Among the natural scientists there was a tendency towards explanations in the sense of the mechanistic philosophy of René Descartes and the empiricism of Francis Bacon.Īfter the riots during the English Civil War, members of the Royal Society sought to demonstrate that science did not pose a threat to the Church and political stability. The Protestant Reformation promoted a literal interpretation of the Bible, also in relation to the creation of the world. Nature was regarded as unstable and moody, marked by the existence of monstrous mixed beings and the spontaneous production of organisms. The Christian Church Fathers and medieval scholars tended to interpret the biblical story of creation allegorically, not literally, describing the mythological and heraldic significance of organisms and comparing their shape. In later editions of seminal book, Darwin traced evolutionary ideas back to Aristotle quoting a text by Aristotle summarizing the ideas of Empedocles. – Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (1859) Evolution before Darwin “And thus, the forms of life throughout the universe become divided into groups subordinate to groups.” On November 24, 1859, famous biologist and founder of the science of evolution Charles Darwin published his seminal treaty ‘ On the Origin of Species‘, which is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology.

Huxley’s illustration showing that humans and apes had the same basic skeletal structure

On the origin of species