Darwin and His Theory Darwin was born in 1809 as the son of a physician. He earlier planned to become a (1) ______ in the Church of England. Later he accepted an invitation to serve as an unpaid naturalist on the H.M.S. Beagle, and joined in the (2) ______ scientific expedition to the Pacific coast of South America in 1831. The book On the Origin of Species was published in 1859 and aroused a storm of (3) ______ He continued to write and publish his works on biology throughout his life. He died on 1882 and lies buried in Westminster Abbey. Darwin’s general theory presumes the development of life from non-life and stresses a purely naturalistic "descent with (4) ______ ", the result of which is an entirely different organism. What Darwin brought to the old philosophy of evolution is a new mechanism called "natural selection". It acts to pre serve and (5) ______ minor advantageous genetic mutations. It is the preservation of a (6) ______ advantage that enables a species to compete better in the wild. Similarly, it (7) ______ inferior species gradually over time. Darwin’s theory of evolution is a slow gradual process. He wrote, "Natural selection acts only by taking advantage of slight (8) ______ variations." An irreducibly complex system is composed of multiple parts, and every individual part is (9). The common mousetrap is an common (10) ______ example of irreducible complexity.