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====CLASS, EDUCATION, & EVOLUTION====
[[File:lamarckgiraffe.jpg|400px|left|thumbnail|Lamark's giraffe]]
The few decades preceding the publication of Charles Darwin’s ''On the Origin of Species'' in 1859 played an important role in setting the stage for how Darwin’s treatise would be received amongst the general public. It is during this time that the working classes, in Britain and most of Western Europe, as well as America, were developing their own sense of identity. A new class unity was slowly forming, founded upon principles of separateness from the upper classes, or as British historian EP Thompson puts it, “the consciousness of an identity of interests as between all these diverse groups of working people and as against the interests of other classes.”<ref> Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class.</ref> Crucial to this new consciousness was the recognition of the power of knowledge and education. A combination of factors, ranging from new types of schooling to the wide readership of “penny” newspapers had created a more literate and political working class. The middle and upper classes feared that the tight grip they had on knowledge and its distribution was being loosened by men who had hitherto been mostly apathetic insofar as education and schooling were concerned.
The proper role of science in the community, and to what extent amateurs should be allowed to interfere with and influence this role, was a brand new topic of debate in the 1800s. Before this time, science was the domain of the gentleman amateurs. Generally, those who were without money and class simply did not have the means to study and engage with scientific discoveries. The advent of the printing press and cheap working-class science periodicals during the beginning of the nineteenth century had scientific knowledge locked in a game of tug-of-war between the scientific elite and everyone else. The elite saw themselves as the producers of science; in their minds, they conceived the theories while everyone else (and especially those who were not members of the upper classes) exploited and misunderstood them.
We should not look at the theories that preceded Darwin’s theory of natural selection as incorrect or superseded, but rather as important and crucial steps on the road to a better understanding of evolution. It is highly unlikely the Darwin would’ve conceived of his theory without referencing the ideas of previous philosophers and men of science, so we should give these ideas their due.
====EVOLUTIONARY IDEAS BEFORE CHARLES DARWIN====
