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  • Charles Dawin's Theory of Evolution

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    Elwin
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    Anaximander of Miletus was one of the earliest philosophers to propose ideas about how organisms change over time, suggesting that humans descended from fish-like creatures. His idea was not considered a scientific theory, as it could not be tested. A theory requires rigorous testing through observations and experiments. It was not until Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species that evolution reached the status of a scientific theory. Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace proposed the mechanism of natural selection, where organisms better suited to their environment are more likely to survive and reproduce, passing on their traits. Natural selection remains a key mechanism of evolution, though genetic drift can also cause evolution through chance variation in reproductive success.

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    Anaximander of Miletus was one of the earliest philosophers to propose ideas about how organisms change over time, suggesting that humans descended from fish-like creatures. His idea was not considered a scientific theory, as it could not be tested. A theory requires rigorous testing through observations and experiments. It was not until Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species that evolution reached the status of a scientific theory. Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace proposed the mechanism of natural selection, where organisms better suited to their environment are more likely to survive and reproduce, passing on their traits. Natural selection remains a key mechanism of evolution, though genetic drift can also cause evolution through chance variation in reproductive success.

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    12 views2 pages

    Charles Dawin's Theory of Evolution

    Uploaded by

    Elwin
    Anaximander of Miletus was one of the earliest philosophers to propose ideas about how organisms change over time, suggesting that humans descended from fish-like creatures. His idea was not considered a scientific theory, as it could not be tested. A theory requires rigorous testing through observations and experiments. It was not until Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species that evolution reached the status of a scientific theory. Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace proposed the mechanism of natural selection, where organisms better suited to their environment are more likely to survive and reproduce, passing on their traits. Natural selection remains a key mechanism of evolution, though genetic drift can also cause evolution through chance variation in reproductive success.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Ideas aimed at explaining how 

    organisms change, or evolve, over time


    date back to Anaximander of Miletus, a Greek philosopher who lived
    in the 500s B.C.E. Noting that human babies are born helpless,
    Anaximander speculated that humans must have descended from
    some other type of creature whose young could survive without any
    help. He concluded that those ancestors must be fish, since fish hatch
    from eggs and immediately begin living with no help from their
    parents. From this reasoning, he proposed that all life began in the
    sea.

    Anaximander was correct; humans can indeed trace our ancestry


    back to fish. His idea, however, was not a theory in the scientific
    meaning of the word, because it could not be subjected to testing that
    might support it or prove it wrong. In science, the word “theory”
    indicates a very high level of certainty. Scientists talk
    about evolution as a theory, for instance, just as they talk about
    Einstein’s explanation of gravity as a theory.

    A theory is an idea about how something in nature works that has


    gone through rigorous testing through observations and experiments
    designed to prove the idea right or wrong. When it comes to the
    evolution of life, various philosophers and scientists, including an
    eighteenth-century English doctor named Erasmus Darwin, proposed
    different aspects of what later would become evolutionary theory. But
    evolution did not reach the status of being a scientific theory until
    Darwin’s grandson, the more famous Charles Darwin, published his
    famous book On the Origin of Species. Darwin and a scientific
    contemporary of his, Alfred Russel Wallace, proposed
    that evolution occurs because of a phenomenon called natural
    selection.

    In the theory of natural selection, organisms produce more offspring


    than are able to survive in their environment. Those that are better
    physically equipped to survive, grow to maturity, and reproduce.
    Those that are lacking in such fitness, on the other hand, either do not
    reach an age when they can reproduce or produce fewer offspring
    than their counterparts. Natural selection is sometimes summed up as
    “survival of the fittest” because the “fittest” organisms—those most
    suited to their environment—are the ones that reproduce most
    successfully, and are most likely to pass on their traits to the next
    generation.

    This means that if an environment changes, the traits that enhance


    survival in that environment will also gradually change, or
    evolve. Natural selection was such a powerful idea in explaining
    the evolution of life that it became established as a
    scientific theory. Biologists have since observed numerous examples
    of natural selection influencing evolution. Today, it is known to be just
    one of several mechanisms by which life evolves. For example, a
    phenomenon known as genetic drift can also cause species to evolve.
    In genetic drift, some organisms—purely by chance—produce more
    offspring than would be expected. Those organisms are not
    necessarily the fittest of their species, but it is their genes that get
    passed on to the next generation.

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