Thomas Henry Huxley’s reaction to Darwin’s idea is understandable: “How extremely stupid of me not to have thought of that!” Darwin’s argument is not arcane. Why did we have to wait so long for an idea as simple and attractive as Darwin’s? An attempt to answer this question by means of a narrow set of influences is likely to produce an account that is, at best, impressionistic. However, that teleology played a leading role is widely accepted, as Darwin himself always recognized that the appearance of design is distinctive of the organic world, having been raised on the teleological argument of Archdeacon William Paley. And an important part of the conceptual network wherein Darwin found himself developed in antiquity. Classical thinkers erected much of the scaffolding with which evolutionists have had to work, framing the debate over teleology in important ways. Early cosmologists thought the idea of the world’s coming to be from nothing as unintelligible. Early teleologists thought getting order out of chaos, equally unsettling, akin to getting something from nothing.

The Early Cosmologists

Natural philosophy before Socrates can be said to concern the origin of the cosmos. The problem of origin, as one might call it, can be characterized in terms of the following three claims:

1. Coming to exist involves a transition from nonbeing to being.

2. Things come to exist.

3. Only that which has being can undergo a transition of any kind.