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Chapter 1
PIONEERS OF EVOLUTIONARY
THOUGHT
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Aristotle
Aristotle was born in 381 B.C., the son of the court physician of the king
of Macedon, and at the age of seventeen he went to Athens to study. He
joined Plato’s Academy and worked there for twenty years until Plato died.
Aristotle then left the Academy, saying that he disapproved of the emphasis
on mathematics and theory and the decline of natural science. After serving
as tutor for Alexander of Macedon, he founded a school of his own called
the Lyceum. At the Lyceum, he built up a collection of manuscripts which
resembled the library of a modern university.
Aristotle was a very great organizer of knowledge, and his writings al-
most form a one-man encyclopedia. His best work was in biology, where
he studied and classified more than five hundred animal species, many of
which he also dissected. In Aristotle’s classification of living things, he
shows an awareness of the interrelatedness of species. This interrelatedness
was much later used by Darwin as evidence for the theory of evolution.
One cannot really say that Aristotle developed a theory of evolution, but
he was groping towards the idea. In his history of animals, he writes:
“Nature proceeds little by little from lifeless things to animal life, so
that it is impossible to determine either the exact line of demarcation, or–
on which side of the line an intermediate form should lie. Thus, next after
lifeless things in the upward scale comes the plant. Of plants, one will differ
from another as to its apparent amount of vitality. In a word, the whole
plant kingdom, whilst devoid of life as compared with the animal, is yet
endowed with life as compared with other corporeal entities. Indeed, there
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is observed in plants a continuous scale of ascent towards the animal”.

Aristotle’s classification of living things, starting at the bottom of the
scale and going upward, is as follows: Inanimate matter, lower plants and
1
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2 INFORMATION THEORY AND EVOLUTION
sponges, higher plants, jellyfish, zoophytes and ascidians, molluscs, insects,

jointed shellfish, octopuses and squids, fish and reptiles, whales, land mam-
mals and man. The acuteness of Aristotle’s observation and analysis can
be seen from the fact that he classified whales and dolphins as mammals
(where they belong) rather than as fish (where they superficially seem to
belong, and where many ancient writers placed them).
Among Aristotle’s biological writings, there appears a statement that
clearly foreshadows the principle of natural selection, later independently
discovered by Darwin and Wallace and fully developed by Darwin. Aristo-
tle wrote: “Wheresoever, therefore... all parts of one whole happened like
as if they were made for something, these were preserved, having been ap-
propriately constituted by an internal spontaneity; and wheresoever things
were not thus constituted, they perished, and still perish”.
One of Aristotle’s important biological studies was his embryological
investigation of the developing chick. Ever since his time, the chick has
been the classical object for embryological studies. He also studied the
four-chambered stomach of the ruminants and the detailed anatomy of the
mammalian reproductive system. He used diagrams to illustrate complex
anatomical relationships — an important innovation in teaching technique.
Averröes
During the Middle Ages, Aristotle’s evolutionary ideas were revived and
extended in the writings of the Islamic philosopher Averröes1 , who lived
in Spain from 1126 to 1198. His writings had a great influence on western
thought. Averroes shocked both his Moslem and his Christian readers by his
thoughtful commentaries on the works of Aristotle, in which he maintained
that the world was not created at a definite instant, but that it instead
evolved over a long period of time, and is still evolving.
Like Aristotle, Averröes seems to have been groping towards the ideas
of evolution which were later developed in geology by Lyell and in biology
by Darwin and Wallace. Much of the scholastic philosophy written at the
University of Paris during the 13th century was aimed at refuting the doc-
trines of Averroes; but nevertheless, his ideas survived and helped to shape
the modern picture of the world.
1 Abul Walid Mahommed Ibn Achmed, Ibn Mahommed Ibn Rosched.
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PIONEERS OF EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT 3
The mystery of fossils

During the lifetime of Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) the existence of fossil
shells in the rocks of high mountain ranges was recognized and discussed.
“...the shells in Lombardy are at four levels”, Leonardo wrote, “and thus it
is everywhere, having been made at various times... The stratified stones
of the mountains are all layers of clay, deposited one above the other by the
various floods of the rivers”. Leonardo had no patience with the explanation
given by some of his contemporaries, that the shells had been carried to
mountain tops by the deluge described in the Bible. “If the shells had been
carried by the muddy waters of the deluge”, he wrote, “they would have
been mixed up, and separated from each other amidst the mud, and not in
regular steps and layers”. Nor did Leonardo agree with the opinion that
the shells somehow grew within the rocks: “Such an opinion cannot exist
in a brain of much reason”, he wrote, “because here are the years of their
growth, numbered on their shells, and there are large and small ones to
be seen, which could not have grown without food, and could not have fed
without motion...and here they could not move”.
Leonardo believed that the fossil shells were once part of living organ-
isms, that they were buried in strata under water, and much later lifted to
the tops of mountains by geological upheavals. However his acute obser-
vations had little influence on the opinions of his contemporaries because
they appear among the 4000 or so pages of notes which he wrote for himself
but never published.
It was left to the Danish scientist Niels Stensen (1638–1686) (usually
known by his Latinized name, Steno) to independently rediscover and pop-
ularize the correct interpretation of fossils and of rock strata. Steno, who
had studied medicine at the University of Leiden, was working in Florence,
where his anatomical studies attracted the attention of the Grand Duke
of Tuscany, Ferdenand II. When an enormous shark was caught by local
fishermen, the Duke ordered that its head be brought to Steno for dissec-
tion. The Danish anatomist was struck by shape of the shark’s teeth, which
reminded him of certain curiously shaped stones called glossopetrae that
were sometimes found embedded in larger rocks. Steno concluded that the
similarity of form was not just a coincidence, and that the glossopetrae
were in fact the teeth of once-living sharks which had become embedded in
the muddy sediments at the bottom of the sea and gradually changed to
stone. Steno used the corpuscular theory of matter, a forerunner of atomic
theory, to explain how the composition of the fossils could have changed
while their form remained constant. Steno also formulated a law of strata,
which states that in the deposition of layers of sediment, later converted to
rock, the oldest layers are at the bottom.
In England, the brilliant and versatile experimental scientist Robert
Hooke (1635–1703) added to Steno’s correct interpretation of fossils by
noticing that some fossil species are not represented by any living counter-
parts. He concluded that “there have been many other Species of Creatures
in former Ages, of which we can find none at present; and that ’tis not un-
likely also but that there may be divers new kinds now, which have not
been from the beginning”.
Similar observations were made by the French naturalist, Georges-Louis
Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707–1788), who wrote: “We have monuments
taken from the bosom of the Earth, especially from the bottom of coal and
slate mines, that demonstrate to us that some of the fish and plants that
these materials contain do not belong to species currently existing”. Buf-
fon’s position as keeper of the Jardin du Roi, the French botanical gardens,
allowed him time for writing, and while holding this post he produced a
44-volume encyclopedia of natural history. In this enormous, clearly writ-
ten, and popular work, Buffon challenged the theological doctrines which
maintained that all species were created independently, simultaneously and
miraculously, 6000 years ago. As evidence that species change, Buffon
pointed to vestigial organs, such as the lateral toes of the pig, which may
have had a use for the ancestors of the pig. He thought that the donkey
might be a degenerate relative of the horse. Buffon believed the earth to
be much older than the 6000 years allowed by the Bible, but his estimate,
75,000 years, greatly underestimated the true age of the earth.
The great Scottish geologist James Hutton (1726–1797) had a far more
realistic picture of the true age of the earth. Hutton observed that some
rocks seemed to have been produced by the compression of sediments laid
down under water, while other rocks appeared to have hardened after pre-
vious melting. Thus he classified rocks as being either igneous or else sed-
imentary. He believed the features of the earth to have been produced by
the slow action of wind, rain, earthquakes and other forces which can be
observed today, and that these forces never acted with greater speed than
they do now. This implied that the earth must be immensely old, and
Hutton thought its age to be almost infinite. He believed that the forces
which turned sea beds into mountain ranges drew their energy from the
heat of the earth’s molten core. Together with Steno, Hutton is considered
to be one of the fathers of modern geology. His uniformitarian principles,
and his belief in the great age of the earth were later given wide circulation
by Charles Darwin’s friend and mentor, Sir Charles Lyell (1797–1875), and
they paved the way for Darwin’s application of uniformitarianism to biol-
ogy. At the time of his death, Hutton was working on a theory of biological
evolution through natural selection, but his manuscripts on this subject
remained unknown until 1946.
Condorcet
Further contributions to the idea of evolution were made by the French
mathematician and social philosopher Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Caritat,
Marquis de Condorcet, who was born in 1743. In 1765, when he was barely
22 years old, Condorcet presented an Essay on the Integral Calculus to
the Academy of Sciences in Paris. The year 1785 saw the publication of
Condorcet’s highly original mathematical work, Essai sur l’application de
l’analyse à la probabilité des decisions rendues à la pluralité des voix2 , in
which he pioneered the application of the theory of probability to the so-
cial sciences. A later, much enlarged, edition of this book extended the
applications to games of chance.
Condorcet had also been occupied, since early childhood, with the idea
of human perfectibility. He was convinced that the primary duty of every
person is to contribute as much as possible to the development of mankind,
and that by making such a contribution, one can also achieve the great-
est possible personal happiness. When the French Revolution broke out in
1789, he saw it as an unprecedented opportunity to do his part in the cause
of progress; and he entered the arena wholeheartedly, eventually becom-
ing President of the Legislative Assembly, and one of the chief authors of
the proclamation which declared France to be a republic. Unfortunately,
Condorcet became a bitter enemy of the powerful revolutionary politician,
Robespierre, and he was forced to go into hiding.
Although Robespierre’s agents had been unable to arrest him, Con-
dorcet was sentenced to the guillotine in absentia. He knew that in all
probability he had only a few weeks or months to live; and he began to
write his last thoughts, racing against time. Condorcet returned to a project
which he had begun in 1772, a history of the progress of human culture,
stretching from the remote past to the distant future. Guessing that he
would not have time to complete the full-scale work he had once planned,
2Essay on the Application of Analysis to the Probability of Decisions Taken According
to a Plurality of Votes.
he began a sketch or outline: Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès

de l’esprit humain3 .
In his Esquisse, Condorcet enthusiastically endorsed the idea of infinite
human perfectibility which was current among the philosophers of the 18th
century; and he anticipated many of the evolutionary ideas which Charles
Darwin later put forward. He compared humans with animals, and found
many common traits. According to Condorcet, animals are able to think,
and even to think rationally, although their thoughts are extremely simple
compared with those of humans. Condorcet believed that humans his-
torically began their existence on the same level as animals and gradually
developed to their present state. Since this evolution took place historically,
he reasoned, it is probable, or even inevitable, that a similar evolution in
the future will bring mankind to a level of physical, mental and moral de-
velopment which will be as superior to our own present state as we are now
superior to animals.
At the beginning of his manuscript, Condorcet stated his belief “that
nature has set no bounds on the improvement of human facilities; that the
perfectibility of man is really indefinite; and that its progress is henceforth
independent of any power to arrest it, and has no limit except the duration
of the globe upon which nature has placed us”. He stated also that “the
moral goodness of man is a necessary result of his organism; and it is, like
all his other facilities, capable of indefinite improvement”.
like the other scientists and philosophers of his period, Condorcet ac-
cepted the Newtonian idea of an orderly cosmos ruled by natural laws to
which there are no exceptions. He asserted that the same natural laws must
govern human evolution, since humans are also part of nature. Again and
again, Condorcet stressed the fundamental similarity between humans and
animals; and he regarded all living things as belonging to the same great
family. (It is perhaps this insight which made Condorcet so sensitive to
the feelings of animals that he even avoided killing insects.) To explain the
present differences between humans and animals, Condorcet maintained,
we need only imagine gradual changes, continuing over an extremely long
period of time. These long-continued small changes have very slowly im-
proved human mental abilities and social organization, so that now, at the
end of an immense interval of time, large differences have appeared between
ourselves and lower forms of life.
Condorcet regarded the family as the original social unit; and in Es-
3 Sketch of an Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Spirit
quisse he called attention to the unusually long period of dependency which

characterizes the growth and education of human offspring. This prolonged
childhood is unique among living beings. It is needed for the high level of
mental development of the human species; but it requires a stable family
structure to protect the young during their long upbringing. Thus, ac-
cording to Condorcet, biological evolution brought into existence a moral
precept, the sanctity of the family.
Similarly, Condorcet wrote, larger associations of humans would have
been impossible without some degree of altruism and sensitivity to the suf-
fering of others incorporated into human behavior, either as instincts or as
moral precepts or both; and thus the evolution of organized society entailed
the development of sensibility and morality. Unlike Rousseau, Condorcet
did not regard humans in organized civilizations as degraded and corrupt
compared to “natural” man; instead he saw civilized humans as more de-
veloped than their primitive ancestors.
Believing that ignorance and error are responsible for vice, Condorcet
discussed what he believed to be the main mistakes of civilization. Among
these he named hereditary transmission of power, inequality between men
and women, religious bigotry, disease, war, slavery, economic inequality,
and the division of humanity into mutually exclusive linguistic groups. Re-
garding disease, Condorcet predicted that the progress of medical science
would ultimately abolish it. Also, he maintained that since perfectibility
(i.e. evolution) operates throughout the biological world, there is no reason
why mankind’s physical structure might not gradually improve, with the
result that human life in the remote future could be greatly prolonged.
Condorcet believed that the intellectual and moral facilities of man are
capable of continuous and steady improvement; and he thought that one
of the most important results of this improvement would be the abolition
of war. As humans become enlightened in the future (he believed) they
will recognize war as an atrocious and unnecessary cause of suffering; and
as popular governments replace hereditary ones, wars fought for dynas-
tic reasons will disappear. Next to vanish will be wars fought because of
conflicting commercial interests. Finally, the introduction of a universal
language throughout the world and the construction of perpetual confeder-
ations between nations will eliminate, Condorcet predicted, wars based on
ethnic rivalries.
With better laws, social and financial inequalities would tend to become
leveled. To make the social conditions of the working class more equal to
those of the wealthy, Condorcet advocated a system of insurance (either
private or governmental) where the savings of workers would be used to

provide pensions and to care for widows and orphans. Also, since social in-
equality is related to inequality of education, Condorcet advocated a system
of universal public education supported by the state.
At the end of his Esquisse, Condorcet wrote that any person who has
contributed to the best of his ability to the progress of mankind becomes
immune to personal disaster and suffering. He knows that human progress
is inevitable, and can take comfort and courage from his inner picture
of the epic march of mankind, through history, towards a better future.
Eventually Condorcet’s hiding-place was discovered. He fled in disguise,
but was arrested after a few days; and he died soon afterwards in his prison
cell. After Condorcet’s death the currents of revolutionary politics shifted
direction. Robespierre, the leader of the Terror, was himself soon arrested.
The execution of Robespierre took place on July 25, 1794, only a few months
after the death of Condorcet.
Condorcet’s Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit h
main was published posthumously in 1795. In the post-Thermidor recon-
struction, the Convention voted funds to have it printed in a large edition
and distributed throughout France, thus adopting the Esquisse as its official
manifesto. This small but prophetic book is the one for which Condorcet is
now chiefly remembered. It was destined to establish the form in which the
eighteenth-century idea of progress was incorporated into Western thought,
and it provoked Robert Malthus to write An Essay on the Principle of Pop-
ulation. Condorcet’s ideas are important because he considered the genetic
evolution of plants and animals and human cultural evolution to be two
parts of a single process.
Linnaeus
Meanwhile, during the 17th and 18th centuries, naturalists had been gath-
ering information on thousands of species of plants and animals. This
huge, undigested heap of information was put into some order by the great
Swedish naturalist, Carl von Linné (1707–1778), who is usually called by
his Latin name, Carolus Linnaeus.
Linnaeus was the son of a Swedish pastor. Even as a young boy, he was
fond of botany, and after medical studies at Lund, he became a lecturer
in botany at the University of Uppsala, near Stockholm. In 1732, the 25-
year-old Linnaeus was asked by his university to visit Lapland to study the
plants in that remote northern region of Sweden.
Linnaeus travelled four thousand six hundred miles in Lapland, and he

discovered more than a hundred new plant species. In 1735, he published
his famous book, Systema Naturae, in which he introduced a method for
the classification of all living things.
Linnaeus not only arranged closely related species into genera, but he
also grouped related genera into classes, and related classes into orders.
(Later the French naturalist Cuvier (1769–1832) extended this system by
grouping related orders into phyla.) Linnaeus introduced the binomial
nomenclature, still used today, in which each plant or animal is given a
name whose second part denotes the species while the first part denotes
the genus.
Although he started a line of study which led inevitably to the theory
of evolution, Linnaeus himself believed that species are immutable. He
adhered to the then-conventional view that each species had been indepen-
dently and miraculously created six thousand years ago, as described in the
Book of Genesis.
Linnaeus did not attempt to explain why the different species within a
genus resemble each other, nor why certain genera are related and can be
grouped into classes, etc. It was not until a century later that these resem-
blances were understood as true family likenesses, so that the resemblance
between a cat and a lion came to be understood in terms of their descent
from a common ancestor4 .
Erasmus Darwin
Among the ardent admirers of Linnaeus was the brilliant physician-poet,
Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802), who was considered by Coleridge to have
“...a greater range of knowledge than any other man in Europe”. He was
also the best English physician of his time, and George III wished to have
him as his personal doctor. However, Darwin preferred to live in the north
of England rather than in London, and he refused the position.
In 1789, Erasmus Darwin published a book called The Botanic Garden
or The Loves of the Plants. It was a book of botany written in verse, and
in the preface Darwin stated that his purpose was “...to inlist imagination
under the banner of science...” and to call the reader’s attention to ”the
4Linnaeus was to Darwin what Kepler was to Newton. Kepler accurately described
the motions of the solar system, but it remained for Newton to explain the underlying
dynamical mechanism. Similarly, Linnaeus set forth a descriptive “family tree” of living
things, but Darwin discovered the dynamic mechanism that underlies the observations.
immortal works of the celebrated Swedish naturalist, Linnaeus”. This book

was immensely popular at the time when it was written, but it was later
satirized by Pitt’s Foreign Minister, Canning, whose book The Loves of the
Triangles ridiculed Darwin’s poetic style.
In 1796, Erasmus Darwin published another book, entitled Zoonomia,
in which he proposed a theory of evolution similar to that which his grand-
son, Charles Darwin, was later to make famous. “...When we think over
the great changes introduced into various animals”, Darwin wrote, “as in
horses, which we have exercised for different purposes of strength and swift-
ness, carrying burthens or in running races; or in dogs, which have been
cultivated for strength and courage, as the bull-dog; or for acuteness of
his sense of smell, as in the hound and spaniel; or for the swiftness of his
feet, as the greyhound; or for his swimming in the water, or for drawing
snow-sledges, as the rough-haired dogs of the north... and add to these the
great change of shape and color which we daily see produced in smaller
animals from our domestication of them, as rabbits or pigeons;... when we
revolve in our minds the great similarity of structure which obtains in all
the warm-blooded animals, as well as quadrupeds, birds and amphibious
animals, as in mankind, from the mouse and the bat to the elephant and
whale; we are led to conclude that they have alike been produced from a
similar living filament.”
“Would it be too bold”, Erasmus Darwin asked, “to imagine that in
the great length of time since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of
ages before the commencement of the history of mankind — would it be to
bold to imagine that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living
filament?”
Lamarck
In France, Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck
(1744–1829), contributed importantly to the development of evolutionary
ideas. After a period in the French army, from which he was forced to
retire because of illness, Lamarck became botanist to the king, and later
Professor of Invertebrate Zoology at the Museum of Natural History in
Paris. Lamarck deserves to be called the father of invertebrate zoology.
Linnaeus had exhausted his energy on the vertebrates, and he had left the
invertebrates in disorder. Their classification is largely due to Lamarck:
He differentiated the eight-legged arachnids, such as spiders and scorpions,
from six-legged insects; he established the category of crustaceans for crabs,
lobsters etc.; and he introduced the category of echinoderms for starfish,

sea-urchins etc. Between 1785 and 1822, Lamarck published seven huge
volumes of a treatise entitled Natural History of Invertebrates. However, it
is for his book Zoological Philosophy, published in 1809, that the Chevalier
de Lamarck is chiefly remembered today.
In his Zoological Philosophy, Lamarck stated his belief that the species
within a genus owe their similarity to descent from a common ancestor.
He was the first prominent biologist since the age of Aristotle to believe
that species are not immutable but that they have changed during the long
history of the earth.
Although Lamarck deserves much credit as a pioneer of evolutionary
thought, he was seriously wrong about the mechanism of change. For ex-
ample, Lamarck believed that the long neck of the giraffe evolved because
each giraffe stretched its neck slightly in an effort to reach the leaves on
high trees. He believed that these slightly-stretched necks could be inher-
ited, and thus, in this way, over many generations, the necks of giraffes
had grown longer and longer. Although Lamarck was right in his general
picture of evolution, he was mistaken in the detailed mechanism which he
proposed, since later experiments proved conclusively that, in general, ac-
quired characteristics cannot be inherited. (One must say “in general”,
because in the case of symbiosis and genetic fusion, acquired characteris-
tics are inherited. Plasmids containing genetic material are also frequently
exchanged between bacteria. Furthermore, in human cultural evolution,
innovations can be passed on to future generations. We will discuss these
Lamarckian mechanisms of evolution in later chapters.)
The debates between Cuvier and Geoffroy St. Hilaire

In 1830, a year after the death of Lamarck, a famous series of debates took
place between Georges Leopold Dagobert, Baron Cuvier (1769–1832) and
Etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire (1772–1844). The two men, both professors at
the Musee National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, were close friends and sci-
entific collaborators. However, they differed in their opinions, especially on
the question of whether the form of an animal’s parts led to their function,
or whether the reverse was true. Cuvier almost singlehandedly founded
the discipline of vertebrate paleontology, and he firmly established the fact
that extinctions have taken place. However, he did not believe in evolution.
In 1828, Cuvier wrote: “If there are resemblances between the organs of
fishes and those of other vertebrate classes, it is only insofar as there are
resemblances between their functions”. In other words, function produces

form. Cuvier denied that similarity of form implied descent from a common
ancestor.
St. Hilaire, on the other hand, considered all vertebrates to be modifi-
cations of a single archetype. He maintained that similar vestigial organs
and similarities in embryonic development implied descent from a common
ancestor. He was especially interested in homologies, that is, cases where
similar structures in two different organisms are used for two different pur-
poses. In 1829, St. Hilaire wrote: “Animals have no habits but those that
result from the structure of their organs: if the latter varies, there vary in
the same manner all their springs of action, all their facilities, and all their
actions”.
The opposing viewpoints of the two men led to a famous series of eight
public debates, which took place from February to April, 1830. Although
Cuvier was thought by most observers to have won the debates, St. Hi-
laire’s belief in evolution continued, as did the friendship between the two
naturalists. In 1832 St. Hilaire partially anticipated Darwin’s theory of
evolution through natural selection: “The external world is all-powerful in
alteration of the form of organized bodies...”, he wrote, “These [modifica-
tions] are inherited, and they influence all the rest of the organization of
the animal, because if these modifications lead to injurious effects, the an-
imals which exhibit them perish and are replaced by others of a somewhat
different form, a form changed so as to be adapted to the new environment”.
Suggestions for further reading

(1) P.J. Bowler, Evolution: The History of an Idea, University of California
Press, (1989).
(2) D.J. Putuyma, Evolutionary Biology, Sinauer Associates, Sunderland
Mass., (1986).
(3) B. Glass, 0. Temkin, and W.L. Strauss, eds., Forerunners of Darwin:
1745-1859, Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, (1959).
(4) R. Milner, The Encyclopedia of Evolution, an Owl Book, Henry Holt
and Company, New York, (1990).
(5) T.A. Appel, The Cuvier-Geoffroy Debate: French Biology in the
Decades before Darwin, Oxford University Press, (1987).
(6) P.J. Bowler, Fossils and Progress: Paleontology and the Idea of Progres-
sive Evolution in the Nineteenth Century, Science History Publications,
New York, (1976).
(7) H. Torrens, Presidential Address: Mary Anning (1799-1847) of Lyme;

’the greatest fossilist the world ever knew’, British Journal of the History
of Science, 28, 257-284, (1995).
(8) P. Corsi, The Age of Lamarck: Evolutionary Theories in France, 1790-
1834, University of California Press, Berkeley, (1988).
(9) C.C. Gillispie, Genesis and Geology: A Study in the Relations of Sci-
entific Thought, Natural Theology and Social Opinion in Great Britain,
1790-1850, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass., (1951).
(10) M. McNeil, Under the Banner of Science: Erasmus Darwin and his
Age, Manchester University Press, Manchester, (1987).
(11) L.G. Wilson, Sir Charles Lyell’s Scientific Journals on the Species
Question, Yale University Press, New Haven, (1970).
(12) M. ’Espinasse, Robert Hooke, 2nd ed., U. of California Press, (1962).
(13) M.J.S. Rudwick, The Meaning of Fossils: Episodes in the History of
Paleontology, 2nd ed., University of Chicago Press, (1985).
(14) A.B. Adams, Eternal Quest: The Story of the Great Naturalists, G.P.
Putnam’s Sons, New York, (1969).
(15) A.S. Packard, Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution: His Life and Work,
Longmans, Green, and Co., New York, (1901).
(16) C. Darwin, An historical sketch of the progress of opinion on the Origin
of Species, previously to the publication of this work, Appended to third
and later editions of On the Origin of Species, (1861).
(17) L. Eiseley, Darwin’s Century: Evolution and the Men who Discovered
It, Doubleday, New York, (1958).
(18) H.F. Osborne, From the Greeks to Darwin: The Development of the
Evolution Idea Through Twenty-Four Centuries, Charles Scribner and
Sons, New York, (1929).
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March 8, 2012 7:54 World Scientific Book - 9in x 6in neweda

is observed in plants a continuous scale of ascent towards the animal”.

2 INFORMATION THEORY AND EVOLUTION

sponges, higher plants, jellyfish, zoophytes and ascidians, molluscs, insects,

1 Abul Walid Mahommed Ibn Achmed, Ibn Mahommed Ibn Rosched.

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT 3

The mystery of fossils

4 INFORMATION THEORY AND EVOLUTION

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT 5

6 INFORMATION THEORY AND EVOLUTION

he began a sketch or outline: Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès

3 Sketch of an Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Spirit

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT 7

quisse he called attention to the unusually long period of dependency which

8 INFORMATION THEORY AND EVOLUTION

private or governmental) where the savings of workers would be used to

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT 9

Linnaeus travelled four thousand six hundred miles in Lapland, and he

10 INFORMATION THEORY AND EVOLUTION

immortal works of the celebrated Swedish naturalist, Linnaeus”. This book

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT 11

lobsters etc.; and he introduced the category of echinoderms for starfish,

The debates between Cuvier and Geoffroy St. Hilaire

12 INFORMATION THEORY AND EVOLUTION

resemblances between their functions”. In other words, function produces

Suggestions for further reading

PIONEERS OF EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT 13

(7) H. Torrens, Presidential Address: Mary Anning (1799-1847) of Lyme;

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