ABSTRACT
Like Newton, Freud, and Einstein, Charles Darwin is one of the very few scientists who can be credited with ushering in a genuine scientific revolution. He was born in 1809 in the English town of Shrewsbury, the son of a prosperous doctor whose high expectations that Charles would follow in his footsteps and become a medical doctor were soon to be dashed. As a child, Charles gave no indication of future scientific greatness. He was a mediocre student who struggled with the classical curriculum of the day, with its emphasis on mathematics and the Greek and Latin classics. Conceding to his father’s wishes, he entered Edinburgh University in Scotland in 1825 to study medicine but soon found out that he was no match for the primitive and harsh realities of medical practice of the time. While at Edinburgh, he had the misfortune of observing two surgical operations that, in this era before the use of chloroform or other kinds of anesthesia, were gruesome and difficult procedures. Unable to bear watching the suffering of the patients, one of whom was a child, he had to leave the operating room before the procedures were completed. Many years later, he would write in his autobiography that “these two cases fairly haunted me for many a long year” (Barlow 1958:48). He left Edinburgh after two years and completed his higher education at Christ’s College at Cambridge University, where, following his father’s wishes, he studied theology and prepared for a career as a minister in the Church of England. Unknown to his father, however, Charles had already lost his faith, and it is unclear how far he was willing to indulge his father’s wishes about becoming a minister after graduation. Luckily for him, another career path appeared just as he graduated from Cambridge in 1831.
