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It was a period in history where modern science started to emerge and brought change in thought and beliefs. People would now build theories on logical and evidential reasoning.
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The enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, was a period in history were people starting to question everything. People would question how society should be run, politics, science, religion, the Catholic Church etc.
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French Philosopher, Georges-Louis Leclerc proposed that ‘species’ were just marked variations, altered with from their originality by environmental factors.
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Erasmus Darwin published his book on evolution. He didn't mention natural selection, but he stated that all living organisms evolved from common ancestors. This book didn't only focus on evolution.
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Jean-Baptiste Lamarck was a French naturalist who published his theory on evolution stating that species undergo a gradual change in characteristics over time.
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Charles Lyell was a geologist who published a paper stating that Earth was millions of years old.
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Patrick Matthew was a Scottish forester who briefly talked about his theory of natural selection in his book. His theory was published approximately thirty years before Darwin published his 'On the Origin of Species'.
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Darwin discovered most of his theories on this voyage when he traveled around the entire coastline of South America. While Darwin was on his voyage, he had created 3000 pages of notes, collected 1529 species, 3907 skins and created 12 catalogs of animals and plants.
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This book was published by both Charles Darwin and Richard Owen. It talks about the behaviour, structure, physiology, classification, and distribution of animals which Darwin discovered during his voyage on the HMS Beagle.
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Alfred Russel Wallace published his theory containing similar ideas to Darwin's theory and included natural selection.
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Charles Darwin publishes his book/essay on Darwinism. It is known to be the foundation for evolution.
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Gregor Mendel reads his first paper on genetics to the local scientific organization. He presented to laws of heredity which was the law of segregation and the law of independent assortment.
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Charles Darwin publishes another book on his Darwinian theories. This book applies his evolutionary theories into human evolution.
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Herbert Spencer invented his theory on Social Darwinism during the 1880s. Social Darwinism is the application of natural selection and 'survival of the fittest' to human society.
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August Weismann states his findings detailing the importance of DNA to heredity and establishes his germ cell theory.
