History of evolutionary thought

The development of ideas and debates about how species change over time, from early theories to modern evolutionary biology.

Lamarckism: An evolutionary theory in which use and disuse alter organisms and acquired traits pass to offspring. Lamarck offered an early systematic account of species changing over time.
Natural selection: A process in which heritable differences affect survival or reproduction, changing trait frequencies across generations. Darwin and Wallace made it a central mechanism of adaptive evolution.
Alfred Russel Wallace: A British naturalist who independently conceived natural selection and co-presented the idea with Darwin in 1858. Wallace's independent work helped prompt the public presentation of natural selection.
Creationism: The belief that life and its diversity originated through divine creation rather than solely through natural processes. Creationist opposition has repeatedly shaped public and religious disputes over evolution.
Modern synthesis: A twentieth-century framework integrating Mendelian genetics, natural selection, and population biology. It reconciled inheritance with Darwinian evolution and shaped biology for decades.
Georges Cuvier: A French naturalist who established comparative anatomy and argued that extinction and catastrophes shaped Earth's history. His evidence for extinction challenged views that species were fixed and everlasting.
Common descent: The proposition that organisms share ancestors, with lineages branching and changing over time. It became a unifying claim supported by Darwin's evidence and later biology.
Thomas Henry Huxley: A British biologist who publicly defended Darwinian evolution and helped popularize the debate. His advocacy made evolutionary theory a prominent Victorian controversy.
Lamarckian inheritance: The proposed inheritance of traits acquired by an organism during its lifetime. It contrasts with the genetic inheritance mechanisms that displaced classic Lamarckism.
Population genetics: The study of genetic variation and allele-frequency change within populations. Its mathematical tools connected inheritance, selection, mutation, and drift.

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Ernst MayrRelated: Mayr’s historical scholarship argued that evolutionary biology changed through conceptual transformations.