HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF EVOLUTION THEORY 13 
Democritus (b. 450 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: 
