History of Evolutionary Biology

History Of Evolutionary Biology

Evolutionary thought, the conception that species change over time, has roots in antiquity, in the ideas of the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Chinese as well as in medieval Islamic science. With the beginnings of biological taxonomy in the late 17th century, Western biological thinking was influenced by two opposed ideas. One was essentialism, the belief that every species has essential characteristics that are unalterable, a concept which had developed from medieval Aristotelian metaphysics, and that fit well with natural theology. The other one was the development of the new anti-Aristotelian approach to modern science: as the Enlightenment progressed, evolutionary cosmology and the mechanical philosophy spread from the physical sciences to natural history. Naturalists began to focus on the variability of species; the emergence of paleontology with the concept of extinction further undermined the static view of nature. In the early 19th century, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed his theory of the transmutation of species, the first fully formed theory of evolution.

In 1858, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace published a new evolutionary theory that was explained in detail in Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859). Unlike Lamarck, Darwin proposed common descent and a branching tree of life, meaning that two very different species could share a common ancestor. The theory was based on the idea of natural selection, and it synthesized a broad range of evidence from animal husbandry, biogeography, geology, morphology, and embryology.

The debate over Darwin's work led to the rapid acceptance of the general concept of evolution, but the specific mechanism he proposed, natural selection, was not widely accepted until it was revived by developments in biology that occurred during 1920s through the 1940s. Before that time most biologists argued that other factors were responsible for evolution. Alternatives to natural selection suggested during "the eclipse of Darwinism" (circa 1880 to 1920) included inheritance of acquired characteristics (neo-Lamarckism), an innate drive for change (orthogenesis), and sudden large mutations (saltationism). The synthesis of natural selection with Mendelian genetics during the 1920s and 1930s founded the new discipline of population genetics. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, population genetics became integrated with other biological fields, resulting in a widely applicable theory of evolution that encompassed much of biology—the modern evolutionary synthesis.

Following the establishment of evolutionary biology, studies of mutation and variation in natural populations, combined with biogeography and systematics, led to sophisticated mathematical and causal models of evolution. Paleontology and comparative anatomy allowed more detailed reconstructions of the history of life. After the rise of molecular genetics in the 1950s, the field of molecular evolution developed, based on protein sequences and immunological tests, and later incorporating RNA and DNA studies. The gene-centered view of evolution rose to prominence in the 1960s, followed by the neutral theory of molecular evolution, sparking debates over adaptationism, the units of selection, and the relative importance of genetic drift versus natural selection. In the late 20th century, DNA sequencing led to molecular phylogenetics and the reorganization of the tree of life into the three-domain system. In addition, the newly recognized factors of symbiogenesis and horizontal gene transfer introduced yet more complexity into evolutionary theory. Discoveries in evolutionary biology have made a significant impact not just within the traditional branches of biology, but also in other academic disciplines (e.g., anthropology and psychology) and on society at large.

Part of a series on
Evolutionary biology
Key topics
  • Introduction to evolution
  • Common descent
  • Evidence of common descent
Processes and outcomes
  • Population genetics
  • Variation
  • Mutation
  • Natural selection
  • Adaptation
  • Polymorphism (biology)
  • Genetic drift
  • Gene flow
  • Speciation
  • Adaptive radiation
  • Co-operation
  • Coevolution
  • Divergent
  • Convergent
  • Parallel evolution
  • Extinction
Natural history
  • Origin of Life
  • History of life
  • Timeline of evolution
  • Human evolution
  • Phylogeny
  • Biodiversity
  • Biogeography
  • Classification
  • evolutionary taxonomy
  • Cladistics
  • Transitional fossil
  • Extinction event
History of evolutionary theory
  • Overview
  • Renaissance
  • Before Darwin
  • Darwin
  • Origin of Species
  • Before synthesis
  • Modern synthesis
  • Molecular evolution
  • Evo-devo
  • Current research
  • History of paleontology
  • Timeline
Fields and applications
  • Applications of evolution
  • Artificial selection
  • Biosocial criminology
  • Ecological genetics
  • Evolutionary aesthetics
  • Evolutionary anthropology
  • Evolutionary computation
  • Evolutionary economics
  • Evolutionary ethics
  • Evolutionary game theory
  • Evolutionary linguistics
  • Evolutionary medicine
  • Evolutionary neuroscience
  • Evolutionary physiology
  • Evolutionary psychology
  • Experimental evolution
  • Phylogenetics
  • Paleovirology
  • Systematics
  • Universal Darwinism
Social implications
  • Theory and fact
  • Social effect
  • Controversy
  • Objections
  • Level of support
  • Evolutionary biology portal
  • Category
  • Related topics
  • Book
History of science
Background
  • Theories/sociology
  • Historiography
  • Pseudoscience
By era
  • In early cultures
  • in Classical Antiquity
  • In the Middle Ages
  • In the Renaissance
  • Scientific revolution
  • Romanticism in science
By culture
  • African
  • Byzantine
  • Chinese
  • Indian
  • Islamic
Natural sciences
  • Astronomy
  • Biology
  • Botany
  • Chemistry
  • Ecology
  • Evolution
  • Geology
  • Geophysics
  • Paleontology
  • Physics
Mathematics
  • Algebra
  • Calculus
  • Combinatorics
  • Geometry
  • Logic
  • Probability
  • Statistics
  • Trigonometry
Social sciences
  • Anthropology
  • Economics
  • Geography
  • Linguistics
  • Political science
  • Psychology
  • Sociology
  • Sustainability
Technology
  • Agricultural science
  • Computer science
  • Materials science
Medicine
  • Medicine
Navigational pages
  • Timelines
  • Portal
  • Categories

Read more about History Of Evolutionary Biology:  Renaissance and Enlightenment, 1859–1930s: Darwin and His Legacy, 1920s–1940s, 1940s–1960s: Molecular Biology and Evolution

Famous quotes containing the words history, evolutionary and/or biology:

    I think that Richard Nixon will go down in history as a true folk hero, who struck a vital blow to the whole diseased concept of the revered image and gave the American virtue of irreverence and skepticism back to the people.
    William Burroughs (b. 1914)

    The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
    Stanley Weiser, U.S. screenwriter, and Oliver Stone. Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas)

    The “control of nature” is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and the convenience of man.
    Rachel Carson (1907–1964)