FIXIST THEORY: POSTULATES AND AUTHORS - BIOLOGY - 2024

The fixist theory or fixism is a biological theory that states that all living species on planet Earth were created as they are today. In other words, according to the fixist theory, there was no evolutionary process as the scientist Charles Darwin suggested at the time.

The theory of evolution states that there is a process of natural selection, which helped the evolution of all living organisms on the planet to take the form they have today after inheriting the characteristics of their ancestors for thousands of generations.

Archaeoprteryx Fossil

According to scientific belief, life on Earth began as a unicellular organism, which evolved through the process of natural selection for millions of years.

The fixist theory goes against this belief, because according to this theory the living species of planet Earth have not changed their shape since their creation.

Postulates

The fixist theory expresses that all organisms on the planet originated independently of each other. That is to say, life did not have a unique origin, but each species was created separately. According to this concept, the evolutionary process did not exist: species never changed shape throughout their existence.

The idea that the characteristics of the species have not been altered makes the fixist theory also support the idea that there is no nexus between species.

Each species belongs to its own group of creation and is not related to each other, even though they belong to the same family (mammal, arthropods, etc.).

According to this perspective, species may have been created from different methods, but there is no defined concept that is used to explain the origin of life in fixist theory.

However, this concept also raises the idea of ​​a spontaneous creation, where the living species of the planet were created from one moment to another by an inexplicable power.

Current state of fixity

At present, fixism is considered a theory whose validity has been lost. There are a large number of scientific discoveries by which it can be shown that humans and millions of other species are the product of an evolutionary process. These discoveries demonstrate the lack of veracity of the fixist theory.

Although this theory is not considered valid, it is known that the principles of the theory were fundamental to the philosophical thought that gave rise to the theory of evolution years later.

Creationism

The fixist theory has many ideas that are related to creationism, but they also present a number of marked differences that separate them from one another.

Creationism states that the universe and all life within it were generated by acts of divine intervention.

Although fixism does not make direct reference to the intervention of God in the creation of life, this idea was the one that was in force in ancient times and caused the debate among philosophers about the origin of life on Earth.

Featured Authors

Most of the renowned scientists who supported the fixist theory did not have sufficient explanatory bases to explore a deeper origin of life.

In other words, most of the important authors who worked with a fixist idea became a fundamental part of the development of the theory of evolution.

Carl Linnaeus

Linnaeus was one of the most important taxonomists in history and the developer of the binomial nomenclature to refer to living species.

Linnaeus originally proposed that species could be classified into as many categories as there were biological families. That is, he originally treated each group as a different family.

Linnaeus' scientific advances and his species research laid the groundwork for Charles Darwin to develop the theory of evolution a couple of centuries later.

Georges cuvier

Cuvier was a French naturalist who raised an important question in the realm of biology. Cuvier's unknown was why there was so much biodiversity in animal species, a concept that went against what later became Darwin's theory.

Cuvier stated that there were four different groups of species, which could not be related to each other as a result of their genetic differences.

Louis Pasteur

Pasteur was one of the scientists who played a major role in disapproving of the theory of fixism. Originally, Pasteur was not entirely opposed to the ideas of this theory, but his investigations served to develop the theory of evolution.

Pasteur's experiments provided the basis for science to prove that the existence of a spontaneous generation of species was not possible.

Pasteur verified that living beings descend from other living beings without exception. This only leaves open the scientific question of how life was generated on Earth.

Difference with evolutionism

All the approaches of fixism go absolutely against the theory of evolution. Evolutionism states that species were generated from a common ancestor, and that they evolved from this to their current state in a process that took millions of years.

The evolutionary approach goes against the belief of spontaneous generation and rather supports a process of natural selection, which would not have been possible if species had been created spontaneously.

Fixism also denies the existence of a relationship between various animal families. On the other hand, according to evolutionism, all species can be related to a common ancestor if the genealogical tree is investigated enough.

Although evolutionary theory also has certain things that cannot be explained (such as the origin of life), it is a scientific concept that is mostly accepted by the world community and is considered the most accurate to explain biodiversity on Earth.

Fixist theory is also closely related to creationism, a concept whose traditional thinking runs counter to the theory of evolution.

References

1. Evolution, Atlas of Genetics and Cytogenetics in Oncology and Haematology, (nd). Taken from atlasgeneticsoncology.org
2. Evolution, Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion and Science, 2002. Taken from inters.org
3. Fixism and Conservation Science, Various Autors, 2017. Taken from researchgate.net
4. Georges Cuvier, Encyclopaedia Britannica, (nd). Taken from Britannica.com
5. Evolutionism, Wikipedia in English, 2018. Taken from Wikipedia.org