Transmutation of species was a term used by Jean Baptiste Lamarck in 1809 for his theory that described the altering of one species into another, and the term is often used to describe 19th century evolutionary ideas that preceded Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. Other 19th century proponents of pre-Darwinian evolutionary ideas included Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Robert Grant, and Robert Chambers who anonymously published the book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. Opposition in the scientific community, led by influential scientists like the anatomists Georges Cuvier and Richard Owen and the geologist Charles Lyell, to these early theories of evolution was intense. The debate over them was an important stage in the history of evolutionary thought and would influence the subsequent reaction to Darwin's theory.
Read more about Transmutation Of Species: Terminology, Historical Development, Opposition To Transmutation
Famous quotes containing the words transmutation of and/or species:
“Everything good is the transmutation of something evil: every god has a devil for a father.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (18441900)
“If there is a species which is more maltreated than children, then it must be their toys, which they handle in an incredibly off-hand manner.... Toys are thus the end point in that long chain in which all the conditions of despotic high-handedness are in play which enchain beings one to another, from one species to anothercruel divinities to their sacrificial victims, from masters to slaves, from adults to children, and from children to their objects.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)