HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF EVOLUTION THEORY 13 



Democritus (b.45o B.C.), said to have been the first comparative 

 anatomist, contributed to the substructure of evolution the idea of the 

 "adaptation of single structures and organs to certain purposes." 



Anaxagoras (500-428 B.C.) was the first of the Greeks " to attribute 

 the adaptations of Nature to Intelligent Design, and was thus the 

 founder of Teleology," an idea that has played a retarding function in 

 the history of evolution. 



"With Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) we enter a new world," says Osborn. 

 "He towered above his predecessors, and by the force of his genius 

 created Natural History." The evolution idea took a great step 

 forward with Aristotle and reached a stage beyond which it did not 

 go for many centuries. He covered nearly the whole field, touching 

 upon most of the foundation stones of the complex problem. His 

 ideas, like those of all the Greeks, were often vague and, in the light 

 of present knowledge, incoherent; but, considering the meager factual 

 background with which he had to work he had a surprising grasp of 

 the whole situation. Some of his principal ideas were: 



1. He had a clear idea of laws of Nature ("Necessity"), and 

 attributed all evolutionary changes to natural causes. 



2. He opposed the ideas of Empedocles as to the fortuitous origin 

 of adaptive characters, and favored the idea of intelligent design in 

 nature. He was therefore a teleologist. 



3. Hence he rejected the hypothesis of the survival of the fittest, 

 because it was based on chance. 



4. He "had substantially the modern conception of the Evolution 

 of life, from a primordial soft mass of living matter. " 



5. He had an idea of a linear phylogenetic series, beginning 

 with plants, then plant-animals, such as sponges and sea anemones, 

 then animals with sensibility, and thence by graded stages up to 

 Man. 



6. "He perceived the unity of type in certain classes of animals, 

 and considered rudimentary organs as tokens whereby Nature sustains 

 this unity." 



7. "He anticipated Harvey's doctrine of Epigenesis in embryonic 

 development. " 



8. " He fully perceived the forces of hereditary transmission, of the 

 prepotency of one parent or stock, and of Atavism and Reversion." 



9. He is the father of that ancient fallacy called "prenatal influ- 

 ences," and believed in the inheritance of acquired characters, as is 

 shown in the following passage : 



