Development of Theories of Evolution

Development of the modern view of Evolution

Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802; grandfather of Charles Darwin) a British physician and poet in the late 1700's, proposed that life had changed over time, although he did not present a mechanism. Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (pronounced Bu-fone; 1707-1788) in the middle to late 1700's proposed that species could change. This was a major break from earlier concepts that species were created by a perfect creator and therefore could not change because they were perfect, etc.

Swedish botanist Carl Linne (more popularly known as Linneus, after the common practice of the day which was to latinize names of learned men), attempted to pigeon-hole all known species of his time (1753) into immutable categories. Many of these categories are still used in biology, although the underlying thought concept is now evolution and not immutability of species. Linnean hierarchical classification was based on the premise that the species was the smallest unit, and that each species (or taxon) belonged to a higher category.

Kingdom Animalia

Phylum (Division is used for plants) Chordata

Class Mammalia

Order Primates

Family Hominidae

Genus Homo

species sapiens



Linneus also developed the concept of binomial nomenclature, whereby scientists speaking and writing different languages could communicate clearly. For example Man in English is Hombre in Spanish, Mensch in German, and Homo in Latin. Linneus settled on Latin, which was the language of learned men at that time. If a scientist refers to Homo, all scientists know what he or she means.

William "Strata" Smith (1769-1839), employed by the English coal mining industry, developed the first accurate geologic map of England. He also, from his extensive travels, developed the Principle of Biological Succession. This idea states that each period of Earth history has its own unique assemblages of fossils. In essence Smith fathered the science of stratigraphy, the correlation of rock layers based on (among other things) their fossil contents. He also developed an idea that life had changed over time, but did not overtly state that.

Abraham Gottlob Werner and Baron Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) were among the foremost proponents of catastrophism, the theory that the earth and geological events had formed suddenly, as a result of some great catastrophe (such as Noah's flood). This view was a comfortable one for the times and thus was widely accepted. Cuvier eventually proposed that there had been several creations that occurred after catastrophies. Louis Agassiz (1807-1873) proposed 50-80 catastrophes and creations.

Jean Baptiste de Lamarck (1744-1829) developed one of the first theories on how species changed. He proposed the inheritance of acquired characteristics to explain, among other things, the length of the giraffe neck. The Lamarckian view is that modern giraffe's have long necks because their ancestors progressively gained longer necks due to stretching to reach food higher and higher in trees. According to the 19th century concept of use and disuse the stretching of necks resulted in their development, which was somehow passed on to their progeny. Today we realize that only bacteria are able to incorporate non-genetic (nonheritable) traits. Lamarck's work was a theory that plainly stated that life had changed over time and provided (albeit an erroneous) mechanism of change.