HOW OLD IS THE SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF EVOLUTION? Greek philosopher Anaximander, of the sixth century B.C.E., wrote: “Living organisms arose by gradual stages from the original moisture; land animals were at first fishes, and only with the drying of the earth did they acquire their present shape. Man too was once a fish; he could not at his earliest appearance have been born as now, for he would have been too helpless to secure his food, and would have been destroyed.” Concerning Anaxagoras (fifth century B.C.E.), we read: “All organisms were originally generated out of earth, moisture, and heat, and thereafter from one another. Man has developed beyond other animals because his erect posture freed his hands for grasping things.” Of Empedocles, we read: “Empedocles (493-435 B.C.), for example, who has been called ‘the father of the evolution idea,’ believed in spontaneous generation as the explanation of the origin of life, and he believed that different forms of life were not produced simultaneously. Plant life came first and animal life only after a long series of trials, but the origin of the organisms was a very gradual process. [Here note is made of the many monstrosities produced.] But the unnatural products soon became extinct because they were not capable of propagation. After the extinction of these monsters other forms arose which were able to support themselves and multiply. Thus, if one cares to, one may see in the ideas of Empedocles the germ of the theory of the survival of the fittest, or natural selection.” The famous philosopher Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.) wrote: “Nature proceeds little by little from things lifeless to animal life in such a way that it is impossible to determine the exact line of demarcation. . . . Thus, next after lifeless things in the upward scale comes the genus of plants . . . There is in plants a continuous scale of ascent towards the animal. . . . And so throughout the animal scale there is a graduated differentiation. . . . A nail is the analogue of a claw, a hand of a crab’s nipper, a feather of a fish’s scale.”
Posted on: Sun, 13 Jul 2014 15:53:30 +0000
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