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Jan 1, 1579
The Great Chain of Being theory.
holds that God created an infinite number of life forms, each one grading into the next, from simplest to most complex. -
James Ussher proclaims that creation is very real.
The traditional Judeo-Christian version of creationism was strongly reinforced by James Ussher , a 17th century Anglican archbishop of Armagh in Northern Ireland. 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. He proclaimed that the time of creation was 9:00 A.M. on October 23, 4004 B.C. -
John Ray discovers that we are considerd primates.
the concept of genus and species was actually developed in the late 1600's by John Ray, an English naturalist and ordained minister. He also placed us in the order Primates along with all of the apes, monkeys, and prosimians. This was very controversial at the time since it implied that people were part of nature, along with other animals and plants. -
Erasmus Darwin believes that Evolution occurs in living things.
Another late 18th century closet-evolutionist was Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of the well known 19th century naturalist, Charles Darwin. Erasmus was an English country physician, poet, and amateur scientist. He believed that evolution has occurred in living things, including humans, but he only had rather fuzzy ideas about what might be responsible for this change. He wrote of his ideas about evolution in poems and a relatively obscure two volume scientific publication entitled Zoonomia. -
James Hutton develops "uniformitarianism".
Lyell provided conclusive evidence for the theory of uniformitarianism, which had been developed originally by the late 18th century Scottish geologist, James Hutton. This held 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 believed that Evolution occured
Erasmus (grandfather of Charles Darwin) was a physician, poet, and amateur scientist who believed that evolution has occurred in living things including humans. He wrote of this in his poems and other relatively obscure publications. -
Cuvier is responsible for making Biology a branch of science.
Cuvier did not reject the idea that there had been earlier life forms. In fact, he was the first scientist to document extinctions of ancient animals and was an internationally respected expert on dinosaurs. However, he rejected the idea that their existence implied that evolution had occurred--he dogmatically maintained the "fixity" of species. -
evidence of Evolution before darwin between the Greeks and Russians.
Contrary to many assumptions, evolutionary theory did not begin in 1859 with Charles Darwin and The Origin of Species. Rather, evolution-like ideas had existed since the times of the Greeks, and had been in and out of favor in the periods between ancient Greece and Victorian England. Indeed, by Darwin's time the idea of evolution - called "descent with modification" - was not especially controversial, and several other evolutionary theories had already been proposed. -
Lamarck suggests a cause of Evolution.
Lamarck believed in the inheritance of acquired characteristics. That is, he thought that evolution occurs when an organism uses a body part in such a way that it is altered during its lifetime and this change is then inherited by its offspring. -
Comte de Buffon makes desicions about how old the Earth is.
The French mathematician and naturalist, 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. In 1774, in fact, he speculated that the earth must be at least 75,000 years old. He also suggested that humans and apes are related. -
Charles Lyell concludes that Cuvier's theory was wrong.
Charles Lyell, concluded that Cuvier's catastrophism theory was wrong. He believed that there primarily have been slower, progressive changes. Lyell documented 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 operate today in shaping the land. These forces include erosion, earthquakes, glacial movements, volcanoes, and even the decomposition of plants and animals. -
Cuvier opposes to Evolution.
Cuvier in particular opposed early theories of evolution because he saw organisms as integrated wholes, no part of which could change without deleterious effects. (This is an early version of what current intelligent design creationists call "irreducible complexity.") Not until around the turn of the 19th century was a coherent theory of the dynamics of species change offered by Lamarck. -
Georges Cuvier disregards "Lamarckianism".
Because of the weakness of Lamarck’s theory, Georges Cuvier, and other critics to discredited the idea of inheritance of acquired characteristics. Critics were quick to point out that if Lamarckianism was correct, the children of cowboys who have developed bowed legs as a result of a lifetime of riding horses would be born with bowed legs as well and the children of professional weight lifters would be born with enlarged muscles. It is obvious that these things did not occur. -
uniformitarianism.
Uniformitarianism is the idea that the earth is very old and that it has been subject to the same sort of natural processes in the past that operate today in shaping the land. These forces include erosion, earthquakes, and volcanoes. -
William Thompson estimates the Earth's age.
William Thompson reportedly estimated the earth to be just 100 million years old, basing his estimate on a model that posited that the earth began as a molten mass of rock and had cooled steadily to its present temperature, with only the last 20 or so million years being cool enough for life as as we know it. Later Kelvin revised his estimate several times, settling in a range from 20 to 40 million years. -
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck contributes to Darwin's book: "The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication".
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck was an exceedingly observant and creative thinker of vast learning but today he is remembered only for his pre-Darwinian theory of inheritance of acquired characters. -
Leclerc proposes notions of species changes.
Another French naturalist, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in the 18th century proposed notions of species change, but within originally created kinds and with no mechanism of change offered. -
two centuries ago...
two centuries ago, most european and american scientists believed that the Earth is approximatley 6,000 years old. -
European biologists believe...
all plant and animal species were created in their present form and have remained unchanged. -
Carrolus Linnaeus
He classified organisms on the basis of similarities and differences in physical appearance. -
Werner introduces Darwin to geology in the 18th century.
Abraham Werner held that rock strata mainly originated from the successive crystallization of different sorts of rock out of a universal deluge, the latter arguing that while some rock was clearly sedimentary, igneous rocks were the product of volcanoes. The influential Scottish mineralogist Robert Jameson, who introduced the 16 year-old Charles Darwin to geology. -
Linnaeus questions evolution.
he did little analysis or interpretation. This is to be expected since Linnaeus apparently believed that he was just revealing the unchanging order of life created by God. The goal of documenting change in nature would not have made sense to him. Late in his life, however, he was troubled by the fact that plant hybrids could be created by cross pollination. These were varieties that had not existed before. Linnaeus stopped short of concluding that these plants had evolved.
