Darwin’s Conversion: the Beagle Voyage and its Aftermath

I feel not a shade of surprise at your entirely rejecting my views: my surprise is that I have been successful in converting some few eminent Botanists, Zoologists, & Geologists. In several cases the conversion has been very slow & that is the only sort of conversion which I respect.- Darwin to an unknown correspondent, March 14, 1861 (de Beer 1958a:112-13) The issue of how and when Charles Darwin became an evolutionist has long fascinated his biographers. Such historical curiosity is hardly surprising; for, without his own conversion, the orthodox young Darwin who once intended to become a clergyman would never have gone on to inspire the scientific revolution that now bears his name. Intimately associated with Darwin's conversion is the story of his circumnavigation f the globe as ship's naturalist aboard H.M.S. Beagle (1831-1836). Indeed, the voyage of the Beagle displays all the hallmarks of a heroic tale in the history of science. Young Darwin, a recen