2) Charles Lyell, a British lawyer-turned-geologist (1797-1875) wanted to change the face of geology, he didn't want it to be about any wild speculations or for the supernatural to be the underlying reason for its existence. He wanted it to be a true science of hits own, just like Darwin. In Darwin's day it was thought the apperence of species was a "Mystery upon Mysteries" but that wasn't a good enough explanation for him. Lyell traveled through Europe to find more evidence that gradual changes had produced the features of the Earth's surface. And through his studies and explorations he was able to change the face of geology with actual rock hard evidence. (haha/joke..) (http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/history_12).
From this bullet point -
- 3) If the environment changes, the traits that are helpful or adaptive to that environment will be different. Organisms with those new adaptive traits will have greater reproductive success than others and those new beneficial traits will spread, producing a change in the population. This is the process of natural selection, essentially the process of the natural environment selecting the organisms that will be most successful.
With Lylle's area of study (Geology) natural selection does apply. But it does go hand in hand with Darwin's work because it deals with environment. So Lylle's work was very positive effect on Darwins work.
4) Without Lylle Darwin could not have developed his theory of natural selection as throughly as he would have liked to i believe. With Lylle actually being on voyages with Darwin he was able to decipher the history of islands, which gave Darwin a better perspective of what type of species would be in that area.
5) Its seems during that time the church had most of the power, and if anyone went against or even challenged there beliefs they were frowned upon. Being that Darwin came from a respectable family he didn't want his writings to affect his family or others in the wrong way, so i believe he waited until he had more evidence and findings to then create his wonderful book " The Origins of Speacies
