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Because evolutionary biology is the default scientific position, it is assumed that "scientists" or "biologists" are "evolutionists" unless specifically noted otherwise. [6] In the creation–evolution controversy , creationists often call those who accept the validity of the modern evolutionary synthesis "evolutionists" and the theory itself ...
Evolutionary thought, the recognition that species change over time and the perceived understanding of how such processes work, has roots in antiquity. With the beginnings of modern biological taxonomy in the late 17th century, two opposed ideas influenced Western biological thinking: essentialism, the belief that every species has essential characteristics that are unalterable, a concept ...
Evolution is the change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. [1] [2] It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, resulting in certain characteristics becoming more or less common within a population over successive generations. [3]
For example, evolutionists like Edward Drinker Cope believed in a combination of theistic evolution, Lamarckism, vitalism, and orthogenesis, [88] represented by the sequence of arrows on the extreme left of the diagram. The various alternatives to Darwinian evolution by natural selection were not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Evolutionists through the mid-20th century predominantly studied animals, and to a lesser degree plants, and the processes they discovered were placed front and center in evolution's overarching ...
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 ...
The timeline of the evolutionary history of life represents the current scientific theory outlining the major events during the development of life on planet Earth.Dates in this article are consensus estimates based on scientific evidence, mainly fossils.
The level of support for evolution among scientists, the public, and other groups is a topic that frequently arises in the creation–evolution controversy, and touches on educational, religious, philosophical, scientific, and political issues.