Dana, I think there's a conflation of ideas here. Transmutation arose with Pierre Maupertuis in 1745. This is the notion that a species is a transmuted form of an earlier species. This is, however, not common descent as such. CD implies that biodiversity increases over time - that species multiply. The Lamarckian/Geoffroyan/Erasmian view was merely that species transmuted. Lamarck held that each lineage arose independently and that, at best, there were alternate pathways a lineage might follow (in other words, the diagram in Philosophie Zoologique is like a road map, rather than a phylogeny, which species lineages can follow).
Buffon's view is only CD if you allow very limited transmutation - he himself saw it as a "degradation" from the "primary stock" due to the local influences of soil and habitat. His "natural species" were roughly at the family level in modern Linnaean taxonomy.
This means that transmutation is widely adopted from 1745-1858, but common descent is not. It is, I believe, Darwin's primary original contribution, and is a response to the nested hierarchy of contemporary taxonomy. There's a limited common descent idea also in Erasmus Darwin, but not a universal account of species diversification.
atad[]
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.talk.creationism/browse_frm/thread/17cf72747e99332e#
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Louis_Maupertuis Could one not say that, in the fortuitous combinations of the productions of nature, as there must be some characterized by a certain relation of fitness which are able to subsist, it is not to be wondered at that this fitness is present in all the species that are currently in existence? Chance, one would say, produced an innumerable multitude of individuals; a small number found themselves constructed in such a manner that the parts of the animal were able to satisfy its needs; in another infinitely greater number, there was neither fitness nor order: all of these latter have perished. Animals lacking a mouth could not live; others lacking reproductive organs could not perpetuate themselves... The species we see today are but the smallest part of what blind destiny has produced...
rephrase1: .. in the combinations of the productions of nature, as there must be some characterized by a certain relation of fitness which are able to subsist, it is not to be wondered at that this fitness is present in all the species that are currently in existence? Chance produced individuals; a number found themselves constructed in such a manner that the parts of the animal were able to satisfy its needs; in another infinitely greater number, there was neither fitness nor order: all of these latter have perished. Animals lacking a mouth could not live; others lacking reproductive organs could not perpetuate themselves... The species we see today are but the smallest part of what blind destiny has produced...
rephrase2: Chance produced individuals; some in such a manner that the parts of the animal were able to satisfy its needs; in others there was no order: all of these latter have perished. Animals lacking a mouth could not live; others lacking reproductive organs could not perpetuate themselves... The species we see today are but the smallest part of what blind destiny has produced...
rephrase3: Chance produced individuals; some in such a manner that the parts of the animal were able to satisfy its needs; in others there was no order: all of these latter have perished. Animals lacking a mouth could not live... The species we see today are but the smallest part of what blind destiny has produced...
rephrase4: Chance produced individuals; some in such a manner that the parts of the animal were able to satisfy its needs; in others there was no order and thus they perished. For example an animal lacking a mouth could not live... The species we see today are but the smallest part of what blind destiny has produced...
rephrase5: Chance produced individuals; some in such a manner that the parts of the animal were able to satisfy its needs; in others there was no order and thus they perished. For example an animal lacking a mouth could not live... The species we see today are but the smallest part of what blind destiny has produced...
rephrase6:
Chance produced individuals; some in such a manner that ordered parts of the animal enabled it to survive in others there was no order and thus they perished. For example an animal lacking a mouth could not live... The species we see today are but the smallest part of what blind destiny has produced...
rephrase7: Chance produced individuals that survived and thus there was order in their parts in others there was no order and they perished. For example an animal lacking a mouth could not live... The species we see today are but the smallest part of what blind destiny has produced...
rephrase8: Chance produced many individuals those that survived had an internal order and those that perished didn't. For example an animal lacking a mouth could not live... The species we see today are but the smallest part of what blind destiny has produced...
rephrase9: Chance produced many individuals those that survived had an internal order and those that perished didn't. The species we see today are but the smallest part of this chance process much more have died because they weren't fitted to their environment.
rephrase10: Chance produced many individuals those that survived had an internal order and those that perished didn't.
rephrase11: Chance produced many individuals those that survived had an internal FITNESS and those that perished didn't.
rephrase12: There is some mechanism out there by which individuals survived, they had an internal FITNESS and those that perished didn't.
Question:
Other than noting the individuals survived how was their fitness measured ?