Actually, the nested arrangement of life was recognized long before Darwin. Starting with the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1635, biologists began classifying animals and plants, discovering that they consistently fell into what was called a “natural” classification. Strikingly, different biologists came up with nearly identical groupings. This means that these groupings are not subjective artifacts of a human need to classify, but tell us something real and fundamental about nature. But nobody knew what that something was until Darwin came along and showed that the nested arrangement of
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This is interesting. The author is trying to make the argument that because we see similarties in different creatures, and we can easily and objectively classify creatures in those categories, that proves evolution because evolution would predict this be true. This again is cyclical reasoning. Evolution was concocted because this is exactly what is observed in nature. The idea of evolution was created because a combination of observation of nature (similar creatures) and fantasy (creatures ability to morph). Evolution didn't predict this - evolution is a product of this obvious fact. It's like watching a horserace studying the winning horse and why it won, then going back and saying that you predicted the winner. You only studied the horse in the first place because they won. In the same way, the only reason evolution is a theory is because Darwin observed the similarities between animals (as did many others) and noticed change within finches and publicised it. You can't use variables that were inputs into a calculation as an output (or prediction) of the calculation. Again, this is deceptive and a stretch for evidence.
