Why did Darwin delay publication of his theory for so long? What finally prompted him to publish it?
Charles Darwin was born in England in 1809 in the town of Shrewsbury. While aboard the HMS beagle, Darwin studied fossils, marine organisms, and tribes of Indians in South America. In the autumn of 1835, the ship came to the Galapagos Islands where Darwin observed and studied a variety of organisms ranging from huge tortoises to sea lions, lizards, and mammals birds. He had never seen these before. He also studied 13 species of Finch (a type of bird), which were all different from each other.
On returning to England, Darwin read a concept in Thomas Malthus’s book, that the amount of food supplies on Earth increase arithmetically, whereas the population increases geometrically. Darwin applied this concept to the populations of animals, plants as well as humans and constructed his theory of Evolution.
Darwin delayed the publication of his “Theory of Evolution” for more than 20 years because he suffered from serious health problems during the second half of his life. He had severe gastric pain and remained confined to his bed. He also suffered from heart palpitations, and acute anxiety. Due to the long medical condition, he suffered from depression and also got infected from a variety of skin disorders.
It is believed that Charles Darwin’s theory of Evolution would have been published only after his death due to his ailing physical conditions.
Alfred Russell Wallace (1823-1913) also got influenced by Thomas Malthus’s essay. He had the experience of observing flora and fauna in the Amazon and the Malay Archipelago and had described a theory of Evolution almost identical to that of Darwin. Wallace and Darwin’s ideas were reviewed by an evolutionary geologist Charles Lyell and were read at the Linnaean society, which aroused no interest.
Two months later, Darwin’s historic book was published and 1500 copies were sold on the first available day. Following this publication, a number of public debates took place regarding the validity of Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” and “concept of evolution” topics. Huxley defended the theory successfully which earned him the title “Darwin’s bulldog” and the enmity of the Church and skeptics.