Origins and Species Before and After Darwin

Abstract

Most languages distinguish different kinds of things and most peoples have theories about the origins of things, including the origins of animal and plant kinds, their diverse designs for living and diverse degrees of life, from the highest to the lowest. Diversity in designs and degrees has been an explicit preoccupation throughout the long run of Western thought. This preoccupation has always concerned the nature and fate of our own species, and so the understanding of the soul, morality and polity. The Jewish account of the Creation includes the forming and the falling of the first humans, a narrative later elaborated into the Christian doctrine of original sin. Among the Greek philosophers, Aristotle taught that any species is distinguished by the purposes embodied in its natural actions; and this teleology of specific natures provided foundations for his politics, his views on man as a political animal, no less than for his interpretation of plant reproduction.