Evolutionism - 19th Century Use

19th Century Use

Evolution originally was used to refer to an orderly sequence of events with the outcome somehow contained at the start. Darwin did not use the term in Origin of Species until its sixth edition in 1872, (though earlier editions did use the word "evolved") by which time Herbert Spencer had given it scientific currency with a broad definition of progression in complexity in 1862. Edward B. Tylor and Lewis H Morgan brought the term "evolution" to anthropology though they tended toward the older pre-Spencerian definition helping to form the concept of unilineal evolution used during the later part of what Trigger calls the Antiquarianism-Imperial Synthesis period (c1770-c1900).