27 December happens to be the
birthday of my wife, which this year I completely forgot for reasons of shock
and sorrow of an untimely death of my Sainik School Bijapur (SSBJ) class buddy,
Pradip Talikoti, who passed away in Mumbai at 4.30 AM on 26 December. He had
suffered a severe cardiac arrest at 10 PM on 25 December and was rushed by his
family to the Saifee Hospital. Doctors had tried all their very best to revive
him but then God had a different path set out for our dear Pradip Talikoti (fondly
called Paddya by all of us his classmates of SSBJ 77 batch). Ironically the
three of us Milind, yours truly and Paddya, from our batch who reside at Mumbai
had spoken with each other on 25th December and infact Paddya spoke
to Milind four times and the last one was at 8.30 PM. The news of the passing
away of Paddya that came to us around 9 AM came as a huge shock and disbelief. I
immediately called up Milind and he too was in utter shock and disbelief. He
called Paddya’s number only to learn from his daughter what he had heard and
hoped against hope to be false was true and our Paddya had passed away early
morning of 26 December.
Milind and I rushed to Paddya’s house
to be with the family – Paddya;’s wife and daughter - and stayed put with with
them whole day until performing the last rites around 7 PM on 26 December. Incidentally,
later that day, former Prime Minister Shri Man Mohan Singh, the father of economic
liberalisation in India, also passed away. The tragic experience of losing a
close friend for 54 years must have played on my mind and therefore I
completely forgot about my wife’s birthday, next day morning. One of the habits
that I cultivated while in service was to combat stress with work, and therefore
to come out of the shock of losing Paddya, I decided to go to the CSMVS Museum,
where I now work as an Advisor, on 27 December. Even after I returned back home
it never occurred to me that it was my wife’s birthday and I had my dinner and
went to bed, not for sleeping but get involved in telephone calls and whatsapp
discussion reminiscing about our Paddya with the batch of SSBJ 77 classmates.
My wife, must have understood the reasons why I may have forgotten her birthday and did not talk about it even during dinner and she too went to bed early. Late night, around 1 AM, my wife woke up and saw me speaking to one of my Sainik School friend in US and realised we were taking about the shocking and untimely death of Pradip Talikoti, which she knew must have been the reason why I had forgotten her birthday. After I was done with speaking to Channu Kambalyal, she reminded me that in the midst of my shock and sorrow of losing our classmate, I had forgotten her birthday. But then she went on, worried that her husband was too emotionally attached and getting affected with the loss of a very close friend for 54 years, to console me by reminding me of the essence of the song from the film Anand, which she knew I liked the most - Zindagi kaisi hai paheli’, picturised on the main protagonist, Rajesh Khanna, and so beautifully composed by Yogesh, sung by Manna Dey and music by Salil Chaudhuri. She reminded me of how I had overcome the greatest sorrow of my life of losing my father, few years before by expressing my sorrow through my writing and posting a tribute to him, a habit so very dear to me. She further reminded me that last year, to commemorate her birthday, I had written an interesting post https://khened.blogspot.com/2023/12/27-december-jana-gana-mana-national.html on the importance of 27 December in Indian history and persuaded me to overcome my sorrow by doing what best I love, reading and writing. And here I am doing just that - writing this post as an homage to my dear class buddy Pradip Talikoti and praying for his moksha and to wish my wife a belated birthday wishes and mark this occasion by highlighting an important epoch making event that happened on this very day, 27 December, 1831, which is what the title of the post describes.
Darwin and his
Beagle Voyage – 27 December 1831
The genesis of the path breaking Darwin’s theory of evolution began with
the historic HMS Beagle voyage which Charles Darwin embarked as a young man on
27 December, 1831. This voyage laid the groundwork for Darwin’s theory
of evolution. This journey would profoundly influence his understanding of
natural selection and the origin of species leading to Darwin's monumental book, 'On the
Origins of Species' which revealed the power of evolution through the diversity
of life. Arguably this book was one of the most important books of the 19th
century and a book that provided an unprecedented impact on later scientific
research.
HMS Beagle was Her Majesty’s British Royal Navy Ship, which was under the command of Captain Fitzroy, R.N. HMS Beagle began sailing from Devonport on the 27th of December 1831. The main objective of the expedition was to complete the survey of Patagonia and Tierradel Fuego, which had commenced under Captain King who was tasked to complete the survey (1826 to l830) the shores of Chile, Peru, and of some islands in the Pacific—and to carry a chain of chronometrical measurements round the world. Unfortunately, Captain King could not complete his objective and had committed suicide on sea. Therefore, this incomplete task was assigned to Captain Fitzroy who was asked to complete this survey during the voyage which had begun on 27 December 1831 and was to last for three years. However, the voyage was extended for nearly five years.
Captain Fitzroy, the Commander of HMS Beagle, had employed young Darwin, aged 22, as a naturalist on this voyage. Charles Darwin arrived at Plymouth on October 24, 1831, expecting to sail on the Beagle voyage starting November 4. Excited to be a part of this voyage, Darwin had spent six busy weeks preparing for the voyage. He had consulted and taken lessons from his Cambridge Professor, Henslow. Darwin had come armed with a pair of pistols, and a three-year supply of clothing. He had also brought a collection of books on natural sciences including those recommended by his Cambridge Professor and organised various instruments for scientific research. Darwin was impatient to start his journey, which he considered as the start of his “second life.” Unfortunately, as things would unfold, bad weather delayed their departure on the expected date and the Beagle voyage had to wait for nearly two months for the favourable weather to commence their voyage, which set sail on 27 December 1831. Later in his autobiography, Darwin wrote that “these two months at Plymouth were the most miserable which I ever spent.”
Bad weather had
delayed the Beagle Voyage, which was miserably depressing for Darwin who had
waited impatiently to start his voyage. Unfortunately, anxiety and depression made
matters worse for Darwin, who suffered from heart palpitations. He believed
this could be due to some heart disease. He was also concerned that if his heart
condition was revealed to any one of the Beagle team, it would reach the
Captain who may order him to disembark. He was determined to undertake this
voyage, for which he had waited so long, at any cost and had resolved that he
would face all hazards to complete this journey. He even carefully avoided running
any risk of having a doctor tell him that he was not fit for such a trip.
Darwin used the waiting period to his advantage to study and to plan a serious method
of work, something he had never thought about previously. This trip, he believed,
would give him a great opportunity
of improving himself—an opportunity that, he said, “I threw away whilst at Cambridge.”
The HMS Beagle was to carry seventy-four persons on board this voyage, including Darwin as naturalist. Since Beagle was only one hundred feet long and had to carry enormous supplies of food and other essentials for its planned three-year voyage, besides the men on board, sailors were all cramped for space on the Beagle. Captain Fitzroy had special interest in natural history and knew that Darwin would need additional space for storage of specimens collected. Therefore, Captain Fitzroy allotted Darwin a small cabin under the forecastle for the specimens he was expected to collect. Darwin would recount later that his experience on this voyage to manage within cramped space, helped him immensely in maintaining a methodical habits of work.
After waiting for nearly 2 months, finally on December 27, with a favourable wind, the Beagle lifted anchor and set sail for a long voyage which would script history not only for Darwin but also for itself. Although Darwin was ecstatic with the voyage setting sail, his happiness soon gave way to his sorrow owing to the sea sickness which he suffered. Darwin was faced severe sea sickness for the first two weeks. Even thereafter, Darwin continue to face sea sickness all through his five-year Beagle Voyage even as he continued to collect and document natural history specimens methodically in his dairies couple with neatly drawn hand sketches.
Immediately after his sea sickness condition improved, he found himself in the warmer waters off North Africa. Darwin removed his materials and instruments, he had brought for collecting and documenting specimens, from his bag and started collecting small sea animal samples, the first of the many specimens he would collect and document on this voyage. Darwin was busy and excited at the exquisite forms and colours of the organisms, which he observed. His seasickness gave way to his happiness and notwithstanding the bouts of sea sickness he would face, Darwin always remained happy and exuberant, so long as he had specimens of any new rock or living thing to examine, catalogue, and describe. Exactly one month after the first examination of his sea animals, he wrote to his father that he thought, if he could judge so soon, that he would “be able to do some original work in Natural History.” His writing was prophetic. By the time he completed his 5 years’ voyage, he had collected lot many samples and documented extensively the flora and fauna on this voyage and all this knowledge would help him finally in the publication of his monumental book 'On the Origins of Species', which was published on 24 November, 1859
Most of the HMS Beagle voyage,
which began on 27 December, 1831, was spent sailing around South America, where
Darwin spent considerable time ashore collecting specimens of plants and
animals. Darwin filled his notebooks with his observations of plants, animals,
and geology. This trip spanned a duration of almost five long years of
kind of a different adventure before the HMS Beagle ship returned to Falmouth,
England, on October 2, 1836.
Charles Darwin was born
in 1809 in Shrewsbury, England. His father was medical doctor who had high
hopes that his son would follow his path in medicine and earn a medical degree
at Edinburgh University in Scotland. Darwin did enrol for his medical degree at
the of sixteen. However, he soon realised that he was more interested
in natural history than medicine. One of the main reason for his
dislike for medicine was the sight of blood, which made him sick to his
stomach. Therefore, he quit medicine and enrolled for his studies
in theology at Cambridge. However, even as he was pursuing his
theology studies, he focussed his attention on natural history, which
became his passion.
Today as we commemorate the seminal work of Darwin, which stands as one
of the most influential books in the history of science, I feel honoured that
his memory came in handy for me to make amends for forgetting wishing my wife birthday
greetings. It helped me realise that my wife’s birthday is stitched with the memory
of the historic HMS Beagles Voyage, which is inextricably connected with Darwin
and ground-breaking work "On the Origin of Species" that laid the
foundation for the theory of evolution by natural selection, reshaping our
understanding of the diversity of life on Earth. In that sense 27 December is an
important date which incidentally also happens to be my wife’s birthday and
hopefully this connect will help me remember her birthday unfailingly.
The key contributions of Darwin’s book included his thesis which proposed the concept of natural selection as the driving force behind the gradual change in species over time. This laid the groundwork for the theory of evolution, challenging prevailing beliefs about the “fixity” of species. Darwin’s book explains how species evolve through the differential survival and reproduction of individuals with advantageous traits, leading to the adaptation of populations to their environments. Darwin presented compelling evidence from the fossil records and biogeography, which he had carefully crafted during his Beagle voyage, supporting his theory by demonstrating the gradual changes in species over geological time and the distribution of species across different regions.
"On the Origin of Species" sparked intense debates, not only within the scientific community but also in wider society. It influenced fields beyond biology, including philosophy, theology, and ethics, challenging prevailing worldviews. While Darwin's contributions to evolutionary biology are monumental, his assumption of blended inheritance reflects the limitations of scientific knowledge in his time. Darwin's assumption of blended inheritance was a logical extension of the scientific understanding of heredity in the mid-19th century. However, subsequent advancements in genetics, particularly the works of Gregor Mendel - which Darwin did not have an opportunity to read and understand - revealed the flaw in the assumptions of Darwin. The scientific logic behind genetic inheritance was first discovered by Gregor Mendel in the 1850s before the publication of the works of Darwin. Mendel experimented on pea plants and recorded how traits get passed down from generation to generation. He noticed that offspring weren’t simply a “blend” of their two parents, as falsely assumed by Darwin.
Darwin's failure or oversight in assuming blended inheritance does not diminish the overall significance of his work. It underscores the reality that failures are an integral part of everyone's lives including Darwin and this must be strongly communicated to our youngsters.
Belated birthday wishes to my wife and hopefully this post, which is courtesy her motivation, serves as her birthday gift
Images
Courtesy Wikipedia
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