It is the non-religious theory that species alive today are identical to those in the past.
Fixism believes that evolution does not happen and that species left already adapted to the environment, without undergoing any change.
Following this thought, the fixist theory is opposed to evolutionism, which is the idea that current species emerged from gradual transformations suffered by ancestral and extinct species.
The religious version of fixism is called creationism., but modernized religious interpreters teach creationism as a metaphorical wisdom and not in opposition to evolutionism.
The origin and history of fixism
The historical discovery of evolution was the overthrow of species fixism. From ancient times, Western intellectuals conceived of a stable and unchanging world that was created by God, with the same characteristics as today's condition.
Beginning in the early 17th century, traditional beliefs were shaken by a series of challenges to the constancy and stability of the world. Thus, the fixity of species was the last vestige of a stable and unchanging world of the ancients.
The work of Darwin, father of the theory of evolutionism, was challenging: the overthrow of an ancient belief in stability.
See also the meaning of evolutionism.
Charles Darwin, considered the father of evolutionary theory.
As the mid-nineteenth century approached, the idea of evolution posed a serious challenge to the then-popular view that species were unchanging accessories of nature.
The concept of Fixity of Species, was a perspective that European zoologists adopted to reflect Western religion and the story of creation as set out in the Bible.
A key feature of the scientific argument for "fixity" was the notion that the structure of each species was based on a model, an ideal shape.
The argument that zoologists and botanists used was that each being grew up as a product of the "perfect" acts of God's creation.
So, if each were made to be perfect, there would be no reason for anyone to change, and no possibility for them to. The idea of fixity, however, was not satisfactory to everyone.
See also the meaning of Darwinism.
Fixism X Evolutionism
Some geologists and zoologists thought that species could actually change over time. Indeed, the possibility that evolution was a fundamental feature of nature turned out to be the crucial question of nineteenth-century science.
One of the reasons this happened was that fossils were slowly being discovered, some in highly "imperfect" environments that didn't seem to follow the logic of creation.
This happened, for example, with the marine shells found buried in the tops of mountains, such as the Alps and the Himalayas. Darwin then allowed himself to wonder whether species were fixed or prone to evolution.
With the intense experience of five years of work, collecting and describing a vast number and variety of species, he has developed as a unique naturalist.
He came to see species differently than those who saw perfection in them. Darwin did not focus on the sameness of individuals; rather, he thought it important that individuals like you and me vary even though we belong to the same species.
He realized that variations could become the raw material for evolutionary change.
See also the meaning of:
- creationism;
- Natural selection;
- Evolution theory;
- Human evolution;
- Naturalism;
- Determinism.