ABSTRACT
The ‘Biological Transition’ is a term used to identify and specify the processes of change that life forms go through in their environments. This transition has been a core concern for biologists and evolutionary scientists since the emergence of Darwinism. While others, notably the eighteenth-century German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), pointed to the importance of understanding biological change as a central principle of life, only with Darwin, Wallace and others in the mid-nineteenth century did this core principle achieve a due scientific framework and rigour. Whether they are called evolutionary biologists or theoretical or plant ecologists, all these scientists operated within the framework of evolutionary thinking and understanding of the interconnections of life as laid out in the grand systemic analysis of Darwin and his co-analysts.
