My question is derived from Aristotle’s ladder of nature theory (Page 67). Grant states that Aristotle was not an evolutionist because “He regarded species as unchangeable.”
Grant says that in contrast to evolution, Aristotle believed that “[living things] proceed little by little from inanimate matter to plants…plants in turn ascend by small degrees toward the animal world.”
Did you all see the opening sequence from fantasia? Isn’t Aristotle’s ladder parallel in evolutionary terms to current theories?
My question is: If Aristotle published his theory around the 4th century BC nearly millennium before Darwin’s Origin of Species does that make him the first evolutionist?