The origin of evolution. The idea of ​​natural selection before and after Darwin. Gribbin D.

The theory of evolution through natural selection has not occurred from anything and immediately in the final form in the head of Charles Darwin. The idea of ​​evolution in various versions spoke out from antiquity, and even the process of natural selection, the key contribution of Darwin to the explanation of the origin of the species, was vaguely guessed by several predecessors and contemporaries of the great British. One of these contemporaries, Alfred Russell Wallace, saw him no less clearly than Darwin himself. Since then, work on understanding the mechanisms of evolution also has not stopped for a minute - many generations of geneticists and molecular biologists took care of this.

none of this in no way deteriorates the merits of Darwin himself in explaining how evolution affects individual individuals and entire types. For the first time having familiarized himself with this theory, the Bulldog Darwin himself exclaimed Thomas Henry Huxley: “How stupid it was not to think of it!” But everyone’s back mind is strong, and to become the first to clearly formulate a thought that is lying on the surface, a very difficult task on the surface. Another achievement of Darwin is that, unlike the same Wallace, he managed to present the theory of evolution in a form available for understanding ordinary mortals. He undoubtedly deserves his glory of the discoverer of evolution through natural selection, but we hope that after reading this book, you will agree that his contribution is only a link of a long chain, which goes one end to gray -haired antiquity and continues to go in our time.