Aristotle published his theory before Darwin's Origin of Species does that make him the first evolutionist?

Question

Aristotle believed that "living things proceed little by little from inanimate matter to plants...plants in turn ascend by small degrees toward the animal world."

Answer 1

Thechnically, yes. But he never really pursued the idea. By the time that biologists had started to investigate 'transmutation of species' (in the early 1800's) the World was again gripped in a spasm of religious belief and, even 'tho Darwin wasn't the only one to believe that species evolved, most of them were too afraid of being called heretics (or worse) and so they kept their mouths shut. Darwin was the one who seriously pursued the idea for almost 20 years and finally published in 1860 (IIRC).
Pedictably, it was ridiculed. In fact, it wasn't even thought of as a piece of science. (See the 'scopes monkey trial' in the mid-20's to get a feel for how far the theory of evolution had progressed in 75 years.)

Doug

Answer 2

I am really looking forward to this Ashes series and certainly haven't completely written the Aussies off. Having said that England must go into the series as overwhelming favourites due to recent form and the fact that the series is being played in England. I reckon Chris Rogers could be a bit of a dark horse as he knows the conditions over here pretty well. Good to see some friendly banter flying around between the 2 sets of supporters too!

Answer 3

Not really ... that isn't exactly what evolution is - it's not just amoebas becoming plants and plants becoming animals (when did a geranium ever turn into a zebra???)

Many philosophers and scientists had ideas that were sort of on the evolutionary track, but none of them came up with a cogent, plausible theory to explain it.

Darwin was the first (although somebody else actually came up with the idea independently at the same time, so it was clearly an idea whose time had come).

Answer 4

He just assumed it was an upward tendency in terms of complexity. This is not at all necessarily so.