On November 14th, 1859, Charles Darwin first published his text "On the Origin of Species." This text, extremely radical as it was, is seen as the beginning of the science on evolution. Darwin argued that life "evolved", and that natural selection allowed for this. 

Darwin himself began to doubt his Christianity after realizing his findings. He wrote that “Disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted for a single second that my conclusion was correct.” He eventually came to the conclusion that the two - science and religion - could work together, which allowed him to finally publish his book proudly. However, Darwin was accussed of taking the "morality" out of nature, and was challenged by an archbishop to debate. One of my sources puts it better than I could: "Thus whether Darwin liked it or not, the popular debate on his theory of evolution pitted evolutionism was pitched against creationism, facts against faith. And facts, and the positivist belief in the supremacy of facts, were central to the Victorian belief system." (Gresham)

By publishing this text, Darwin challenged the very core of Victorian society: Christianity. While it is worth noting that there were some who tried to fit Darwin's findings within Christianity, many responded defensively. In the end, Darwin impacted religious and athiest views in the UK, and caused a stir during the quite religious Victorian Era. 

This impacts our course texts as seen in The Sign of the Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In the text, we see negative sterotypes and racist ideas concerning the character of Tonga. This also ties back to the course's themes of place, and what it meant to be "British". We see Darwin's work molded to fit extremist eugenics ideals during both the rest of the Victorian era and onward. People interpreted evolution as a ladder of "worst to best" or "least evolved to most evolved" in order to push racist and abelist ideals. This complicates the idea of "identity" in a state (Great Britan) that controlled a variety of different cultures and people through colonization. Even though those people were under British rule, they were looked at as lesser. I'm interested to see how this will eventually develop in the modern era through the texts we will read. 

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