Historical Influences on Darwin
1. Charles Lyell. 2. Charles Lyell was a geologist from the 1800s. He followed the ideas of a Scottish farmer, James Hutton. The ideas described how Earth was transformed by changes overtime, so Lyell traveled Europe in order to prove the concept. His version later became known as uniformitarianism. Lyell’s theory deeply influences Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by viewing it as “a sort of biological uniformitarianism.” (Source: https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/history_12 ) 3. “ Individuals do not evolve. Populations do. Individuals cannot change their heritable traits; they can only pass them on. Evolution does not occur within a generation. It occurs between generations.” This point was influenced by Lyell’s gradual change theory because the gradual change theory of uniformitarianism consisted of tiny changes to the environment. These tiny given a...