The impact of evolutionary theory on philosophy

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I think you protest too much Dibble. The story of Jacob and Laban in Genesis clearly shows that there was a basic understanding of genetic selection well before Darwin. It wasn't until around 1800 that the theory of spontaneous generation was generally considered discredited for higher organism. There were ancient Greeks who put forth theories of evolution, such as Anaximander and Empedocles who espoused the mutability of the species.

However, Western philosophy decided to follow Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates, who held the idea of immutable species and it wasn't until the Renaissance that the west began to unshackle itself from Plato.

It is true that Darwin is generally acknowledged as the first to link the concepts of evolution and natural selection and for that he deserves credit, but I think that even if had never lived, the theory of evolution via natural selection would still have been proposed in the mid 19th-century.