<P> Evolutionary thought , the conception that species change over time , has roots in antiquity -- in the ideas of the ancient Greeks , Romans , and Chinese as well as in medieval Islamic science . With the beginnings of modern biological taxonomy in the late 17th century , two opposed ideas influenced Western biological thinking : essentialism , the belief that every species has essential characteristics that are unalterable , a concept which had developed from medieval Aristotelian metaphysics , and that fit well with natural theology ; and the development of the new anti-Aristotelian approach to modern science : as the Enlightenment progressed , evolutionary cosmology and the mechanical philosophy spread from the physical sciences to natural history . Naturalists began to focus on the variability of species ; the emergence of paleontology with the concept of extinction further undermined static views of nature . In the early 19th century Jean - Baptiste Lamarck ( 1744 -- 1829 ) proposed his theory of the transmutation of species , the first fully formed theory of evolution . </P>
<P> Evolutionary thought , the conception that species change over time , has roots in antiquity -- in the ideas of the ancient Greeks , Romans , and Chinese as well as in medieval Islamic science . With the beginnings of modern biological taxonomy in the late 17th century , two opposed ideas influenced Western biological thinking : essentialism , the belief that every species has essential characteristics that are unalterable , a concept which had developed from medieval Aristotelian metaphysics , and that fit well with natural theology ; and the development of the new anti-Aristotelian approach to modern science : as the Enlightenment progressed , evolutionary cosmology and the mechanical philosophy spread from the physical sciences to natural history . Naturalists began to focus on the variability of species ; the emergence of paleontology with the concept of extinction further undermined static views of nature . In the early 19th century Jean - Baptiste Lamarck ( 1744 -- 1829 ) proposed his theory of the transmutation of species , the first fully formed theory of evolution . </P>
who is considered the founder of the theory of evolution
who is considered the founder of the theory of evolution
Jean - Baptiste Lamarck
Jean - Baptiste Lamarck