Evolution (1620s) – any process by which an organic form changes in response to situational conditions. The notion is based on the metaphor of “an opening of what was rolled up” (i.e., a scroll or book), and it was originally used in medicine and mathematics. It was first used to refer to living forms in the 1660s to describe the growth and development of individual organisms. The metaphor was extended to geological from in the 1830s and to biological species in the last half of the 1800s. (Charles Darwin used the word only once in his writings, having preferred the phrase “descent with modification.”)
Please cite this article as:
Davis, B., & Francis, K. (2023). “Evolution” in Discourses on Learning in Education. https://learningdiscourses.com.
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