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Scientists postulate one of the reasons for the rapid selection of this genetic variant is the lethality of the disease in non-immune persons. [ 187 ] [ 188 ] Other reported evolutionary trends in other populations include a lengthening of the reproductive period, reduction in cholesterol levels, blood glucose and blood pressure.
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 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.
Professor of biology Jerry Coyne sums up biological evolution succinctly: [3]. Life on Earth evolved gradually beginning with one primitive species – perhaps a self-replicating molecule – that lived more than 3.5 billion years ago; it then branched out over time, throwing off many new and diverse species; and the mechanism for most (but not all) of evolutionary change is natural selection.
Thomas Henry Huxley warned Darwin that he had taken on "an unnecessary difficulty in adopting Natura non facit saltum ["Nature does not take leaps"] so unreservedly." [ 9 ] Huxley feared this assumption could discourage naturalists ( catastrophists ) who believed that major leaps and cataclysms played a significant role in the history of life.
In On Being the Right Size, he wrote that "while nationalization of certain industries is an obvious possibility in the largest of states, I find it no easier to picture a completely socialized British Empire or United States than an elephant turning somersaults or a hippopotamus jumping a hedge".
Merton believed that it is multiple discoveries, rather than unique ones, that represent the common pattern in science. [4] Merton contrasted a "multiple" with a "singleton"—a discovery that has been made uniquely by a single scientist or group of scientists working together. [5] The distinction may blur as science becomes increasingly ...
This theory, Lamarckism, was an influence on the Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko's ill-fated antagonism to mainstream genetic theory as late as the mid-20th century. [ 15 ] Between 1835 and 1837, the zoologist Edward Blyth worked on the area of variation, artificial selection, and how a similar process occurs in nature.