Charles Darwin Research Paper

When dealing with the concept of evolution, Charles Darwin is the main figure mentioned because he was the first to discover that evolution happened by means of natural selection. However, there were ideas concerning evolution years before Darwin’s time. Early evolutionary thought came from influences such as Greek Thought, Rise of Christianity, The Renaissance, Natural Philosophers, and Biological Research and Writings. Darwin wasn’t the first person curious about the origin of the world, but he was the most accurate. Greek Thought included the philosophies of Anaximander, Xenophanes, Empedocles, and Aristotle. Anaximander was a Greek philosopher born in 610 BCE and died in 546 BCE. According to Greek artifacts, he was the first known philosopher

Also, he was a student of Anaximander, and later developed Anaximander’s theories further. He observed fossil fish and shells, and concluded that land must’ve been under the ocean at some point of time. Xenophanes believed that the world formed from the condensation of water; he was one of the first people known to use fossils as evidence of evolution. Empedocles was a Greek philosopher born in 490 BCE and died 430 BCE. He believed that the universe was made entirely of the classical elements, which are air, water, fire, and earth. He noted that the constant interaction of these elements formed the universe. Also, Empedocles believed the two fundamental forces, which he called love and hate, stirred the elements.

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher born in 384 BCE and died in 322 BCE. He was a vitalist, and believed that there was an internal force and in all matter. Aristotle developed a “Scala naturae,” which he organized the natural world with a ladder beginning with inanimate matter to plants, invertebrates, and vertebrates. Among the vertebrates, he put fish at the lowest level of the ladder and humans on the top level. This “Scala Naturae” represented the organisms he believed were most imperfect to most

Augustine was a Christian philosopher born in 354 CE and died in 430 CE. He used scripture to interpret a thousand years before the Scientific Revolution, and he rejected the ideas of the Greeks and Egyptians. Relating to the bible, Augustine intended that the story Genesis had a literal interpretation. He concluded that the six days of Creation are not chronological, but a way to categorizes God’s work of creation. Also, he believed that the human being was a perfect unity of soul and body.

Thomas Aquinas was a Catholic Priest born in 1225 and died in 1274. He believed that life could have formed from non-living material or plant life, which is a theory known of spontaneous generation. He intended that the story of Genesis wasn’t to be interpreted literally. He noted that God and scientific research could be compatible. Also, Aquinas believed if humans understood Christian doctrine properly and did their science well that they would find the