Start with the Greeks bro

I like the idea of a whole bunch of monsters suddenly appearing and then just dying because they can't breathe or whatever

Holy... Darwin's full of shit

This is what I think is really cool about Greek philosophy. If you just read the conclusions of their arguments (about nature especially), they can seem kind of ridiculous. But if you actually follow the arguments and take it in the context of the time, it's hard to fault them for reaching those conclusions.
Starting with the Greeks is legit a meme, it's a lot easier and helpful for your understanding to read more recent thinkers and then go back to the Greeks

How is it on the Sophists? I've never read a good historical analysis of the sophists

Not really, that view is that there were already-formed human foetuses inside fish. There's no mention of adaptation or even ancestry.

An initial population of diverse characteristics getting trimmed down by nature?
That's pretty much how Darwin understood the origin of species

>Lysidike took her ability to read his mind as a matter of course, but his converse power was still unsettling. Time was only Anaximander ever gleaned what she thought with any proficiency; but he deduced her nature from what his oily smarts told him was the nature of a person, and only sardonically hinted at his mastery. Tlexictli didn’t even have to puzzle to catch her straight away, so the privacy she took for a metaphysical given in her youth broke up, and she felt her disagreements with her husband as dumb sensory pressures, like heat or cold. Their cross-purposes weren’t any easier for their transparency, but there was nothing to worry over – they’d conducted business together before becoming sentimental.

good one

that's fucking sick bro. an ancient Greek author using belly-of-the-beast metaphor, even with the ichthyic Jonah-whale imagery. how great is it that i'm peeping into the eternal human subconscious. pretty great i say.

>hurr Durr a guy living 2000 years before Darwin didn't get evolutionary thought down to a tee whatta retard