Charles Darwin's grandfather Erasmus Darwin, an English physician and philosopher, was one of the first to propose an idea of evolutionary change. What did he propose?
A) He proposed that all life developed from what he called a single living filament, which was modified in endless ways over millions of years.
B) He proposed that diversity was a result of modification and that traits acquired during the lifetime of an organism were passed down to its progeny resulting in increased diversity.
C) He proposed that life arose multiple times through spontaneous formation and that diversity arose from the influence of the different environments where formation occurred.
D) He proposed that each branch of life, or kingdom, resulted from accumulation of change, originating with different filaments for each kingdom.

Question

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Erasmus Darwin proposed that all life developed from what he called a single living filament, which was modified in endless ways over millions of years. This was one of the earliest ideas of evolutionary change.

Charles Darwin's Grandfather Erasmus Darwin, an English Physician and Philosopher