A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF THE SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION

  A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF THE SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION INTRODUCTION:       Philosophers pursued the concept of evolution for thousands of years.   Many different ideas were explored and discarded until biologists blended the thoughts of Gregor Mendel and Charles Darwin into a theory called the modern synthesis in the first half of the twentieth century.   While it attracted considerable support in the scientific community, it is now being challenged by new discoveries in microbiology.   The following overview follows the changes in thinking over the years.   At this time, the accumulation of books and papers on evolution constitute a huge body of literature and no overview can possibly be all inclusive.   Hopefully, this overview reviews enough pertinent documents to adequately demonstrate how evolutionary concepts have changed over the years. Much of the voluminous literature on evolution contains a mix of philoso...