Please help, I'm smoothbrain: how was the discovery of evolution an "innovation"? Surely our ancestors were able to notice creatures that survive tend to survive and parents resemble their children.
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@tengumatingpress
The important part was to connect 3 seperate concepts into a new mechanism.
Survival of strong is one thing, that means nothing.
Mutations are interesting, but by themselves mean only spread.
Genetical heretage means nothing.
Only by connecting all 3 of these concepts do you get the full "random mutations, that occur naturally cause some individuals to have increased chance of surviving to have genes with the same traits."
@Type_Other @LukeAlmighty The prevailing dialectic is embarrassingly bad tbh
@LukeAlmighty @tengumatingpress And that’s specifically darwinian evolution, which contrasted the lamarckian belief of how changes could be inherited–e.g. giraffes only have long necks because they’ve spent many generations stretching their necks to reach high things. If you work out your biceps a lot, you’ll have a kid with strong biceps. When we didn’t know anything about genes that seemed like a plausible explanation too.
This wasn’t long after spontaneous generation was a common belief. People actually thought their bags of grain were spawning mice, that burning logs created salamanders, that rotting meat created maggots, etc.