Introduction.

Questions of origins of earth and life on it have been on the minds of humans since prehistoric times. Many of us are also concerned with questions of origin:

 How old is the planet earth?

 How long has life been on earth?

 How did life arise on earth?

 How did a certain animal species come into existence?

Answers for these questions come from scientific inquiry.

In this chapter we will study some aspects of organic evolution. Evolution. Evolution refers to the processes that have transformed life on earth from its earliest forms to the vast diversity which is observed today. Evolutionary change is based mainly on the interactions between populations of organisms and their environments.

CONCEPT OF EVOLUTION VS SPECIAL CREATION

In a bid to explain the cause of diversity of life and interrelationship among living organisms, two schools of thoughts emerged in the earlier 19th century.

 Creationists believed in the Theory of Special Creation,

 Evolutionists believed in the Theory of Natural Selection.

Theory of creation.

According the theory of special creation, all living things came into existence in their present forms especially and specifically created by Nature. Linnaeus. Among the scientists who believed in divine creation was Carlous Linnaeus (1707-1778). Theory of evolution. The idea that organism might evolve through time, with one type of organism giving rise to another type of organism, is an ancient one, existing from the days of Aristotle. Aristotle recognized that organisms ranged from relatively simple to very complex structures.

However, the present day concept of evolution is based on a known history Darwin was the first person who argued from evidences that species were not specially created in their present forms, rather they had evolved from ancestral species. He also proposed a mechanism of revolution, which he termed Natural Selection. Carlous Linnaeus Work. He in the eighteenth century classified organisms. He grouped similar species in the same genus and similar genera in one family. Creationist. But as a natural theologian, he believed that species were permanent creations. Evolutionary evidence. A century later, the taxonomic system of Linnaeus became of focal point in Darwin‟s arguments for evolution.