Evolution: An Objective Look

58: Evolution Didn’t Start with Darwin…

The idea that ​​the origin of life came through spontaneous generation, spontaneous factors, and the evolution of species from common ancestry arose from ancient 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 afterward 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 could metamorphose spontaneously.

Lucretius (98-55 BC) stated that living entities appeared through the accidental combinations of multiple 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 could 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), the 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), a French naturalist and writer, believed that tapeworms, caterpillars, cockroaches, and lice could be born from rot.

Julien de la Mettrie (1709-1751), a materialist philosopher and French physician, accepted the progressive improvement of species and considered that man is a machine whose activity does not require a soul.

Denis Diderot (1713-1784), a French materialist philosopher and writer, one of the most famous Enlightenmentists, and editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia, believed that life arose spontaneously through random chemical combinations.

Jean-Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamark (1744-1829), a French naturalist, believed that life arose spontaneously and then evolved from simple to complex.

Pierre Jean Cabanis (1757-1808), a French materialist philosopher, writer, and physician, believed that matter in motion produced 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), considered the father of evolution, took shape. He believed that man descended from a hairy mammal with a tail and pointed ears that lived in trees. Darwin took many previously conjured evolutionary philosophical ideas and gave them a scientific exterior.