LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Charles Lyell: Charles Darwin
built 804 days ago
Charles Darwin was a close personal friend, and Lyell was one of the first prominent scientists to support The Origin of Species -- though he never fully accepted natural selection as the driving engine behind evolution. In fact, Lyell was instrumental in arranging the peaceful co-publication of the theory of natural selection by Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in 1858, after each discovered it independently. Lyell's own The Geological Evidence of the Antiquity of Man followed a few years later in 1863.
Source:
Lyell's 'Principles of Geology' was read by Charles Darwin as he travelled on the HMS Beagle. Lyell had proposed that all species remained unchanged since their creation, but that new species were occasionally created and others became extinct. This 'non-progressionist' theory was in fact the basis upon which Darwin formed his Theory of Evolution by natural selection. On his return from his travels, Darwin and Lyell became great friends and Lyell later came to accept Darwin's theory.
Source:
When Charles Darwin embarked on the Beagle, he took with him a book written by Charles Lyell: Principles of Geology. In the book, Lyell made the argument for gradualism (or uniformitarianism), the idea that present-day geological processes can explain the history of the earth. When Lyell introduced this concept in 1830, it was a controversial idea; many people relied on the story of the biblical flood to explain the earth's features, though most of Lyell's gentlemen-geologist colleagues did not. Many of them believed that the ancient planet had been much hotter and wetter than the present, with more dramatic geologic processes.
Source:
Charles Darwin read, and was much influenced by, Lyell's Principles of Geology while aboard HMS Beagle. This frontispiece image illustrates the main point of the book: that evidence of the forces of geological change that have been shaping Earth for millennia is observable today. The temple columns, with their high-water marks and evidence of marine encrustation, showed that the sea levels had changed several times, and so gradually that the monument was undisturbed.
Source:
Charles Lyell (1797–1875), a British geologist noted for establishing the principles of uniformitarianism, the idea that features of the Earth's surface were produced by natural forces operating for long times (1830s). Prior to Lyell, most scientists were catastrophists, meaning they believed that changes in geological features were due to rapid forces, namely natural catastrophes. This belief was in close accordance with accounts of the Earth's history recorded in the Bible, meaning the Bible and science were still treated as harmonious. Lyell... argued that geological changes occurred only after long periods of time and were caused by very slow-moving forces. Uniformitarianism was embraced by those who also supported the theory of evolution because evolutionary processes also occurred over very long time scales. Lyell supported Charles Darwin's theories of evolution.
Source:
Darwin was influenced by a geologist called Charles Lyell. In 1830 he published a book called Principles of Geology. In it Lyell proposed a theory called uniformitarianism. He believed that rocks and the landscape were formed over vast periods of time by very slow processes. However Lyell did not believe that one species of animal could change into another.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Charles Darwin