Evolution is the natural view on the occurrence, development and change of nature in ancient philosophical thought. It is a simple understanding of nature, believing that nature is changing and can be transformed and evolved. This is contrary to Plato's ontological view that "the world we live in is just a projection of eternal essence"; Plato's view has a profound impact on the West. Aristotle studied under Plato and proposed the purposefulness of the process of natural phenomena, dividing living things into a series from simple to complex (the Great Chain of Being). Like Plato, he believed that species have fixed essences and the world is eternal, thus ruling out the idea of ??evolution. This view had a profound influence on medieval Christian thought. Thomas Aquinas, the earliest advocate of natural theology, used this point of view to elaborate on creationism and believed that the order of living things was evidence of divine creation. The "giant chain of beings" was the most influential metaphor in pre-Darwinian biology. Natural theology enabled people to begin studying biology within the framework of creationism.

In the sixth century BC, Thales of Miletus, an ancient Greek philosopher of the Milesian school, was inspired by observing the universal natural phenomenon of water, and based it on the water god Oceanus in Greek mythology. Oceanus) was inspired by the idea of ??creating the world; he proposed that there is life and movement everywhere, and water is the origin of all things.

Thales’ student Anaximander believed that the existence of water needs to be explained. Where does water come from and how does it transform into all things? Anaximander proposed that the origin of the world is "infinity" (apeiron, also translated as "infinite"), which surrounds everything in the world we live in, and it can be transformed into various things that we are familiar with and can perceive. essence, and promote their mutual transformation. One of his famous sayings: "Wherever things are born, they must be destroyed according to necessity; because they must pay fines according to the order of time and be judged for their injustice" (this is also the Chinese philosophy of "the leaves fall back to their roots" ). "Infinity" is the balance that is maintained by the injustice caused by the constant expansion of eternal laws, just as there is light and darkness, and there is warmth when there is cold. No element can expand infinitely beyond the limits of eternity. In Greek mythology, no matter how powerful the gods are, they cannot escape the omens of fate, so it is not difficult for us to understand the tragedy of Oedipus...

It is this concept, combined with the myths and legends about sea monsters, that provided artistic inspiration for later generations to create the image of "mermaid". The image of mermaids has greatly enriched culture and art. A strapless evening dress for formal occasions, its design is inspired by the legend of the mermaid. This eternal force of justice has always been in a neutral position in the world's struggles. In an eternal motion of imbalance, the world was evolved rather than created by God. Anaximander believed that humans evolved from fish like other species, which was the earliest evolutionary view.

In the field of biology, it is still dominated by natural theology. Natural theology believes that God established natural laws, and natural laws structured the universe in a mechanical way, and God has never intervened since. The method is to understand the intention of divine creation by studying the body's adaptation to the environment. In the seventeenth century, the great scientists around Newton, Robert Boyle and John Ray, both promoted this kind of natural theology. In 1802, William Paley published the book "Natural Theology" , making this understanding reach its peak. At the end of the fifteenth century, the Renaissance ushered in modern science. The discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo fundamentally negated the egocentric creed of people's understanding of nature caused by monotheistic belief; they showed people an unprecedented and extremely vast universe. Newton's "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy" elaborated on the universal gravitation that explains planetary motion; Descartes's mechanical philosophy doctrine, which simplifies complexity into simple mechanisms, has a profound influence...

Natural theologians regard "adaptation" as a basic phenomenon of biology and believe that it fully embodies the existence and attributes of God. We call it "non-evolutionary adaptationism." The French naturalist Georges Cuvier held this view. He compared the anatomical differences of different biological species, reconstructed fossil morphology, and believed that function is the basis for classifying species; he expanded Linnaeus's classification system into fossil species and Living species are classified together. By studying stratigraphic sequences at different times, Cuvier believed that drastic changes in strata indicated the existence of geological disasters, and proposed the "catastrophic theory." This view forms the basis of ancient earth creationism, or multiple creations. This had a profound impact on culture, with most theologians admitting that the geological age exceeds millions of years, and that the biblical day is a metaphor for much longer periods of time.

In 1830, Charles Lyell published "Principles of Geology", which proposed a completely different view, namely the theory of uniformitarianism; it revived the view of James Hutton. For geological science, the two arguments for the emergence of sedimentary rocks on land are the "water formation theory" and the other is Hutton's "volcanic theory." The theory of uniformitarianism had a great influence on the later Darwin, and used the cumulative effect of its process to explain the evolution of life.