>>- Charles Darwin (for discovering probably the most fundamental law
>>governing life.)
>>His work is important. But talk of evolution was already in the
>air. I think the theory was inevitable even without Darwin. You
>might want to give some credit to Linneaus whose classification
>scheme helped to bring out the evidence for evolution.
I didn't want to prolong this thread, but Darwin is not credited with
coming up with the theory of evolution; even his grandfather Erasmus
Darwin published a book about evolution. Darwin is credited with
coming up with a *mechanism* for evolution, namely natural selection.
That theory, too, was probably inevitable, because Alfred Wallace came
up with the same theory independently--some think before Darwin, I
believe.
John Anderson
--
John E Anderson
Department of Natural Sciences
University of North Florida
