Why John Money Doesn’t Actually Matter

Between the years of 494 BC and 434 BC, a man lived in the nation of Greece named Empedocles, who is commonly considered one of the first philosophers. Although, like most Greeks, a large amount of what Empedocles believed scientifically has been long debunked, one of the more interesting facts about his theories is that they’re — to put it one way, less wrong than one might expect.

Take his theory on how life got here: According to Empedocles, at the start of life what we now call “humans,” were nothing more than a series of separate limbs which wandered the Earth. These limbs would later form together, and create a variety of creatures with different numbers of arms, legs, eyes, and so on. The reason why we only see humans with our current structure is because, to put it simply, humans were best at adapting to their environment and therefore out competed the other possible arrangements.

One could easily see this as a prototype to the theory of evolution, popularized by Charles Darwin through his 1859 book On the Origin of Species. However, all this could really be considered is a prototype, using Empedocles to argue against Darwinian evolution would be utterly nonsensical because, although similarities do exist, they are totally different theories.