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Charles Darwin (1809–1882) Naturalist Charles Darwin had a profound influence on the early development of psychology. Darwin was not the first scientist to propose that complex organisms evolved from simpler species (Caton, 2007). However, Darwin’s book, On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, gathered evidence from many different scientific fields to present a compelling account of evolution through the mechanism of natural selection. Darwin’s ideas have had a lasting impact on scientific thought (Dickins, 2011; Pagel, 2009).