Darwin was the first to propose that living things enolve?

Question

TRUE OR FALSE IN DETAILS PLEASE

Answer 1

No, Darwin wasn't first to propose that organisms evolve. That honor goes to Anaximander (roughly 550 BC), who hypothesized that new species were formed by hybridizataion (though he didn't use the terminology we use today of course).

For a good 100 years or so before Dawin published On the Origin of Species... (1859), early naturalists/scientists were pretty confident that evolution was the explanation for the diversity of life. What Darwin did was provide the *mechanism* for that evolution.

We scientists are a skeptical lot after all. What was accumulating for decades before Darwin's book was evidence that evolution had taken place. In other words, that one species changed into another (or others). But what was missing was exactly **how** this happened. So Darwin provided the mechanism known as "natural selection" to explain how evolution could take place.

Since Darwin's insight, we've of course identified other means of evolution that aren't precisely the same as what he discussed (e.g., genetic drift, founder effects, etc.), but his insight was first, and allowed these others to take place.

I hope this helps!

Answer 2

Believe it or not Charles Darwin's grandfather Dr. Erasmus Darwin wrote reams of indifferent verse in which he proposed that evolution proceeded by the inheritance of acquired characteristics. This was in a pretty vague way, but he was not the first to recognise that evolution was a fact. It was probably the classification system of Linnaeus which made it very obvious that evolution was a fact.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasmus_Darwin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolus_Linnaeus

Answer 3

Darwin was the first to propose HOW things evolved. Even the early Greeks had the idea that perhaps things evolved.

Answer 4

I suppose you could say evolve, but he more noted adaptations. Survival of the fittest.

He stated that chance mutations would happen, and these mutations would help some members of a species survive. Those that have the mutation have a better chance of survival. They pass it on to their children, and eventually, there are none without this now adaption.

Answer 5

The evolutionary -type phylosophy has been around for a very long time. The Apostle Paul mentions it in the first chapter of the Book of Romans.

Answer 6

He was the person that fought against the church to prove that it's true, that's why it became such a big deal because he won (it hasn't happened much in history).

Answer 7

There were people that suggested it before him, but I believe he was the first one to prove it. I believe he did an experiement on the galapagos islands.