18: Evolution and the Origin of Species
The theory of evolution is the unifying theory of biology, meaning it is the framework within which biologists ask questions about the living world. Its power is that it provides direction for predictions about living things that are borne out in experiment after experiment. The Ukrainian-born American geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky famously wrote that “nothing makes sense in biology except in the light of evolution. " He meant that the tenet that all life has evolved and diversified from a common ancestor is the foundation from which we approach all questions in biology.
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- 18.1: Understanding Evolution
- Evolution by natural selection describes a mechanism for how species change over time. That species change had been suggested and debated well before Darwin began to explore this idea. The view that species were static and unchanging was grounded in the writings of Plato, yet there were also ancient Greeks who expressed evolutionary ideas.
Thumbnail: A silhouette of human evolution. (CC BY-SA 3.0; Tkgd2007 via Wikimedia Commons ).