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Natura non facit saltus [1] [2] (Latin for "nature does not make jumps") has been an important principle of natural philosophy.It appears as an axiom in the works of Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays, IV, 16: [2] "la nature ne fait jamais des sauts", "nature never makes jumps"), one of the inventors of the infinitesimal calculus (see Law of Continuity).
The mediaeval great chain of being as a staircase, implying the possibility of progress: [1] Ramon Lull's Ladder of Ascent and Descent of the Mind, 1305. Alternatives to Darwinian evolution have been proposed by scholars investigating biology to explain signs of evolution and the relatedness of different groups of living things.
Devolution, de-evolution, or backward evolution (not to be confused with dysgenics) is the notion that species can revert to supposedly more primitive forms over time. The concept relates to the idea that evolution has a divine purpose and is thus progressive (orthogenesis), for example that feet might be better than hooves, or lungs than gills.
The nature–culture divide is the notion of a dichotomy between humans and the environment. [1] It is a theoretical foundation of contemporary anthropology that considers whether nature and culture function separately from one another, or if they are in a continuous biotic relationship with each other.
Ecocentrism (/ ˌ ɛ k oʊ ˈ s ɛ n t r ɪ z əm /; from Greek: οἶκος oikos, 'house' and κέντρον kentron, 'center') is a term used by environmental philosophers and ecologists to denote a nature-centered, as opposed to human-centered (i.e., anthropocentric), system of values.
Objections to evolution have been raised since evolutionary ideas came to prominence in the 19th century. When Charles Darwin published his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, his theory of evolution (the idea that species arose through descent with modification from a single common ancestor in a process driven by natural selection) initially met opposition from scientists with different ...
This view is opposite to the idea of monogenism, which posits a single origin of humanity. Modern scientific views find little merit in any polygenic model due to an increased understanding of speciation in a human context, with the monogenic "Out of Africa" hypothesis and its variants being the most widely accepted models for human origins. [1]
The Pali word for impermanence, anicca, is a compound word consisting of "a" meaning non-, and "nicca" meaning "constant, continuous, permanent". [1] While 'nicca' is the concept of continuity and permanence, 'anicca' refers to its exact opposite; the absence of permanence and continuity.