My Year of Darwin 7/5/2014: Darwin deduces

"No other work of mine was begun in so deductive a spirit as this, for the whole theory was thought out on the west coast of South America, before I had seen a true coral reef" Charles Darwin, Autobiography

Darwin developed a theory on how coral reefs and atolls developed. From his theory he had many hypotheses and predictions then we was able to test his hypotheses by observing several coral reefs and seeing how consistent the observations were with his hypothesis. This is the way much science is done - but certainly not all.