# 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:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**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 29, 2017, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076/21 "2017-04-29T02:12:07Z")
I’m not a moderator, but I suspect that a discussion of intelligent design should be a separate thread and should be in Great Debates. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2017, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076/22 "2017-04-29T03:20:37Z")
Didn’t Thomas Aquinas speculate about possible animal evolution? ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2017, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076/23 "2017-04-29T03:30:48Z")
> [@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. This, though Darwin, as a pigeon fancier, might’ve come up with it without his hypothesis on his own. Breeders of dogs, pigeons, and peas knew the hard way how the rules work, without the details. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2017, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076/24 "2017-04-29T04:08:02Z")
**Moderator Note** > [@Great\_White\_Dope](#): > > 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!”_ Welcome to the Straight Dope, **Great White Dope**. Please note that religious discussions belong in our Great Debates forum. If you want to discuss things like God and Intelligent Design, please do so in the Great Debates, not in General Questions. General Questions is for factual questions only. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2017, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076/25 "2017-04-29T04:23:00Z")
> [@Great\_White\_Dope](#): > > 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!”_ You weren’t wrong about enough things in the sphere of politics that you needed to start being profoundly wrong in the sphere of science? ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2017, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076/26 "2017-04-29T18:03:29Z")
> [@Great\_White\_Dope](#): > > 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!”_ Uh, what? ---
**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, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076/27 "2017-04-29T23:52:17Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > Uh, what? In short: Darwin got it all wrong. It’s ideological commitment which has kept his ideas alive, not good science. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2017, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076/28 "2017-04-30T00:15:14Z")
> [@Great\_White\_Dope](#): > > In short: Darwin got it all wrong. It’s ideological commitment which has kept his ideas alive, not good science. I think you need to start a Great Debates thread at this point. Don’t you? [Great Debates](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/forumdisplay.php?f=7) ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2017, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076/29 "2017-04-30T00:35:33Z")
> [@Great\_White\_Dope](#): > > 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!”_ Actually, in a sense this is true–every facet of biology _does_ seem to scream out “design”. There’s absolutely no way all the amazingly complex and intricate function of form and behavior we see in living things from amoebas to zebras could possibly have “just happened” or have evolved by “random chance”. But Darwin’s insight was that evolution could produce such apparent “design” without a designer: > [@Charles Darwin](#): > > It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. (Concluding paragraph of [_Origin of Species_)](http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/origin/chapter14.html) Richard Dawkins has also expounded very eloquently on both the absolutely stunning amount of design and complexity in living organisms, and also on how the theory of evolution by natural selection allows for design without a designer; see for example [_The Blind Watchmaker_](https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Watchmaker-Evidence-Evolution-Universe/dp/0393351491). ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2017, 7:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076/30 "2017-04-30T07:48:37Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > 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. Darwin’s genius was that his idea (that breeding caused creation of species) was so obviously correct to members of his own class and country. Darwin tied biological creation to the Creation Myth of the English Upper Class (breeding). > [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > 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! The idea of Breeding was /not/ the ‘theory of evolution’. Darwins ‘theory of evolution’ was (1) That breeding could cause the origination of species. (2) That breeding provided a mechanism for /evolutionary/ (gradualist) change. (3) That breeding provided a mechanism for non-observable creation. (4) That breeding provided a non-supernatural mechanism for origin of species. (5) That breeding as origin of species provided an explanation for and was compatible with geological evidence (the cutting-edge science of the day) The educated English scientific class of the day understood selective breeding, which they took to apply not just to horses, but to themselves. They believed, mostly, in a gradual, evolutionary, natural (non-supernatural) origin of species. They just hadn’t made the link between the two: natural (non-supernatural) selection and the origin of species. When the idea was proposed, it burst on them like a flash of light: why didn’t I think of that? ---
**Author:** ![up\_the\_junction](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/f1d935/32.png) [@up\_the\_junction](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/up_the_junction)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2017, 10:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076/31 "2017-04-30T10:26:52Z")
tbf, it can be easier to think of evolutionary theory as an aspect, perhas even a consequence, of The Enlightenment/Age of Reason. It sure as hell didn’t appear out of thin air. Nor did it to Charles given his grandfather Erasmus was a great proponent: > **[Age of Enlightenment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment)** > > The Age of Enlightenment or the Enlightenment\[note 2\] was an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries with global influences and effects. The Enlightenment included a range of ideas centered on the value of human happiness, the pursuit of knowledge obtained by means of reason and the evidence of the senses, and ideals such as natural law, liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and sta The... ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076/32 "2017-05-01T11:49:38Z")
Darwin’s great contribution to the field was the introduction of a mechanism. It was pretty obvious that species seemed to flow a bit from one to the next. What Darwin came up with was HOW this happened; through the mechanism of natural selection. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolutionists-before-darwins-book/785076.md?page=1)