Evolution has many meanings.
- Change over time
- Evolution of the cosmos
- Evolution of living things
- Evolution of culture, technology, etc.
- Changes within existing species
- Morphological (anatomical)
- Genetic (change in gene frequencies)
- Common ancestry
- Within a species
- Descent of all species from a common ancestor
- Darwinian evolution
Darwinism: Descent with modification through unguided processes
- Descent: “I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long ago.”
- Modification: “The preservation of favorable individual differences of variations, and the destruction of those which are injurious (natural selection).”
- Unguided processes: “There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. So I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of chance.”
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