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Period: Jan 15, 1500 to
Year of Evolution
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Oct 23, 1581
James Usser
During Ussher's lifetime, debate focused only on the details of his calculations rather than on the approach on evolution. His belief that the earth and life on it are only about 6000 years old fit neatly with the then prevalent theory of the "Great Chain of Being." -
John Ray
John Ray was an English naturalist and ordained minister who placed us in the order Primates (a larger, more inclusive category than our genus) along with all of the apes, monkeys, and prosimians. -
Carl Linné
Carl Linné was considered the father of modern taxonomy for his work in hierarchical classification of various organisms. At first, he believed in the fixed nature of species, but he was later swayed by hybridization experiments in plants, which could produce new species. However, he maintained his belief in special creation in the Garden of Eden, consistent with the Christian doctrine to which he was quite devoted. -
Comte de Buffon
Comte de Buffon actually said that living things do change through time.He speculated that this was somehow a result of influences from the environment or even chance. He believed that the earth must be much older than 6000 years. -
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant delevoped a concept of descent that is relatively close to modern thinking. Kant speculated that organisms may have came from a single ancestral source. -
James Hutton
A Scottish geologist who thought that the natural forces now changing the shape of the earth's surface have been operating in the past much the same way. In other words, the present is the key to understanding the past. -
Erasmus Darwin
Charles grandfather, Erasmus Darwin was also a distinguished naturalist with his own intriguing ideas about evolution. While he never thought of natural selection, he did argue that all life could a have a single common ancestor, though he struggled with the concepts of a mechanism for this descent. -
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's theory of evolution was a good try for his time, but has now been discredited by experimental evidence and the much more plausible mechanism of modification proposed by Darwin. Lamarck saw species as not being fixed and immutable, but rather in a constantly changing state. -
Thomas Malthus
Thomas Malthus' theory of population growth was in the end what inspired Darwin to develop the theory of natural selection. According to Malthus, populations produce many more offspring than can possibly survive on the limited resources generally available. Malthus also says poverty, famine, and disease were natural outcomes that resulted from overpopulation. -
George Cuvier
George Cuvier was largely responsible for making biology a distinct branch of science. In fact, he was the first scientist to document extinctions of ancient animals and was an internationally respected expert on dinosaurs. -
Boucher de Perthes
His hobby was collecting ancient stone tools from deep down in the Somme River gravel deposits. Since he found these artifacts in association with the bones of extinct animals, he concluded that they must have been made at the time that those animals lived. -
Critique of Practical Reason,Metaphysics of Morals, Critique of Judgment
These were the three main books published by Immanuel Kant. They talk about ethics, religion, law, aesthetics, astronomy, and history over evolution. -
Charles Lyell
Charles thought that Cuvier's catastrophism theory was wrong. He believed that there primarily have been slower, progressive changes in evolution. -
Philosophie Zoologique
Lamark's public book when in was published. -
Gregor Mendel
Gregor Mendel was the first person to begin to grasp why evolution happens on Earth. -
Alfred Wallace
Alfred Wallace who was hard at work collecting biological specimens in Southeast Asia for sale to museums and private collectors. Wallace always read and looked up to Darwin. -
Henry Walter Bates
Bates was the first to give a scientfic account of mimicry in animals. -
Principles of Geology
A three volume book written by Charles Lyell. In this book he states the fact that the earth must be very old and that it has been subject to the same sort of natural processes in the past that operates today in shaping the land. -
Zoologist
Henry Bates wrote a short paper on beetle evolution in the journal Zoololgist. -
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
This was the first book that Alfred Wallace published. It talks about evoultion and progressive transmutation of species.
