History
In the 19th century, some scientists such as Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Ray Lankester believed that all Nature had an innate striving to become more complex with evolution. This belief may reflect then-current ideas of Hegel and Herbert Spencer that all creation was gradually evolving to a higher, more perfect state.
According to this view, the evolution of parasites from an independent organism to another parasite was seen as "devolution" or "degeneration", and contrary to Nature. This view has sometimes been used metaphorically by social theorists and propagandists to decry a class of people as "degenerate parasites". Today, "devolution" is regarded as nonsense; rather, lineages will become simpler or more complicated according to whatever forms have a selective advantage.
Read more about this topic: Evolution Of Biological Complexity
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Let it suffice that in the light of these two facts, namely, that the mind is One, and that nature is its correlative, history is to be read and written.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“These anyway might think it was important
That human history should not be shortened.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)