The idea of evolution, in common with most great human concepts, is not entirely of recent origin and is, in most cultures, largely based on myths, superstitions or philosophical ideas rather than on careful observations and accumulation of facts. The germ of the idea, which has now developed into the modern theory of evolution, appears in Greek writings.
Empedocles (495 B.C. – 435 B.C.), a Greek philosopher, had suggested that plants had arisen first, and that animals were later formed from them. The seed of the idea of natural selection was contained in his belief that the parts of animals were formed separately and then united at random. Most would then be monstrous and unviable, but a few would survive.
Then came Aristotle (384 B.C. – 322 B.C.). His was the concept of ‘Scala naturae’, ladder of nature, in which he arranged living things on a scale of perfection. The succession ranged from inanimate matter through the lower plants to the higher animals on a single scale with man, at the top, being the most nearly perfect. He apparently never interpreted the chain as possibly suggesting that each group had evolved from the one below it. Since he remained the most authoritative source of biological information for a very long period, one could say that his theory actually hampered the development of the theory of evolution.
Then we have Lucretius (99 B.C. – 55 B.C.). His famous work ‘De Rerum Natutra’, the nature of things, summed up most of the Greek non-Aristotelian thought. His work preserved everything during the Dark and Middle Ages. He is significant not because of any particular advance in the evolutionary thought, but because he marked the end of a period. With him we come to the end of the classical era.
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