CNN's Beth Nissen reports on how Charles Darwin's findings are relevant to today's fight against avian flu.
BETHNISSEN,CNNCORRESPONDENT(voice-over): Sometimes the best way to understand something is to look at its origins, that's the theory behind the new exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in New York on one of the most original thinkers in history: Charles Darwin. Although he gave few indications of scholarly genius when he was a boy.
MICHAEL NOVACEK, AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NAT. HISTORY: He wasn't a very good student as a matter of fact. But he had a passion for nature.
UNIDENTIFIEDMALE: He was fascinated by nature always. He was collecting beetles, bugs, anything he could get into his pockets, from early childhood.
NISSEN: Charles Darwin's commanding father wanted him to be a doctor. Darwin ended up studying to be a clergyman and had just finished divinty studies when he was invited to be a naturalist on a royal exbition to South American onboard the HMS Beagle.
UNIDNETIFIEDMALE: This is a real full tilt adventure. It's something that you would accept in a book like "Master and Commander" but it's nonfiction.
NISSEN: The long voyage through rough sea was perilous and for Darwin, miserable from the day he set sail.
UNIDENTIFIEDMALE: He realized at once that the next five years were going to be torment for him, because he was acutely seasick.
NISSEN: But what Charles found on the blessed stops on dry land made the trip worth it: extraordinary plant and animal life in Brazil, Argentina and off Ecuador, the Galapogos Archipeligo.
NOVACEK: It's made up of many small islands. And Darwin noticed that the animals that live on those different islands are different.
NISSEN: For example, giant tortoises that lived on islands where most of the food was ground vegetation had shells with a low front. But Tortoises on other islands where the best food sources were cactus plants had shells with an arched front that let hem lift their heads higher.
NOVACEK: Darwin began to think that perhaps there's some process going on here where species actually changed through time in order to adapt to these different conditions.
NISSEN: That was radically different from what most scientists, most of society, believed at the time.
NOVACEK: They ascribe the origin of all of this life and this diversity to the act of creation by God.
NISSEN: As Darwin studied the thousands of specimens and notes he collected on his trip, he started to think: what if Earth was in the created at one moment and remained the same ever since but had evolved over millions of years? What if all life was related? Look at the similarities in the forelimbs of the human, a chimpanzee, a fruitbag and a frog.
NOVACEK: There is a particularly interesting page from a notebook that shows the first tree of life. And up above it says, I think. There's a vivid sort of documentation of an insight.
NISSEN: An insight Darwin kept secret after his return to England, kept secret for 20 years for two reasons.
NOVACEK: One is that he wanted to make sure he was right.
NISSEN: The other was knowledge that his emerging theory of evolution would be explosively controversial. UNIDNETIFIED MALE: He saw very quickly that many people would see this idea as a direct threat to the whole Christian faith.
NISSEN: When Darwin's book "The Origin of Species" was published in 1859, the outcry was immediate.
NOVACEK: Many people, especially fervently religious people rejected it, or were very upset.
UNIDENTIFIEDMALE: The thing that really touched the nerve of society was the notion that we evolved, or we were closely related to the greater apes.
NISSEN: But Darwin's research was supported by overwhelming evidence. By the time Darwin died in 1882, his theory was widely accepted by the world's scientists and the educated public.
NOVACEK: It's not only the foundation for modern biology, it's really something that relates to our daily lives.
Let's take the avian flu problem we're having right now. We're worried that avian flu may transfer to human populations and we'll get a pandemic. Well, we think that because organisms evolve. In just the way Darwin said.
Darwin redefined the way we looked at life on this planet.
NISSEN: Life in its almost incomprehensible variety and splendor and wonder. Sometimes the best way to understand things is to look at their origins.
Hi, by reaing this article, I wish you also become a pioneer, a adventurer, and a true seeker of the truth trying to find out the new truth beyond an old prejudice and a distorted view.
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