Greeks
Proposals that one type of animal, even humans, could descend from other types of animals, are known to go back to the first pre-Socratic Greek philosophers. Anaximander of Miletus See more

In the first half of the 17th century, René Descartes' mechanical philosophy encouraged the use of the metaphor of the universe as a … See more

Paleontology and geology
In 1796, Georges Cuvier published his findings on the differences between living elephants and those found in the fossil record. … See more

Population genetics
The Mendelian and biometrician models were eventually reconciled with the development of population genetics. A key step was the work … See more

Islamic philosophy and the struggle for existence
Although Greek and Roman evolutionary ideas died out in Western Europe after the fall of the See more

By the 1850s, whether or not species evolved was a subject of intense debate, with prominent scientists arguing both sides of the issue. The publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species fundamentally transformed the discussion over biological … See more

The middle decades of the 20th century saw the rise of molecular biology, and with it an understanding of the chemical nature of genes as sequences of DNA and of their relationship—through … See more