The History of Evolutionary Thought

Introduction

Science never takes place in a void, and evolutionary thought didn't either. Charles Darwin was aided by many scientists who had come before him in the development of the theory of evolution. All of his predecessors' ideas about evolution were limited to the information available at the time of their conception; this concept is better known as a paradigm. A paradigm is a model or way of viewing the world; it shapes what is studied by a scholar, what has significance, and most importantly the epistemology ( why we study what we study) behind a study. Many of the evolutionary paradigms have their foundations within the Bible, religion, and philosophy. The following theories must be read with their historical context in mind, and as neither valid nor invalid to the present state of science. Rather, early theories share the commonality to explain the natural world, and can often be models and offshoots of the paradigm scholars in the past had.

Essentialism

To follow the rise of evolutionary thought one must venture back to the age of ancient Greece, where the idea of essentialism was a belief which explained how natural creatures were what they were. According to essentialist thought, a creature and all of their traits were decided by the amount of the four basic "humors" they had within their body. These humors were Black Bile, Phlegm, Yellow Bile, and Blood. According to the amount of specific humors a person had within their body, they would have specific traits. Accordingly, the Greeks acknowledged that geography was a factor in the traits which were expressed in an organism. For example, a bird from the tropics was brightly colored because it had a specific mixture of humors which were determined by its geography.

The Great Chain of Being

The theory of essentialism eventually led to the idea of the Great Chain of Being, proliferated by the early Christian church in Europe. The great chain of being proposed several main tenets:

I. The universe was full and plentiful

II. Every species within the universe had at least one trait in common, and

III. the species within the universe could be placed in order from the least 'ens perfectissimum', or godly, to the most godly.

The general interest of scholars within this timeframe was less with the natural world and its functions, and more toward the study of God in the natural world.