what are the ramifications?
I was considering this the other day. One that springs to mind for me are much earlier ideas about eugenics and innate racial superiority.
Evolution as a concept could have been thought of earlier, but without an understanding and eventual proof of Mendelian genetics it would remain just a non-scientific philosophy.
Evolution as a concept could have been thought of earlier, but without an understanding and eventual proof of Mendelian genetics it would remain just a non-scientific philosophy.
Darwin and Wallace amassed a tremendous weight of scientific evidence in favor of the existence of evolution long before Mendelian genetics was at all known or suspected to be important. They may not have been able to identify the mechanism by which trait inheritance occurred, but that in no way makes their theory unscientific, it merely means that they were missing part of it.
Now to spread his idea I used the following development in my China timeline:It was Shen Kuo who formulated a hypothesis about the process of land formation (geomorphology) based upon several observations as evidence. This included his observation of fossil shells in a geological stratum of a mountain hundreds of miles from the ocean. He inferred that the land was reshaped and formed by erosion of the mountains, uplift, and the deposition of silt, after observing strange natural erosions of the Taihang Mountains and the Yandang Mountain near Wenzhou. He hypothesized that, with the inundation of silt, the land of the continent must have been formed over an enormous span of time.While visiting the Taihang Mountains in 1074, Shen Kuo noticed strata of bivalve shells and ovoid rocks in a horizontal-running span through a cliff like a large belt.Shen proposed that the cliff was once the location of an ancient seashore that by his time had shifted hundreds of miles east.Shen wrote that in the Zhiping reign period (1064–1067) a man of Zezhou unearthed an object in his garden that looked like a serpent or dragon, and after examining it, concluded the dead animal had apparently turned to "stone".The magistrate of Jincheng, Zheng Boshun, examined the creature as well, and noted the same scale-like markings that were seen on other marine animals.Shen Kuo likened this to the "stone crabs" found in China.
Shen also wrote that since petrified bamboos were found underground in a climatic area where they had never been known to be grown, the climate there must have shifted geographically over time Around the year 1080, Shen Kuo noted that a landslide on the bank of a large river near Yanzhou (modern Yan'an) had revealed an open space several dozens of feet under the ground once the bank collapsed.This underground space contained hundreds of petrified bamboos still intact with roots and trunks, "all turned to stone" as Shen Kuo wrote.Shen Kuo noted that bamboos do not grow in Yanzhou, located in northern China, and he was puzzled during which previous dynasty the bamboos could have grown. Considering that damp and gloomy low places provide suitable conditions for the growth of bamboo, Shen deduced that the climate of Yanzhou must have fit that description in very ancient times. Although this would have intrigued many of his readers, the study of paleoclimatology in medieval China never developed into an established discipline.
....The fossils were impressed into lithographic limestone, which happened to have some very useful properties. Lithographic originally used an image drawn with oil, fat, or wax onto the surface of a smooth, level lithographic limestone plate.
The stone was treated with a mixture of acid and other stuff, etching the portions of the stone which were not protected by the grease-based image. When the stone was subsequently moistened, these etched areas retained water; an oil-based ink could then be applied and would be repelled by the water, sticking only to the original drawing. The ink would finally be transferred to a blank paper sheet, producing a printed page. Yin Jong discovered this while trying to "print" his fossils collection on paper to send them to other enthusiasts and vice versa.
Darwin and Wallace amassed a tremendous weight of scientific evidence in favor of the existence of evolution long before Mendelian genetics was at all known or suspected to be important. They may not have been able to identify the mechanism by which trait inheritance occurred, but that in no way makes their theory unscientific, it merely means that they were missing part of it.
I'm surprised that it took until the 19th century to fully formulate the idea of evolution - its discovery didn't require any advanced technology or mathematics. When is the earliest it could be fully realized and what are the ramifications?
I would argue this is exactly the case with biological evolution. Darwin, Wallace, and for that matter Lamarck, all came up with neat ideas that appeared to explain the physical similarities and differences among species, but until the actual Mendelian mechanisms were discovered and proven, evolution would have remained just a neat idea searching for an explanation of how exactly it worked.
No, it would not. The difference with continental drift is that while you cannot witness continents drifting (not without modern tools that allow you to measure very small changes), you can observe the effects of selection on populations in a relatively short period of time, even without having the information needed to formulate an accurate theory of heredity.