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Evolutionary Theory
New Advance

Evolutionary Theory

Prerequisites

Requires:

  • Age of Reason
  • Modern Medicine

Statistics

Gives:

  • Access to other Advances

Gameplay

The first step on the modern Science track, this advance is an absolute necessity for those contemplating a Science Victory in the game.

Historical

The Theory of Evolution was, itself, the product of a long evolution. Charles Darwin originally published Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle in 1840, but did not mention evolution at all in that work, even though reading Malthus’ 1798 essay on Population had given him the germ of the idea already. Although he didn’t know it at the time, the concept of ’survival of the fittest’ and the extinction of the rest had originally been committed to paper by de Maupertius in Essai de Cosmologie in 1741. It was not until 1858 that Darwin ’went public’ with the theory of evolution in a paper presented to the Linnaean Society in London in cooperation with Alfred Russell Wallace, who had independently developed evolutionary theory after visiting Malaysia. In 1859 Darwin published On the Origins of the Species. This touched off major controversy in that it contradicted the creation stories of every major religion, but as a scientific theory it has never been seriously questioned and it formed a framework for understanding the interrelationships between living things and their environment over time that no other theory could provide.