1830: Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology published [112]

Art Piece: Untitled (rock formation), Brett Weston, 1960 [20]

Paper: Building mountain biodiversity: Geological and evolutionary processes [153]

Amongst the books that Charles Darwin brought aboard [199] with him to the Galapagos Islands on the HMS Beagle, he notably brought with him Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology. This work was a foundational and significant textbook for understanding geological concepts, and since Darwin was greatly inspired by Lyell, it made the perfect reading onboard. Lyell taught his geological principles through many examples and facts, with Darwin even later remarking [25], “The very first place which I examined . . . showed me clearly the wonderful superiority of Lyell’s manner of treating geology, compared with that of any other author, whose work I had with me or ever afterwards read.” For someone who aimed to also geologically explore the areas which the HMS Beagle traveled to, Lyell’s textbook equipped Darwin with the knowledge he needed to adequately interface with many geological formations found in the places he explored. Moreover, Lyell’s text is also a good example of uniformitarianism, as well — geology inherently observes changes over long periods of time in terms of rock formations and physical geological features. The artwork above [20] depicts a rock formation, which would be of interest to Charles Darwin or even to Lyell himself. The rock formation was probably the result of longstanding geological processes and also slow, gradual processes like weathering and erosion, which encompasses the ideas present in both Lyell’s textbook and also in the theory of uniformitarianism. The above scientific paper [153] also adds more depth to Lyell’s ideas — notably, the paper explored mountain biodiversity in terms of geological and evolutionary processes, This paper showcases that mountain biodiversity is not the result of isolated, random, or standalone processes, but rather the result of interconnection between geological and evolutionary concepts like speciation rates per topographic region and mineral/rock deposits. Lyell’s work represents a large paradigm shift in terms of viewing the physical world geologically and through the perspective of slow-moving processes, a paradigm shift that no doubt influenced Darwin’s own ideas and theories.