With the publication of Darwin's theory of evolution in 1859, the concept of a " natural system " of taxonomy gained a theoretical basis, and the idea was born that groups used in a system of classification should represent branches on the evolutionary tree of life.

This idea is in conflict with the evolutionary philosophy of paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, who preferred to stress the " pluralism " of evolution ( i. e., its dependence on many crucial factors, of which natural selection is only one ).

Mayr insisted throughout his career that the gene as the target of selection cannot and should not be considered a valid idea in modern evolutionary thought.

As a factual criticism, Benitez-Bribiesca points to the lack of a " code script " for memes ( analogous to the DNA of genes ), and to the excessive instability of the meme mutation mechanism ( that of an idea going from one brain to another ), which would lead to a low replication accuracy and a high mutation rate, rendering the evolutionary process chaotic.

For example, a defender of evolution may well accept that the current formulation of evolutionary theory is likely to be revised in the future, but she defends evolution because she believes current evolutionary theory is more likely than any current rival idea, such as Creationism.

The theory was contrasted against phyletic gradualism, the popular idea that evolutionary change is marked by a pattern of smooth and continuous change in the fossil record.

The idea is that Earth's carbon-based life forms affect the global carbon cycle and so major evolutionary events alter the carbon cycle, redistributing carbon within various reservoirs within the biosphere system and in the process temporarily lowering the atmospheric ( greenhouse ) carbon reservoir until the revised biosphere system settled into a new state.

Many of those whom subsequent centuries term evolutionary biologists read him, notably Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, for each of whom Malthusianism became an intellectual stepping-stone to the idea of natural selection.

During the 19th century the idea that men were everywhere and always the same that had characterized both classical antiquity and the Enlightenment was exchanged for a more organic and dynamic evolutionary concept of human history.

Most modern evolutionary biologists accept that the idea is consistent with many processes in evolution.

The idea of the Weismann barrier is central to the Modern evolutionary synthesis, though it is not expressed today in the same terms.

Ernst Haeckel ( 1866 ), in his endeavour to produce a synthesis of Darwin's theory with Lamarckism and Naturphilosophie, proposed that " ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny ," that is, the development of the embryo of every species ( ontogeny ) fully repeats the evolutionary development of that species ( phylogeny ), in Geoffroy's linear model rather than Darwin's idea of branching evolution.

This was extended by the more general idea of heterochrony ( changes in timing of development ) as a mechanism for evolutionary change.

Pierce described his form of panentheism as being based on " he idea of an evolutionary universe ... with an evolution toward ever higher and higher states of self-consciousness ," and his political ideas were centered on racial purity and eugenics as the means of advancing the white race first towards a superhuman super race, and then towards a personal godhood.

What does have that implication is not evolutionary theory itself, but unguided evolution, the idea that neither God nor any other person has taken a hand in guiding, directing or orchestrating the course of evolution.

Cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker has argued that the game theoretic advantages of ethical behavior support the idea that morality is " out there " in a certain sense ( as part of the evolutionary fitness landscape ).

Others, such as Stephen Jay Gould, reject the notion that genetic entities are subject to anything other than genetic or chemical forces, ( as well as the idea evolution acts on " populations " per se ), reasserting the centrality of the individual organism as the true unit of selection, whose specific phenotype is directly subject to evolutionary pressures.

Later the discovery of a whole series of similar lobopod animals, some with closer resemblances to arthropods, and the development of the idea of stem groups suggested that the Early Cambrian was a time of relatively fast evolution but one that could be understood without assuming any unique evolutionary processes.

In Schumpeter's book he proposed an idea radical for its time: the evolutionary perspective.

Fitness ( often denoted in population genetics models ) is a central idea in evolutionary theory.

Although this evolutionary model is now taken for granted, in William Beebe's time it was a novel idea.

Spare also believed in what he called " atavistic resurgence ", the idea that the human mind contains atavistic memories that have their origins in earlier species on the evolutionary ladder.

The third element is the idea genesis, which is described as evolutionary and iterative process progressing from birth to maturation of the opportunity into a tangible idea.

" However, as Stocking notes, Tylor mainly concerned himself with describing and mapping the distribution of particular elements of culture, rather than with the larger function, and he generally seemed to assume a Victorian idea of progress rather than the idea of non-directional, multilineal cultural development proposed by later anthropologists.

Reinhold Niebuhr described the modern idea of ethical and scientific progress as " really a rationalized version of the Christian myth of salvation ".

This was described in a book published in 1786, but Müller failed to obtain funding to progress with the idea.

One of the focus themes in the environmental skeptics movement is the idea that environmentalism is a growing threat to social and economic progress and the civil liberties.

For George Woodcock this attitude can be also motivated by certain idea of resistance to progress and of rejection of the growing materialism which is the nature of American society in the mid 19th century.

Indeed from the 1870s onward, the idea that history and civilization were inherently progressive, and that progress was always good ( and had no sharp breaks ), came under increasing attack.

It disintegrates metanarratives of historical progress -- the idea that the gradual movement out of superstition and into reason is a necessary condition of man's being ( see dialectical materialism ).

Condorcet's Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Spirit ( 1795 ) was perhaps the most influential formulation of the idea of progress ever written.

In this essay, he explored the idea that the progress of culture is associated with the deletion of ornament from everyday objects, and that it was therefore a crime to force craftsmen or builders to waste their time on ornamentation that served to hasten the time when an object would become obsolete.

The increasing prevalence of enlightenment ideas encouraged the idea that society and life were changeable, and that civilization could progress.

For George Woodcock this attitude can be also motivated by certain idea of resistance to progress and of rejection of the growing materialism which is the nature of American society in the mid 19th century.

For George Woodcock this attitude can be also motivated by certain idea of resistance to progress and of rejection of the growing materialism which is the nature of American society in the mid XIX century.

For George Woodcock this attitude can be also motivated by certain idea of resistance to progress and of rejection of the growing materialism which is the nature of American society in the mid XIX century.

The idea bears some similarity to Marx's view that human society would progress toward a communist peak.

His strategic gains in 1711 made it virtually certain that the Allies would march on Paris the following year, but Harley had no intention of letting the war progress that far and risk jeopardising the favourable terms secured from the secret Anglo-French talks ( based on the idea that Philip V would remain on the Spanish throne ) that had proceeded throughout the year.

The idea of " progress " indicated that through continuous reform a better society was possible.

For a modern survey of the idea of progress in evolution see Nitecki and Dawkins.

While Esmarch and Jessen had asserted as early as 1857 that syphilis caused general paresis, progress toward the general acceptance by the medical community of this idea was only accomplished later by the eminent nineteenth-century syphilographer Alfred Fournier ( 1832 – 1914 ).

Instead, these religions embrace the concept of linear history progressing toward the Messianic Age or the Last Judgment, thus initiating the idea of " progress " ( humans are to work for a Paradise in the future ).

However, Eliade argues, Judaism elaborated its mythology of linear time by adding elements borrowed from Zoroastrianism — including ethical dualism, a savior figure, the future resurrection of the body, and the idea of cosmic progress toward " the final triumph of Good ".

** The idea made progress coming near the 2007 race, once the referendum on a European constitution was over.

" He added that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was also used by conservative politicians, judges, and publicists to justify the idea of a " natural order of things " as well as " the notion that progress resulted from the elimination of the weak and the ' survival of the fittest.

Another idea Toynbee dismissed was that free competition was universally beneficial to economic and societal progress, especially as reflected in its apotheosis in Social Darwinism, which promoted laissez-faire capitalism.