(June 24, 2014 at 1:07 pm)Cato Wrote: So obvious that it took until the 19th century for someone to discover it. My point is to tread with some caution regarding the obvious claim.
Evolution is needed to describe speciation, not the inheritance of traits within reproductively isolated populations. Animal domestication and husbandry has been around for thousands of years indicating that we've known about this for some time. It took Darwin to discover natural selection and the resulting speciation.
What is much more fair to say is that evolution is perfectly reasonable and demonstrably true given the confluence of evidence along with its explanatory and predictive power. Denying it with what we know today is an extreme position.
I think it is easy sometimes to take the knowledge we have today for granted and undervalue the momentous intellectual achievements of the past.
What is obvious depends on what you already know. Evolution is obvious based on what we know in 2014 AD. it might have been obvious based on what we knew in 1780 AD had christainity not used threats and underhanded cajoling to increase to social barrier to its acceptance. But It was probably not obvious before western oceanic global exploration amassed the zoological and botanical knowledge in the 17th and 18th century.
