History of evolution

Ryan Gregory at Genomicron has a couple of interesting posts; One on Natural Selection before Darwin, which discusses prior presentations back to Hutton. I think he’s right that prior to Darwin selection was typically not thought of as a way to form new species. It’s generally not after Darwin either – speciation is usually thought of as a side effect of selection. Also he argues that abiogenesis, the formation of life from abiotic materials, is a part of evolution, but not required by evolutionary theory. I agree: but not because abiogenesis begins with replication. Rather, I think replication is itself the outcome of selection on chemical autocatalysis. Finally, he argues that epigenetic evolution is not Lamarckian, something else I agree with.

Also note that the journal Evolution and Outreach has a new edition – free to view.