5.1 - Development of Evolutionary Thoughts

Natural historian

It is the one that studies nature in a scientific manner.

Historia Animalium (The History of Animals)

It is a preserved work of Aristotle, which classified animals based on their structure and functions.

Historia Animalium (The History of Animals)

This is a reminiscent of modern taxonomic classifications, which use both morphological and molecular data in order to determine lineage.

Historia Animalium

A work by Aristotle that focuses on the history and description of animals.

De Generatione Animalium

A work of Aristotle that describes animal reproduction.

De Partibus Animalium

A work of Aristotle that focuses on animal anatomy, morphology, and physiology.

Scala naturae or “Natural Ladder”

A work of Aristotle that organized all natural objects, from nonliving matter to living organisms in a continuum. This ladder ranged from nonliving matter, such as minerals, as the lowest entity, and up to plants, animals, and humans, respectively. Aristotle placed humans at the top of the ladder because of their inherent capacity for rational thinking. Moreover, Aristotle also elaborated that organisms cannot change positions in this hierarchy, which implies that species are rather immutable or unchanging entities .  

Zeno

He is a natural historian that also studied Aristotle’s work.

Theophrastus

He is a natural historian who was one of Aristotle’s successors and has done extensive work on plants in his Historia Plantarum, which earned him the moniker the “Father of Botany”.

Historia Plantarum

Is a work by Theophrastus that studies on plant anatomy, structures, reproduction, growth, and more.

Marcus Cicero

Is a natural historian who was born in the Roman empire.

Pliny the Elder

He wrote the work Naturalis Historia, which is Latin for Natural History.

Naturalis Historia

It is a vast work by Pliny the Elder that spanned ten volumes that tackled several fields such as biology, astronomy, mathematics, and many other branches of science. Pliny’s observations on animals and plants have been widely read even centuries after his death. In fact, many of these ideas influenced his contemporaries many years afterward.

Roman Catholic creation story

“the world and all its inhabitants were created over the course of six days”

Islamic creation myths

“the world being fashioned out of nothing”

Buddhist mythology

“the universe has no beginning and end”

Al Jahiz

He was an Islamic scholar born in Basra, Iraq. He published the Kitab al-Hayawan, also known as the Book of the Animals . This was a vast work that spanned seven volumes and contained ideas that had some influences from Aristotle. It also had multiple ideas that predated but supported the idea of natural selection. Some of these include early ideas of adaptation, competition, and more.

St. Thomas Aquinas

He was an Italian Catholic priest who has also made significant contributions to scientific thought. He notably stated that there is no disconnect between the Catholic creation myth and the natural obseervations that have been made by the natural philosophers that have come before him. His view attempted to reconcile the conficting views of science and religion. Many of his beliefs, however, are incompatible with the modern idea of evolution according to some Thomasian philosophers.

St. Thomas Aquinas

A notable view held by him was that natural phenomena do not occur without an ultimate purpose. This line of thought, in particular, contradicts the modern concept of evolution since evolution does not have an ultimate purpose and, instead, occurs through random mechanisms that depend on nature.

Ibn Khaldun

He was an Islamic scholar. Born in Tunisia and published the Muqaddimah.

Muqaddimah

In Ibn Khaldun’s work, he described the origins of Earth as being from basic nonliving components. Later on, he described the formation of plants and animals from simple life forms to more complex ones. His notable ideas was the possible origin of humans from monkeys.

1700s

Many of the concepts that build the modern theory of evolution were formulated in the _____.

Charles Bonnet

The first time that the term “evolution” was used to describe how species have originated was in a publication by ______ (1720–1793) in 1762. He was a naturalist who was born to French parents in Geneva, Switzerland.

Considérations sur les Corps Organisées (Considerations on Organized Bodies)

In Charles Bonnet’s publication, the ____________________________, he used the term evolution to describe his own concept of preformation, which is an idea that states that a miniature version of organism is carried by females to give rise to future organisms.  While his idea of preformation later fell out of prominence, the use of the word evolution did not.

Comte de Buffon

He was a French naturalist. His work, entitled Natural History of Animals, put forth ideas in comparative anatomy that are closely related to today’s idea of evolution. Some of his observations included noting the similarities in the limbs of several vertebrates and the specific structures and function involved in these limbs. This method, in fact is still used widely today to determine evolutionary relationships between organisms.

Comte de Buffon

He proposed that modern animals have not always been present, but are instead the descendants of organisms that once existed . He stated that these animals come from a common ancestor but have since been modified to give rise to the observable animals of today.

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

He was a French naturalist who counted Comte de Buffon as one of his mentors. His transmutation of species is an idea that species change over time and may also be seen as a derivative of his mentor’s ideas. Take note that some of his concepts, like many other naturalists before him, were built and adapted from earlier ideas put forth by other naturalists.

Theory of use and disuse

According to this theory, specific structures that organisms use more may become more developed or complex and can change over time. Then, these changes are heritable, which means that they can be transmitted to the organism’s offspring.

Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation

A work by Robert Chambers that presented ideas regarding the origins of life on Earth. He claims that fossils show the progressive changes that happen to organisms . These fossils, according to Chambers, can be used to trace the origins of humanity. As with other earlier works about evolution, the publication contained many other ideas that were controversial or discredited.