A Brief History
On August 20, 1858, naturalist Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution, the change of organisms over time through mutation and natural selection, in The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London.
Digging Deeper
While we generally think of Darwin as the man that came up with the idea of “evolution,” there were other scientists at the time that also came to a similar conclusion, including fellow British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, whose work was published at the same time and in the same publication as Darwin’s.
While most serious scientists today accept Darwin’s theory of Evolution Through Natural Selection, a sizeable number of people reject the theory based on a religious belief that all creatures and plants that currently exist have existed in the same form from the beginning, having been made deliberately by God.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Appleman, Phillip. Darwin. W. W. Norton & Company, 2000.
Shapiro, James. Evolution: A View from the 21st Century. Fortified. Cognition Press, 2022.
The featured image in this article, an Italian panel depicting Charles Darwin, created ca. 1890, on display at the Turin Museum of Human Anatomy, is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author’s life plus 70 years or fewer.
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