Evolution Didn’t Start with Darwin…
I don’t think it matters, they actually copied each other and Darwin came out ahead stealing the star. In fact, the idea is not new.
The idea of the origin of life (through spontaneous factors) and the idea of the evolution of species come from pagan philosophy.
Anaximander (610-546 BC) believed that animals arose from the sea due to solar heat; that at first they were covered with a bark of thorns which they afterwards lost.
According to Empedocles (483-423 BC) life was born from heated mud from which segments of living beings, isolated, eyes without heads, etc. emerged.
Democritus (460-370 BC) believed that man was born like a worm, from mud.
Aristotle (384-322 BC) considered that it spontaneously passed from the non-living to the living through some intermediate elements. He also believed that plants were intermediate links between inanimate objects and animals.
Theophrastus of Eresos (370-287 BC) believed that plants can metamorphose spontaneously.
Lucretius (98-55 BC) stated that specifics appeared through the accidental combination of some elements.
Geber (720-813) by his Arabic name Abu Musa Djaber ibn Hayyan, a follower of the philosophy of Empedocles, had an evolutionary view extended to all matter. Based on external similarities, he believed that copper could be turned into gold through chemical reactions.
Albertus Magnus (1193-1280) was convinced that plants can change from one species to another under the influence of soil, nutrition or grafting. He believed that barley could turn into wheat and oak into vines.
Pierre Charron (1541-1603), French writer and moralist, affirmed the kinship of man with animals and tried to separate morality from religion.
Georges Louis Leclerc comte de Buffon (1707-1788), French naturalist and writer, believes that tapeworms, caterpillars, cockroaches and lice can be born from rot.
Julien de la Mettrie (1709-1751), materialist philosopher and French physician, accepts the progressive improvement of species and considers that man is a machine whose activity does not require a soul.
Denis Diderot (1713-1784), French materialist philosopher and writer, one of the most famous Enlightenmentists and editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia, believed that life arises spontaneously through random chemical combinations.
Jean-Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamark (1744-1829), French naturalist, believed that life arose spontaneously and then evolved from simple to complex.
Pierre Jean Cabanis (1757-1808), French materialist philosopher, writer and physician, believes that matter in motion produces life forms.
Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), Charles Darwin’s grandfather, also thought that life arose spontaneously. He also believed that life evolved due to their desires and efforts of will.
In that era, the idea circulated that animals with teeth arose from those without teeth, from their desire to chew food.
In this context, the thinking of Charles Darwin (1809-1882), I consider the father of evolutionism, took shape. He believed that man descended from a hairy mammal with a tail and pointed ears that lived in trees. Darwin took the evolutionary philosophical ideas and gave them a scientific exterior.
Evolution: An Objective Look 