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I don't know if it is that different. Darwin and Wallace still came up with the same radical theory within decades of one another, quite a coincidence. The natural explanation is that the theory was a result of other human developments making their observations possible.

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I agree. For reference, the underlying cause of the Darwin and Wallace coincidence was the establishment of modern geology by Hutton (which established the earth was old and naturally mutable), along with the large-scale collection of biological observations by naturalists such as Darwin and Wallace.

Fun unrelated Darwin fact: he's the person who figured out the geology of how and why coral reefs and atolls form where they do.

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