Zoology is the discipline of biology that involves the study of animals. Historically, an important difference is between zoology in pre-Darwinian and post-Darwinian times with Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection now fundamental to the discipline. Before Darwin came along in the 19th Century the study of animals had been going on in a scientific manner since the 16th Century. Although general advances in biology can be traced back as far Aristotle, who made important attempts to develop systems of taxonomy and causation.
In the decades before Darwin zoologists already had a concept of evolution. They believed that species changed in to other species gradually over time, a doctrine that was largely ignored by the many because it contradicted the Biblical account of creation. But what the zoologists lacked was a theory that accounted correctly for the evolutionary mechanism. One famous pre-Darwinian attempt is Lamarck’s theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. The time had come for Darwin to unleash his great insight.
In 1859, with the publication of The Origin of Species, Darwin began a revolution in zoology by providing the true mechanism of organic evolution through natural selection which he described using the phrase the survival of the fittest’. Much of the 19th Century was spent getting the theory accepted by educated society in the face religious objections. Darwin was helped in this by his enthusiastic supporter Thomas Henry Huxley.
During the twentieth century vital associations were made between evolution and genetics, particularly with the demonstration of the structure of DNA, the molecule of heredity, by Crick and Watson in 1953. More recently techniques of genetic engineering and germline therapy and stem cell research have all provided examples of how transformations and modifications can be made to animals in fundamental ways rendering the very concept of species questionable and taking us closer to a future free from disease and imperfection.
