What is Evolution?

   Evolution may be defined as a process in which different forms are produced or developed orderly in a system. It is concerned with the continuous progress in a system that bring complexity in simplicity, heterogeneity in homogeneity and certainty in uncertainty. In other words, evolution reveals changes in a system in course of time, which can be shown stage after stage or period after period in continuous sequence from past to present. It never deals with change of system, as revolution attempts to do, but it discusses change in a system. The direction of evolution is always from simple to complex, similarity to dissimilarity and indefinite to definite. This can be shown by establishing stages of development in which simple thing developed into a complex one and it includes very gradual process.   Evolutionists have used evolution as a methodology to reconstruct the history of mankind from past to present. Thus, it can also be defined as a methodology or approach which compares the present to past and establishes sequences of development.   Herbert Spencer, a British sociologist and anthropologist, who was a follower of evolutionary approach, has defined evolution as follows:-

  Evolution is integrated of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion           during which matter passes from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to         definite coherent heterogeneity (Spencer, 1906:396).  

The principal of evolution is applicable to both biological and cultural spheres.

  

Evolution of mankind