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Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
Buffon was on of the many people to comment on the two thousand years of dogma by the church. He stated in his book, "Les Epoques de la Nature" in 1788, that humans are very much alike apes. Also he questioned the church's belief that the world was made around 6,000 years ago. He said it was made long before that. He mainly believed that the environment acted directly on organisms, what he called "organic particles". -
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Important People
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Erasmus Darwin
Erasmus Darwin created the first formal theories of evolution such as The Laws of Organic Life. Darwin did put up some ideas about natural selection that his grandson, Charles Darwin, elaborated on sixty years later, that life evolved from a sinlge ancestor forming, "one living filment". He sited a poem in his book The Temple of Nature that summed up everything he believed in. --> Next Point -
Erasmus Darwin Continued
"Organic life beneath the shoreless waves
Was born and nurs'd in ocean's pearly caves;
First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;
These, as successive generations bloom,
New powers acquire and larger limbs assume;
Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,
And breathing realms of fin and feet and wing."
- Erasmus Darwin, The Temple of Nature -
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Lamarck was greatly rejected throughout his entire life. His scientific theories on the theory of heredity, "inheritence of acquired traits" was greatly ignored but was acknowledged as great work by Charles Darwin, Lyell, Haeckel and other evolutionary biologists. Lamarck was the first man whose conclusions on the subject excited much attention of evolution. -
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin was mainly known for his theory of evolution and natural selection. He embarked on a journey to the Galapagos Islands studying 14 species of finches for five years. He found that the finches that survived, were due to their adaptation to their envronment. They 'evolved' to survive. This created the theory of natural selection also known as 'survival of the fittest'. -
Alfred Russel Wallace
Wallace and Darwin were very close in their study. Wallace aided Darwin with birds for him to study about his theory of natural selection. Wallace asked Darwin for help so that he could publish his own theory of evolution. He created one, sent it to Darwin and it almost replicated Darwin's theory. Whilst Darwin presented his findings, Wallace continued travelling and focused on the importance of biogeography.
