chapter 15 evolution

Question 1

Carolus Linnaeus 1

mid 18

Answer 1

• Jobs:
  Botanist, physician, and zoologist.
• Achievement:
  + created the binomial nomenclature ( 2 part name )
  + Believe in special creation:
  a) Special creation—each species had an “ideal” structure and function; and
  b) Fixity of species—each species had a place on the ladder of life.
  + Each species had a place in a ladder of life.
  +Develop a system of classification ( taxonomy) and believe species can be arranged in an order of increasing complexity.

Question 2

Georges de Buffon 2

mid 18

Answer 2

• Jobs:
  naturalist.
• Achievement:
  + Wrote 44 volumes about all plants and animals
  + Also provided evidence of descent with modification
  => influences of the environment, migration, geographical isolation, and the struggle for existence
  + believe in special creation and the fixity of species.

Question 3

Erasmus Darwin 3

mid 18

Answer 3

-Jobs:
a physician and a naturalist
- Achievement:
+ suggested the possibility of common family background (descent)
+ Based conclusion on:
1. change undergone by animal during development
2. artificial selection by human
3. vestigial structure: structures that were presented with the ancestor but has reduced and serve no function to the descendant.

Question 4

George Cuvier

late 18 and early 19

Answer 4

-Job:
French vertebrate zoologist
- Achievement:
+ Founded the science of paleontology- the study of fossil.
+ Founded fossils on different layers, finding out that fossils variations changed between layers.
+ Advocate of special creation and fixity of species.

+ Proposed series of catastrophe and repopulation to explain fossil record.
=> Proposed “catastrophism”: catastrophic extinction occurred -> repopulation of species through time -> give an appearance of change through time

Question 5

Lamarck

late 18 and early 19

Answer 5

-Job:
Naturalist biologist
- Achievement:
“Inheritance of acquired characteristic” organisms become adapted to their environment -> pass adaptations to their offsprings.
-> But he fail due to him failing to prove that phenotypic changes do not result in genetic changes that can be passed down

Question 6

James Hutton

late 18 and early 19

Answer 6

-Job:
geologist
- Achievement:
Geological changes can be accounted for by a slow natural process.
-> geological forces operate slowly -> Earth must be older than few thousands years old
=> theory of gradualism.

Question 7

Charles Lyell

late 18 and early 19

Answer 7

• Jobs:
  + British lawyer and the foremost geologist
  Earth was subject to slow but continuous geological processes at a uniform rate

=> Earth changes suggest that species can also change
=> theory of uniformitarianism

Question 8

Thomas Malthus

late 18 and early 19

Answer 8

economist
Published an essay on the principle of population
Size of human population was limited by the quantity of resources available
Famine, wars, epidemics -> result of overpopulation and limited resources
=> Darwin used to formulate the idea of natural selection.