefly describes Darwin's life, tracing on a map the naturalist's five-year (1831-36) journey on the "H.M.S. Beagle," on which he observed the variations of species on the Galapagos Islands and their modifications to their environments. Darwin concluded that successful characteristics are transmitted by the fittest survivors of a species and that the process of evolution continuously creates change. His ideas were published in 1859 in "Origin of Species," with the support of Joseph Hooker, Charles Lyell, Alfred Russel Wallace, and Thomas Huxley. Responses and challenges to these heretical views were made by such critics as Samuel Wilberforce, Lord Kelvin, and Fleeming Jenkin.