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300
Aristotle - BC
The Greek philosopher, Aristotle, studied marine animals and developed an epigenetic model of evolution. He also developed a classification system for all animals. -
520
Anaximander - 520 B.C
Anaximander of Miletus, wrote a text called "On Nature" in which he introduced an idea of evolution, stating that life started as slime in the oceans and eventually moved to drier places. -
spontaneous generation
stated that living things can appear fully formed from inorganic matter. In this view, maggots came from rotting meat, frogs came from slime, etc. This sort of a concept prevented both genetic thinking and speculation about evolution or descent with modification. Nevertheless, a few philosophers theorized about some sort of teleological principle by which species might derive from a divine form. -
John Ray
John Ray's book, "Historia Plantarum" catalogued and described 18,600 kinds of plants and gave the first definition of species based upon common descent. -
Carolus Linnaeus
He believed that new species within genera came into being through hybridization, but only under the controlling hand of god. He also thought there was a divine order to all organisms and developed his classification system to reveal this order. -
Benoit de Maillet
de Maillet taught that fish were the forefathers of birds, mammals and men -
Comte de Buffon
He thought that all organisms were created by god and arranged in a hierarchy with mankind at the top of creation. -
Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis
He thought that speciation took place by chance events in nature, rather than by spontaneous generation as was believed at the time. -
Maupertuis
new species may result from the fortuitous recombining of different parts of living beings. -
Charles Bonnet
He believed that natural catastrophes sparked evolutionary changes in organisms -
Georges Cuvier
He was the founder of vertebrate paleontology, confirmed that species can become extinct, and developed a classification system for animals that is still in use today (vertebrates, articulates, molluscs and radiates). -
Erasmus Darwin
Erasmus thought that all life had evolved from one common ancestor which over time branched off into all the species we see today -
Charles Lyell
Charles Lyell , to conclude that Cuvier's catastrophism theory was wrong. He believed that there primarily have been slower, progressive changes. -
Robert Chambers
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, which was published in 1844. Without this book, Darwin said he might never have written Origin of Species. -
inheritance of acquired characteristics.
This theory stated that an organism could pass on to its offspring any characteristics it had acquired in its lifetime. For example, if a man exercised and thus developed strong muscles, his offspring would then have strong muscles at birth. -
Transmutation
Transmutation had previously been used as a term in alchemy to describe the transformation of base metals into gold. Other names for evolutionary ideas used in this period include the development hypothesis (one of the terms used by Darwin) and the theory of regular gradation, used by William Chilton in the periodical press such as The Oracle of Reason -
Transmutation of species
was a term used by Jean Baptiste Lamarck in 1809 for his theory that described the altering of one species into another, and the term is often used to describe 19th century evolutionary ideas that preceded Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. -
uniformitarianism
This thoery says that Natural Forces that change the shape of Earths surface have been doing it in the past, the same way. -
catastrophism
This held that there have been violent and sudden natural catastrophes such as great floods and the rapid formation of major mountain chains. Plants and animals living in those parts of the world where such events occurred were often killed off according to Cuvie -
James Ussher
By counting the generations of the Bible and adding them to modern history, he fixed the date of creation at October 23, 4004 B.C. During Ussher's lifetime, debate focused only on the details of his calculations rather than on the approach. Dr. Charles Lightfoot of Cambridge University in England had the last word. He proclaimed that the time of creation was 9:00 A.M. on October 23, 4004 B.C.
