No Bodily Thing Was Born For

From Book IV of De Rerum Natura, in Lucretius's account of teleology and natural selection. He argues against the Aristotelian view that nature designs organs for purposes: eyes did not arise in order to see; rather, eyes arose, and organisms then found uses for them. This proto-evolutionary insight — that function follows structure, not the other way round — was remarkable for its time and anticipates the modern Darwinian rejection of design arguments. Charles Darwin read Lucretius and acknowledged him as an ancient anticipator of key evolutionary ideas.