Talk:Orthogenesis/Archive 1

Archive 1

Untitled

Couldn't Prigogine's Thermodynamics offer a mechanism for Orthogenesis? A subtle force pushing systems toward greater entropy production which has culminated in the massive energy flow rate of the human brain?

about the comparison

I think it have a few errors. I´ll make a different version here, the main differences are bold:

Comparison of different theories of evolution

	Darwinism	Orthogenesis	Lamarckism
Mechanism	Short-sighted Natural Selection sorting variation. Selected traits are adaptive, i.e. have some survival value. At first, inheritance of acquired characteristics was accepted as a source of variation, but that was later replaced by mendelian genetics.'	Intrinsic drive towards perfection; natural selection unimportant. Characters produced may be totally non-adaptive, i.e. have no survival value.	Intrinsic drive towards perfection and inheritance of acquired characteristics.
Common descent	Yes, new species coming into existence by speciation events.	No, speciation rejected or considered unimportant in long term trends; spontaneous generation of new species resulting in parallel evolution.	Depends upon source quoted. Signs that species shared a common ancestor were detected before Darwin, but in absence of a mechanism some still rejected the idea.
Status	Prevailing in modified form as modern synthesis.	Nearly totally abandoned, in favour of natural selection.	Declined after the Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, though the inheritance mechanism was not replaced until the mendelian genetics. With the Modern Synthesis was established that epigenetic inheritance has no great importance on evolution.

Summarizing what I´ve changed here:

• As Darwin accepted the idea of pangenesis, ie, his own theory of inheritance of acquired traits, variation under natural selection was not necessarily random, as previously stated. I also think that the term "genetic" came later, or at least, the term now has much more association with the current meaning;
• removed that inheritance of acquired traits was a "Lamarckian principle", I think it was widelly accepted, but not first proposed by Lamarck, although generally associated with him nowadays
• What prevails today is not neo darwinism, but the modern synthesis. The latter acknowledges drift, natural selection and etc, while neo darwinism accepted only natural selection as relevant and denied everything else.

And maybe one or other thing that may not need a more exetense explanation... --Extremophile 06:37, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

[Resolved - I made the change to the relevant section on 6/25/11] I'm not an expert, but the 'Mechanism' box for orthogenesis appears to contain the conflated definition discussed in the second paragraph of the main article. --Panaceus 11:58, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I made the change to modern evolutionary synthesis since there is not doubt that the creator of the table should have used it.

Nick Beeson (talk) 19:01, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

The problem Panaceus pointed out still exists in the table: the earlier text in the article makes it clear that orthogenesis does not imply a continuous drive toward perfection, only in a particular direction. Many citations of apparent orthogenesis are for changes that are seriously maladaptive and therefore contrary to the principles of natural selection. Gordon Rattray Taylor, in "The Great Evolution Mystery," gives examples on Pp. 27-29. Flagmichael (talk) 17:09, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

I am removing the table because it is unsourced. It is complete original research. For example proponents of orthogenesis did not reject common descent, natural selection or speciation. There is no Intrinsic drive towards perfection in orthogenesis or Lamarckism (though that idea was held by some). Your definition of Darwinism and Lamarckism is wrong and unsourced. A little angry (talk) 22:27, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Bad philosophy

"The refutation of orthogenesis had some ramifications in the field of philosophy, as it refuted the idea of teleology as first postulated by Aristotle "

No, it didn't. A lot of people believe it did, but this is simply due to the fact that practically nobody learns philosophy anymore. The question of teleology isn't really accessible by the natural sciences. What people really mean when they say 'evolution isn't teleological' is more like 'you can't derive humans' (or any other species) 'a priori from the principles of mutation, selection etc.' Which is true, but doesn't actually rule out teleology.

Simon Conway Morris, for example, holds something close to a teleological view of evolution (with an emphasis on convergent evolution, and he's done some good work in paleontology -- it's not incompatible with the current state of the science. [Special:Contributions/165.91.166.57|165.91.166.57]] (talk) 00:57, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Very Good.88.230.205.113 (talk) 16:52, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Evolutionary of Lamarckism.88.232.151.90 (talk) 15:19, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Yea, the idea that if the evolutionary process has internal forces which influences its direction, it necessarily must follow an undeviated progression is a remarkably bad understanding of the concept. An analogy would be to say a person's life has a fate, which is moved towards because the person lives in a social and ecological context, and his personality interacts with his context in a certain way. That doesn't mean he progresses in a linear fashion towards his fate, it just means the forces in his life will eventually get him there. One can compare the idea that evolution progresses to the idea that a person's understanding of things progresses or society progresses. It would never do so infallibly or interminably, but there's an arc -- and conflict and other nonlinear developments may be part of the process. Brianshapiro (talk) 18:23, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Additions

I just added Ken Wilber in the list of proponents of Orthogenesis. He doesn't openly describe his position as orthogenetic, but it is in nature. I think it is relevant to add him in the list as his thought and his Integral Theory are a contemporary influential force in philosophy, psychology and many other fields. --HeronBlue (talk) 21:07, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Also, I see that my previous edit (did as an external user) was deleted along with a comment here in the talk section by Chiswick Chap. While I might understand why my contribution was deleted, I can't help but finding the deletion of my comment in the talk section as a move that lacks transparency. The elimination was justified as "bad philosophy", but this isn't a question of whether the philosophy is "bad" or "good", Ken Wilber is a relevant modern philosopher that has written far-reaching books in terms of sales and academic feedback. I can't see a reason why Bergson and Tehilard De Chardin can stay but KW must be left out. After all, orthogenesis is already listed as an obsolete and unprovable theory, so the "bad philosophy" reason makes even less sense. If the community finds that the contribution must be deleted so be it. Otherwise, it's a perfectly fine contribution on every aspect, unless you share a reason here in the talk section without deleting either my contribution or my comment here. --HeronBlue (talk) 22:36, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

No, I didn't call it anything, good or bad. I stated that it was uncited. You have added a lengthy text out of keeping with anything else in the table - I shall copy-edit it - and you have provided a reference to a quotation from Wilber himself, plainly not an independent source, let alone a reliable one. At issue is whether his theories, which are very complicated, judging by the elaborate table in the article about him, are considered orthogenesis by reliable independent sources and have any relevance to the history of evolutionary thought. His interest seems to be purely "spiritualistic", as Simpson said of some other thinkers masquerading as biological theorists. I guess there's a good chance someone has labelled Wilber as another such. Bergson and Teilhard certainly did influence biology: Julian Huxley was influenced by Teilhard, for example. I'll see if I can find a decent source for W. Chiswick Chap (talk) 05:47, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

I've had a look: there do not appear to be any reliable sources that state that Wilber's theories are orthogenetic. Darwiniana has an interesting list of "non-Darwinian mechanisms" but it's just a blog. Chiswick Chap (talk)

Well, I must have misunderstood what was written in the history. I still find that the deletion of my previous comment wasn't a good edit, it would have been good to write your reply then though. Anyway. Indeed, his arguments aren't strictly biological, but they are meant to of influence accross different disciplines (Integral Theory is described as a meta-theory that wants to influence practically any discipline, even though it's more psychological in nature as the majority of his work treats more humanistic and psychological concepts), biology included, even if it didn't necessarily influence any biologist to research under the influence of his thought yet. He is also a graduate in biophysics and biochemistry (source is from site of the pubblisher), so this might add to his understanding and intepretation of evolution. I think it's important to add him in the orthogenesis list as many of his critics describe him as a proponent of intelligent design, which is deeply incorrect as he isn't against evolutionism in any way, and to say that his arguments are Orthogenetic is a description that fits him best given also his academic background. Regarding the sources, I have tried to find some but I was unsuccesful. I didn't want to link to quotes from his book "a brief history of everything"since he himself admitted that the arguments used there are extremely simplistic and meant for a lay audience. The link I put seemed independent and explanatory enough to give a gist of his thought on the matter. So I'd say that under the "Field" column it's better to insert Integral Theory, and maybe instead of Eros (of which he has a specific definition not found in wikipedia) we might put Holarchy. The wiki page doesn't yet have any of Ken Wilber's contributions to the concept though.--5.88.247.7 (talk) 12:20, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. Since we have both been unable to find reliable sources, the presumption must be that his theories are nothing to do with evolutionary biology and the entry should be deleted unless someone finds trustworthy evidence within a month or so. That would render any discussion of what goes in which column nugatory, but for what it's worth, the field means "scientific field", in principle which branch of biology the scientist was working in, so we could leave it blank. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:22, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

I have found a possible source where Ken Wilber is associated with orthogenesis multiple times. I unfortunately do not own this book: "Science, Paradox, and the Moebius Principle" by Steven M. Rosen. Here we can see some of the paragraphs where orthogenesis and Ken Wilber are associated.--5.88.247.7 --HeronBlue (talk) 12:21, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Text removed from Julian Huxley page might be of value

This paragraph on the Julian Huxley it out of place there and not about him. I've put a copy here as I suspect it might have value. Like much of the Huxley entry, it reads as though it is heavily drawn from an unnamed source, but if so I don't know what.

• The question of evolutionary advancement has quite a history. Of course, pre-Darwin, it was believed without question that Man stood at the head of a pyramid (scala naturae). The matter is not so simple with evolution by natural selection; Darwin's own opinion varied from time to time. In the Origin he wrote "And as natural selection works by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection". This was much too strong; as Sober remarks, there is nothing in the theory of natural selection which demands that selection must produce an increase in complexity or any other measure of advancement. It is merely compatible with the theory that this might happen. Elsewhere Darwin admits that "naturalists have not yet defined to each other's satisfaction what is meant by high and low forms" (p. 336); nor have they now – this is one of the problems. Other evolutionary biologists have had similar thoughts to Huxley: G. Ledyard Stebbins and Bernhard Rensch, for example. The term for progressive evolution is anagenesis, though this does not necessarily include the idea of improvement.
  The objective description of complexity was one of the issues addressed by cybernetics in the 1950s. The idea that advanced machines (including living beings) could exert more control over their environments and operate in a wider range of situations perhaps serves as a basis for making the terms such as 'advanced' amenable to more exact definition. This is a debate that continues today.

For a modern survey of the idea of progress in evolution see Nitecki and Dawkins. Js229 (talk) 18:44, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

References

Enchev's Game of Evolution

How can you deny Orthogenesis once it is a fact and can be simulated?!

"The Enchev's Game of Evolution is the simplest type of simulation that shows how evolution works based on random crossover of the genetic material (random combine the genetic information of two parents to generate new offspring) and natural selection (survival of the fittest)."

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_qroDzIDoZdnI89GSbss3aRrtZhlPwmF/view http://orthogenesis.blog.bg/technology/2019/11/26/enchev-s-game-of-evolution.1684261

Thanks for the thought. Random Variation + Natural Selection can of course be simulated (like that or in other ways), and it can indeed lead to change with an apparent direction (for a while). That is however very different from God-directed evolution towards a preplanned final goal, which is what orthogenesis is about. Therefore, such simulations do not need to be discussed in this article. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:04, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

May be you can show me such simulation?! :-) http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Evolutionary_algorithm "Select the best-fit individuals for reproduction. (Parents)" As you can see, in the other simulations "Natural Selection" is DeFacto selective breeding, not evolution. I give to you simulation which is the closest and simplest analogue of "random variation and natural selection". You do not have to select parents by qualities. They mate randomly. "for a while" - there is no such thing in my simulation:-) It is always progressive. You can kill all virtual developed organisms and they will once again evolve from lower ones and dominate the virtual world. "God-directed" is a phrase that describes very accurately evolution, because it is physical law. It is information that is evolving, not organisms. Organisms are just the tool by which information interacts with matter. I post in several places because I want to spark your interest. This is the example Wolfram Language code of the simulation, you can try to see whether your "for a while" will be confirmed. https://drive.google.com/file/d/13uQTEN3xWJW7KgfeqOJhc8ynEWngAf8r/view 46.10.124.197 (talk) 14:02, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

The simulation is purposefully as simple as possible, do your best to get into it. Then we'll talk again. The problem for many people is that if they do not see something written in a scientific journal or find it too simple, they immediately deny it. I'm Machine Intelligence Researcher, not Biologist. I can vaporize all the criticisms you have about Orthogenesis if you are open minded. It doesn't matter how you call it "God-directed" on not. This phenomenon of progressive evolution exists. At first, I was thinking of making you a more sophisticated simulation program to help evolutionists understand much of their observations, whose logic they do not understand. Judging by your reaction now - good thing I stopped. Step by step for you. 46.10.124.197 (talk) 14:17, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Please take great care not make personal remarks, policy is No Personal Attacks here: it is both rude and irrelevant to the article. I understand what the simulation does in broad terms, including that it is random (as I already agreed); it is not close to being orthogenesis; and actually, if someone did make a computer simulation of divinely-directed orthogenesis, it would be of little or no interest to the article as Original Research, which is also forbidden here. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:39, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

I'm not going to post something on the main page to quote meOriginal Research. I'm posting in talk page, because I think there will be some(if not any) interest. But you "banned" me from posting elsewhere, and now "Devolution" talk page is empty from my presence :-)). And this phenomenon is also real. Appears in my simulation when resources are plentiful and factor "natural selection" ceases to matter, as random variation begins the averaging of the genetic material. I didn't want to offend anyone. 46.10.124.197 (talk) 14:59, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Do your best to understand the phrase: "Life is the only tool of information through which it interacts with matter.". This is what will lead to the birth of Artificial Intelligence next year. [[Special:Contributions

/46.10.124.197|46.10.124.197]] (talk) 15:04, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

It's not about me, and your suggestions are nothing to do with this article; you are also not allowed to use Wikipedia to advertise. Let's close this discussion, there's nothing to say here. Goodbye. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:10, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

No nuance

The article for Teleology covers more or less the same debate, but with far more nuance than this one. It is not an open and shut case, as this article would imply. Environmental conditions of a given habitat DO point toward the likelihood of the evolution of particularly optimal traits. i.e. That we would evolve to have 2 eyes could be known a priori.74.140.199.156 (talk) 05:26, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your thoughts, despite the needlessly rude headline. However, teleology in biology is a philosophical topic (that I brought to GA), where this subject is far more historical. As far as evolution is concerned, the case is certainly closed, as there is no evidence of any overall direction; you are of course correct that evolution by natural selection proceeds towards local optima, nothing new there, but nothing to do with orthogenesis either. Just to be clear for other readers, Directional selection is an entirely Darwinian mechanism, and wholly unrelated to orthogenesis. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:44, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

Recent edit

A large edit has been made without prior discussion, though this article has passed formal review. Some work may be needed to assimilate the edit. Among the minor details (there are surely others) are that

• the naming of references needs to be brought into line, so each ref is named rather than just :numbered;
• the section headings should be in "Sentence case" not "Title Case";
• the use of "E. Darwin" doesn't fit well, we'd best spell the name out when there's a risk of ambiguity; * titles such as Vestiges should be in italics, if not written out in full;
• phrases like "it is important to note" are deprecated and should be removed;
• the reference system with "rp" (page numbers in the text) was not in use, and given Wikipedia's policy that reference systems should not be changed, should speedily be removed. The article uses the "sfn" style which permits sources to be cited compactly to page without repetition and without placing numbers in the text itself.
• books should be listed in "Sources" at end of article (and then referenced using "sfn").
• The article is in British English, with idioms such as "The scholar Joe Bloggs..." rather than "Scholar...".

It is not instantly clear what has been deleted, as the change has overwhelmed the diff tool's capabilities, so adjustments may be required there.

The increased emphasis on the chain of being seems to stray into territory that belongs or is already covered by the Great chain of being article, so those sections may need to be cut down, possibly radically; some text might be moved to that article.

A first impression is that the quotations and the account, especially of the chain of being, are probably somewhat too long; most of the points made seem to have been covered in the reviewed version. At the least, some paraphrasing and copy-editing may be beneficial; an alternative would be to revert the recent edit, discuss what if anything needs to be added to the reviewed text, and make small agreed changes one at a time. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:26, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Well, in the absence of any response, let's put the new text here, and we can work on it "in slow time", moving small parts to the article in the article's reference format as described above. The chain of being is already mentioned in the article and I'm doubtful if that part actually needs elaboration (that's what having a separate article on the subject is for) but perhaps a few more connections can be made. The material on Lamarck is similarly covered in detail at Lamarckism and again I'm doubtful if that needs to be mentioned here. The Classical section talks about ranks of forms; that forms the basis of the chain of being, which in turn (as the article states already) forms the basis of orthogenesis, but the inference that the classical concepts are much to do with orthogenesis seems to be WP:OR: we'd need a scholar to say that, we're not allowed to do so in our own voice. Since neither Plato nor Aristotle actually believed in progress of that sort, the material seems basically to be an inference too far. The "Temporalization" section goes into great length about several concepts that also aren't orthogenesis. The closest to something usable in all the material is the coverage of Erasmus Darwin and Robert Chambers, so perhaps we might start working on those paragraphs.

Here are the additions: Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:06, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

I've incorporated brief mentions of Erasmus D. and Chambers. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:33, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

"=== Foundations in Classical Philosophy ==="

The foundations for the concept of Orthogenesis have their roots in Neoplatonic philosophy, deriving from the ideas of Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus.

While Plato proposed the concept of ideal Forms, he suggested that they did not all have the same “metaphysical rank or excellence.” He did, however, describe the form with the highest rank, the Form of the Good.

This hierarchy was later definitively formulated by his student Aristotle, who proposed the idea of arranging the natural world into a single, graded scale (scala naturae) according to degrees of “perfection” in his History of Animals. He identified 11 grades of animals — Man occupying the highest position — sorted by his analysis of the offspring’s development at birth, forming a continuum from the lowest, who laid cold, dry mineral-like eggs, to the highest who gave live birth to hot and wet progeny. Below the order of animals were the orders of plants and minerals, respectively. In his treatise On the Soul, Aristotle proposed another hierarchy ranking all organisms based on their “the powers of the soul,” from the vegetative soul of plants to the rational soul of man — and possibly “another kind superior to his” — with each higher grade additionally inheriting the powers of those below it. More abstract than his classification of the natural world, or even souls, Aristotle in his Metaphysics also proposed a universal ordering of all things by their degree of excellence, with everything except God having some amount of “privation,” or lack of perfection.

These ideas were expanded upon and systematized into a general scheme by the Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus. In his Enneads, Plotinus describes a wholly perfect and self-sufficient Absolute, or One, that generates all lower forms of reality from its excess, writing, “The One is perfect because it seeks for nothing, and possesses nothing, and has need of nothing; and being perfect, it overflows, and thus its superabundance produces an Other.” This creates an infinitesimally graded hierarchy of best to worst, with the “Most Perfect Being,” or “First Good,” at the top.

"=== The Great Chain of Being ==="

Further information: Great chain of being

The possibility of Orthogenetic progress through a hierarchy of forms is embedded in the medieval notion of a Great Chain of Being. The notion finds its basis in the ideas from Classical Philosophy that all things fit into a linear sequence of forms from lowest to highest with a supreme form at the top. These Classical conceptions proved particularly congenial to Scholastic medieval theologians, who adapted them into a Christian context, where they retained influence into the late eighteenth century. Called the Great Chain of Being or scala naturae, this hierarchy “stretched from the foot of God’s throne to the meanest of inanimate objects,” containing the whole natural and even spiritual world within its ranks. The main links of the chain were as follows:

* God

* Angels

* Humans

* Animals

* Plants

* Minerals

This hierarchy of the world was represented visually by the Christian philosopher and theologian Ramon Llull (1232-1315) in his Ladder of Ascent and Descent of the Mind (1305), with steps leading through the elements, animals, humanity, angels, and culminating in God. Interesting to note, Llull, unlike other contemporary thinkers who believed the chain to be an “absolutely rigid and static scheme,” believed beings could ascend or descend the steps, through sensory data, to an intellectual understanding of spiritual reality, and inversely. Another representation, displaying the commonly held static view and visually representing the metaphorically alluded chain, is found in Didacus Valades’ (1533-1582) Rhetorica Christiana (1579).

While most of these conceptions of a universal hierarchy — those of the classical philosophers and the commonly held view of the Chain of Being — were static, with beings having a defined and constant place on the vertical continuum, later inheritors of the idea would add a second, horizontal axis of time, with a driving force propelling the natural world toward a higher goal.

"=== The Temporalization of the Chain of Being ==="

During the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth centuries, new theories, discoveries, and contemporary events shook the idea of the world as static and constant as many long-held political and belief systems were challenged or dismantled. Politically, two large, violent revolutions, the American and French, upturned enduring modes of government. In the natural world also, new findings were disrupting steady views of the universe, such as the nebular hypotheses of the astronomer William Herschel (1738–1822), which argued that celestial objects like stars, planets and other cosmic entities were subject to the processes of birth, growth, decay, and death. Eighteenth-century geologists also made discoveries of transformations the earth had undergone and presented fossils of plants and animals nowhere known to exist. These new conceptions prompted contemporary natural philosophers to revise and animate the ancient idea of a static Chain of Being into a temporalized progression of beings transforming to some higher goal.

In light of contemporary ideas of transformative species change, various Eighteenth and Nineteenth-century thinkers proposed their own mechanisms to explain this progression, many of them linking progress to the increase of a specific metric, like complexity or intelligence, or tending towards a specific end goal. These concepts were retained and adapted by later thinkers, sometimes explicitly under the label of Orthogenesis. While many of these theories had strong similarities in outcome, like the progression of beings culminating in a concept of civilized, European man, the mechanisms that drove this progression varied by author.

In his original evolutionary system, later significantly modified, the French zoologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829) posited two guiding forces that drove organic species change: first, a vertically driving “force that incessantly tends to complicate organization” — sometimes called his complexifying force — and second, a horizontally driving force called “the influence of circumstances.” He invoked the idea of spontaneous generation of the most simple forms, which were then advanced upwards in complexity by his progressive force, creating a “ladder by which living forms advanced to more complex levels of organization.”

This ladder of complexity — and importantly, time — began with monads, the most simple beings, and concluded in man, an idea constructed on the conceptual features of a “temporalized chain of being,” including telos, hierarchy, and anthropocentrism. Notably, this complexifying force drove the linear progression only of the “major anatomical designs of life’s phyla,” with the second, circumstantial force creating specialized, local adaptations of certain lineages as a horizontal departure from the upward progression.

Contrary to modern narratives that Lamarck maintained these beliefs for his entire life, he in fact revised these theories in his later work, “embrac[ing] the opposite model...of a branching tree of life.” However, it is important to note that while he altered his proposed mechanism from a linear sequence to a branching one, this latter model retained teleology — specifically towards man.

Other 18th and 19th-century thinkers positing progressive forms of transformational species change include Erasmus Darwin, Robert Chambers, and John Pringle Nichol. These three thinkers had a great deal in common, all presenting sweeping narratives of a single transformative force organizing the celestial, natural, and human worlds.

English doctor and polymath Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802), grandfather of Charles Darwin, saw “the whole cosmos [as] a living thing propelled by an internal vital force” towards “greater perfection.” He presented a picture of the cosmos as a “continuous sequence” gradually transforming in the direction of “higher levels of organization and greater mental powers” culminating in man. While he believed life progressed over time, E. Darwin believed the trajectory of transformation was not perfectly linear, with dead ends sometimes being reached. Despite accounting for extinction and multiple paths of transformation, his view of nature was deeply steeped in the teleology of the Great Chain of Being and a firm belief in the idea of progress — one he even extended to the domain of human social affairs.

Another view of transformation as progressing towards a goal is seen in the work of Robert Chambers (1802-1871), whose anonymously published Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844) presented a sweeping narrative account of cosmic transmutation culminating in the evolution of humanity. Chambers cited evidence of this in the fossil record — devoting a third of the Vestiges to survey it — claiming that in it one could see a main line of gradual ascent to the human species. Also steeped in the tradition of the Great Chain, Chambers’ hierarchy of complexity travels through invertebrates, fish, which within themselves go from simple to complex, reptiles, and is terminated in mammals, which go from the simplest forms and culminate in Homo sapiens.

A friend of Chambers, Scottish educator, astronomer, and economist John Pringle Nichol (1804–1859) also presented an argument similar to the Vestiges that “everything in the universe was guided by a principle of progressive “evolution,” uniting physical astronomy, natural history, and the emerging sciences of man.” Taking all phenomena in the universe to behave in accordance with a common, teleological law, Nichol stated, “In the vast Heavens, as well as among phenomena around us, all things are in a state of change and PROGRESS.”

Charles Darwin himself rarely used the term "evolution" now so commonly used to describe his theory, because the term was strongly associated with orthogenesis, as had been common usage since at least 1647.

References