The evolution of evolution theory

Nonetheless, doubts have always challenged the theory's authority itself, questions about gaps in the so-called fossil record, about how the supposedly 'useful' traits spread from individuals across whole species, and so on, but the significant shift whatever the eventual status of Darwin's 'theory' is that this sort of debate is, like the theory itself, is now firmly about 'rational' ideas rather than the revealed knowledge.

Anaximander (c.610 BCE - 546 BCE) is often said to have created the first map of the world, but is also credited sometimes with being the first person to explain the development of life on Earth as a kind of evolutionary process. Anaximander was a follower of Thales, who held that everything was ultimately made out of water, and his map reflects this, being circular in form with the Aegean Sea in pride of place at the centre 'doughnutted' by all the known lands of the world and the whole set in endless ocean, but unlike his teacher, Anaximander thought that one substance alone could not explain all the variety found in nature — for example, water can only be wet, never dry — and therefore, there had to be more than the one primary substance.

Only fragments ¹ of Anaximander’s thoughts remain, but they indicate that he started with an unlimited primordial mass (that he called apeiron, a term which means not only infinite but also 'that which is not experienced'), which itself was unchanging, subject to neither old age nor decay, but which perpetually yielded fresh materials from which everything we can perceive is derived.

If he ever defined this principle precisely, the detail has been long lost, and it has been generally taken that this primeval state (for example, by Aristotle and Augustine) taken to have been been understood as a time of chaos. It embraced the opposites of hot and cold, wet and dry, and directed the movement of things, by which there grew up all of the host of shapes and differences which are found in "all the worlds" - of which he believed there were many.

Out of this original flux there sprang a central mass - cylindrical in shape, poised equidistant from surrounding orbs of fire, which had originally clung to it like the bark round a tree, until their continuity was severed, and they parted into several wheel-shaped and fire-filled bubbles of air. This cylindrical mass,was the Earth.

On Earth, life began in the seas. Anaximander considered life, in the form of fish, to have spontaneously arisen in the moisture that originally covered the whole of Earth. Man himself came into being only after a series of transmutations as other kinds of animals. After all, he rightly notes, man with his extended infancy could scarcely have survived. For this, even though Anaximander offers nothing approaching a theory of natural selection, some people consider him to be evolutionary theory's most ancient proponent. Indeed, the theory of an aquatic descent of man was re-conceived centuries later and graced with the name ‘the aquatic ape hypothesis’.

The one surviving fragment of Anaximander was transmitted as a quote by Simplicius and could be translated as:

In saying this, Anaximander seems to express the belief that there is an overarching natural order to the world that ensures balance not only between the four elements of Ancient Greek philosophy, (Fire, Earth (or more precisely ‘Ashes’), Air and, of course, Water) - but much more than that, as Anaximander's Greek peers echoed, there is a ‘paradigm changing’ sentiment here that there may be natural boundaries that not even the Gods can operate beyond.

Was Darwin a 'racist'? Certainly, many racists and not a few genocidal state theorists have found much to support their prejudices in Darwin's work. But here are two quotations ².

Darwin also said:

And he goes on:

Hitler's political philosophy revolves around this unhappy caricature of Darwinism. From such props, he imagines an ideal people, the 'Aryan race' and credits them with an historical mission - to crush and eliminate the inferior races. This in Nazism, but not (as often erroneously stated) Fascism. (Fascism explicitly attempts to weld different races together to form a modern state.) But the question remains, is this objectionable theory also, really, 'Darwinism'?