# Evolutionists before Darwin's book **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 23, 2017, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076 "2017-04-23T16:57:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![bizerta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3be4f8/32.png) [@bizerta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bizerta)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2017, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076/1 "2017-04-23T16:57:06Z")
In a recent Scientific American article, a British scientist discovered and displayed dinosaur fossils (which he called Megalosaurus) some 35 years before Darin’s published theory. That scientist also had unearthed fossils of extinct mammals over 100 million years old. The article never said how these fossils were explained at the time. Was creationist theory simply the law of the land before Darwin? How did these scientists explain fossils without some form of evolution theory? how did scientists explain animal extinction, like the dodo? ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2017, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076/2 "2017-04-23T16:59:49Z")
There was a long history of evolutionary thought before Darwin: > **[History of evolutionary thought](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought)** > > Evolutionary thought, the recognition that species change over time and the perceived understanding of how such processes work, has roots in antiquity—in the ideas of the ancient Greeks, Romans, Chinese, Church Fathers as well as in medieval Islamic science. With the beginnings of modern biological taxonomy in the late 17th century, two opposed ideas influenced Western biological thinking: essentialism, the belief that every species has essential characteristics that are unalterable, a concept... ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2017, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076/3 "2017-04-23T17:36:40Z")
Just fyi on terminology, to aid in searching for information on the topic: (1) “Evolutionism” referred to something rather different in the nineteenth century. > **[Evolutionism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionism)** > > Evolutionism is a term used (often derogatorily) to denote the theory of evolution. Its exact meaning has changed over time as the study of evolution has progressed. In the 19th century, it was used to describe the belief that organisms deliberately improved themselves through progressive inherited change (orthogenesis). The teleological belief went on to include cultural evolution and social evolution. In the 1970s, the term "Neo-Evolutionism" was used to describe the idea that "human b The term... (2) The terms “evolutionism” and “evolutionist” are not used among modern scientists, since evolutionary theory is universally accepted among biologists. It would be equivalent to calling a geologist an “old-earther”. The use of the term has been fostered mainly by creationists in an attempt to imply a false equivalence. So a search for something like “early evolutionism” is unlikely to yield useful information; search instead for something like “early evolutionary theory”, or as in Wendell’s link, “evolutionary thought”. ---
**Author:** ![Mk\_VII](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2017, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076/4 "2017-04-23T17:53:26Z")
Philip Gosse (now better remembered as the father of Edmund Gosse) postulated that, an instant after the single catastrophic act of creation, the earth presented the appearance of having existed for millions of years. This theory was not, however, much esteemed even among other Christians. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2017, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076/5 "2017-04-23T18:05:10Z")
> [@bizerta](#): > > In a recent Scientific American article, a British scientist discovered and displayed dinosaur fossils (which he called Megalosaurus) some 35 years before Darin’s published theory. That scientist also had unearthed fossils of extinct mammals over 100 million years old. The article never said how these fossils were explained at the time. [George-Louis Leclerc, Compte de Buffon,](http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/%3C?%20echo%20$baseURL;%20?%3E/history_06) in the late 1700s was one of the first scientists to advance a non-Biblical explanation for Earth History. He postulated that the Earth was much older than the Bible indicated (but still not millions of years old). While some scientists believed that fossil animals like elephants that no longer occurred in Europe might continue to exist elsewhere, Buffon accepted that some plants and animals had become extinct. [Georges Cuvier,](http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/history_08) active in the early 1800s, was the first to really recognize the importance of extinctions in Earth History. He promoted the [Theory of Catastrophism,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catastrophism) that periodic catastrophes caused widespread extinctions and the replacement of one set of species by another. Catastrophism was later supplanted by Uniformitarianism, the idea that changes in the past were mostly gradual, promoted by Lyell in Geology and Darwin in Biology. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2017, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076/6 "2017-04-23T18:33:17Z")
Gosse’s theory is completely irrefutable and also completely unprovable. If you’re interested in the philosophical debates over evolution, you should read his book _Omphalos_. It’s very well written and is a good introduction to what we can and can’t prove with science: > **[Omphalos (book)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphalos_(book))** > > Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot is a book by Philip Gosse, written in 1857 (two years before Darwin's On the Origin of Species), in which he argues that the fossil record is not evidence of evolution, but rather that it is an act of creation inevitably made so that the world would appear to be older than it is. The reasoning parallels the reasoning that Gosse chose to explain why Adam (who would have had no mother) had a navel: Though Adam would have had no need of a navel, God ... ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2017, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076/7 "2017-04-23T19:02:34Z")
[Erasmus Darwin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasmus_Darwin#Zoonomia) Charles’ grandfather, was an earlier thinker who proposed a type of evolution. That idea wasn’t Charles Darwin’s claim to fame, as it had considerable currency before and during his lifetime. His claim to fame was the proposed mechanism (and copious data to back it up), as noted in the full title of his book: _On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection_. It’s true that much of the establishment was tied closely to the Church and the idea that species were immutable, but science by the mid-19th century was well on the way to disentangling itself from religion. That was a losing proposition. Darwin’s genius is that his ideas are so obviously correct-- once someone explains them to you-- but so difficult to figure out for the first time. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2017, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076/8 "2017-04-23T19:04:41Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > There was a long history of evolutionary thought before Darwin: > > [History of evolutionary thought - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought) For example [QUOTE=Wikipedia] Patrick Matthew wrote in his book On Naval Timber and Arboriculture (1831) of “continual balancing of life to circumstance. … [The] progeny of the same parents, under great differences of circumstance, might, in several generations, even become distinct species, incapable of co-reproduction.”[75] Charles Darwin _ **implies that he supposedly** _ [??? why does Wikipedia have this slur?] discovered this work after the initial publication of the Origin. In the brief historical sketch that Darwin included in the 3rd edition he says “Unfortunately the view was given by Mr. Matthew very briefly in scattered passages in an Appendix to a work on a different subject … _**“[Matthew] clearly saw, however, the full force of the principle of natural selection.”**_”[76] [/QUOTE] Darwin’s greatness arises not just from the T of E-NS, parts of which had been hinted at for decades if not centuries. Darwin’s greatness comes from the unique eloquence and thoroughness of his writings. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2017, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076/9 "2017-04-23T20:08:24Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > Darwin’s greatness arises not just from the T of E-NS, parts of which had been hinted at for decades if not centuries. Darwin’s greatness comes from the unique eloquence and thoroughness of his writings. Right. It is well known that Alfred Wallace independently came up with the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. But Darwin had been compiling mountains of evidence in support of evolution for decades. It was his presentation and synthesis of this information in _The Origin of Species_ that convinced the scientific world of its validity. Without Darwin, it might have taken decades more for the idea to have become widely accepted. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2017, 8:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076/10 "2017-04-24T08:51:58Z")
A bit of a stretch (as describing any pre-modern writer being a proponent of any “scientific theory” is a bit of a stretch, as the concept did not really exist): But Al Jahiz (a black Iraqi medieval scientist) can make some claim to being the first “evolutionist”: > [@](#): > > Al Jahiz was the first Muslim “biologist” to develop a theory on evolution. Indeed, he wrote on the effects of the environment on an animal’s survival chances, as he observed and carefully described the evident struggle for existence among all species. Interestingly, he made a linkage between food consumption and the environment, determining that the latter established, or perhaps, contributed to the physical characteristics of all plants and animals. Long before Darwin advanced his own theories, Al Jahiz noticed how the environment was responsible for the different human skin colours. His “Kitab Al Hayawan” (Book of Animals) stood as an encyclopaedia of at least 350 varieties of animals and, though seldom read nowadays, included critical notions that were unique to the Basrawi. Few can deny his valuable work on natural selection long before Darwin’s Origin of Species: Al Jahiz discovered the notion of biological evolution, Darwin perfected it. > **[The father of the theory of evolution](https://gulfnews.com/general/the-father-of-the-theory-of-evolution-1.1079209)** > > Al Jahiz observed the phenomenon of natural selection a millennium before Darwin ---
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2017, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076/11 "2017-04-24T22:47:22Z")
> [@bizerta](#): > > In a recent Scientific American article, a British scientist discovered and displayed dinosaur fossils (which he called Megalosaurus) some 35 years before Darin’s published theory. That scientist also had unearthed fossils of extinct mammals over 100 million years old. The article never said how these fossils were explained at the time. I haven’t seen the article, but it was presumably a reference to [William Buckland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Buckland). Yet Buckland was hardly a believer in evolution in any modern sense of the term. For he saw the “deep past” as a series of divine creations and extinctions, so that there were a whole series of essentially disconnected pre-human past worlds, some evidence of which was preserved as fossils. As others have noted, there were people of that vintage thinking about “transmutation”. Buckland really wasn’t one of them. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2017, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076/12 "2017-04-24T23:12:04Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > For example Just to comment on your complaint and (rhetorical?) question about Wikipedia… The particular language you object to does go against Wikipedia’s [manual of style](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Words_to_watch#Expressions_of_doubt) and the reason why that article has that language is because nobody has fixed it yet. If it really bothers you then **you** can fix it. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076/13 "2017-04-25T00:55:00Z")
Well, there were people breeding horses (mainly warhorses) & keeping pedigree records long before Darwin. There are books from the Hittite Kikkuli from 1400BC and the Greek Xenophon from 400BC that talk of the importance of choosing correctly-bred horses. Horse breeders of that time weren’t writing about the theory of evolution, but they were certainly practicing it! ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2017, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076/14 "2017-04-26T21:07:57Z")
> [@bizerta](#): > > some 35 years before Darin’s published theory. Which Darin? Dick York or Dick Sargent? ---
**Author:** ![Gymnopithys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/fbc32d/32.png) [@Gymnopithys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gymnopithys)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2017, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076/15 "2017-04-28T19:35:28Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > Right. It is well known that Alfred Wallace independently came up with the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. But Darwin had been compiling mountains of evidence in support of evolution for decades. It was his presentation and synthesis of this information in _The Origin of Species_ that convinced the scientific world of its validity. Without Darwin, it might have taken decades more for the idea to have become widely accepted. I just finished reading this excellent book by Rebecca Stott: Darwin’s Ghosts - In search of the first evolutionists (Bloomsbury, London, 2012) ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2017, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076/16 "2017-04-28T19:41:06Z")
> [@Omar\_Little](#): > > Which Darin? Dick York or Dick Sargent? Derwood. ---
**Author:** ![RedSwinglineOne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a9adbd/32.png) [@RedSwinglineOne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedSwinglineOne)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2017, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076/17 "2017-04-28T20:01:12Z")
[I asked a similar question years](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=709765) ago, and received some excellent responses. > [@](#): > > What was the common thinking at the time of “On the Origin of Species”? ---
**Author:** ![Great\_White\_Dope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/22d042/32.png) [@Great\_White\_Dope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_White_Dope)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2017, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076/18 "2017-04-28T23:11:44Z")
John Angus Campbell has a brilliant lecture on how Darwin was a master of rhetoric, and how it was this rhetoric, not physical evidence, which makes up the foundation of his hypothesis. In my humble opinion, Darwin’s ideas were terribly wrong, and full of dangerous implication, yet there’s such an ideological investment in them, that they remain long past their expiration date. ---
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2017, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076/19 "2017-04-29T00:11:12Z")
For those who don’t know the name, that’d be the [John Angus Campbell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Angus_Campbell) who’s at least a “fellow traveller” when it comes to Intelligent Design advocacy. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_White\_Dope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/22d042/32.png) [@Great\_White\_Dope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_White_Dope)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2017, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076/20 "2017-04-29T01:18:29Z")
> [@bonzer](#): > > For those who don’t know the name, that’d be the [John Angus Campbell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Angus_Campbell) who’s at least a “fellow traveller” when it comes to Intelligent Design advocacy. So, he rejects a view of biology rooted in 19th century ignorance (Darwin), in favor of a view of biology rooted in 21st century knowledge (intelligent design). I’d say that’s a positive, not a negative. You’d have to be a very stupid and/or dishonest person to deny the fact that every facet of biology is practically screaming out _“design!”_ [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076.md?page=2)