Chapter 6

Question 1

According to Darwin, during his time as a student at Cambridge University the extra-curricular activity that gave him the most pleasure was

Answer 1

collecting beetles.

Question 2

During his time aboard the Beagle Darwin’s nickname was

Answer 2

“Philosopher.”

Question 3

What was the most revolutionary aspect of Darwin’s theory as published in his 1859 The Origin of Species?

Answer 3

the notion of natural selection as the mechanism for evolution

Question 4

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, as presented in his The Origin of Species, presupposed the existence of

Answer 4

inheritable small individual differences.

Question 5

Prior to becoming a naturalist, Darwin seriously contemplated careers in which of the following fields?

Answer 5

medicine and the clergy

Question 6

The English geologist Charles Lyell promoted and supported which geological theory?

Answer 6

uniformitarianism

Question 7

Uniformitarianism and catastrophism were opposing theories from the nineteenth century concerning

Answer 7

the processes by which the major natural features of the earth were created.

Question 8

__________’s widely accepted calculation of the earth’s age as just 6,000 years old lent support to the theory of __________.

Answer 8

James Ussher; catastrophism

Question 9

What was a major factor that converted Darwin to the uniformitarian viewpoint during his Beagle voyage?

Answer 9

the presence of fossilized seashells high in the mountains

Question 10

While on his Beagle voyage, Darwin made important observations, which eventually helped lead to his evolutionary theory. These include all the following EXCEPT

Answer 10

a species of short-necked giraffes in Brazil.

Question 11

While on his Beagle voyage, Darwin’s biological discoveries led him to adopt two general lines of thinking that would prove important to the development of his theory of evolution. These two lines of thinking emphasized the geographical distributions of species and the

Answer 11

adaptive functions of animals’ distinctive characteristics.

Question 12

Although Darwin is best known for his theory of evolution by natural selection and his biological expertise, he also made important contributions to which field?

Answer 12

geology

Question 13

The philosopher and theologian William Paley is best remembered for promoting which idea?

Answer 13

the argument from design

Question 14

According to philosopher and theologian __________, studying the structure of an eye was “a cure for atheism.”

Answer 14

John Stevens Henslow

Question 15

Which of the following provided a crucial insight that helped Darwin develop his theory of evolution by natural selection following his reading of it “for amusement”?

Answer 15

Thomas Malthus on population

Question 16

Robert FitzRoy became an important figure in Darwin’s life because he

Answer 16

took Darwin on as his Beagle dining companion and ship naturalist.

Question 17

Adam Sedgwick and John Stevens Henslow influenced young Darwin in which of the following ways?

Answer 17

They taught him botany and geology at Cambridge

Question 18

Both __________ and __________ helped bring the idea of evolved species to scientific awareness, but without suggesting a plausible mechanism by which evolution could occur.

Answer 18

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck; Erasmus Darwin

Question 19

Zoologist __________ proposed that species evolve as a result of the inheritance of physical characteristics acquired during an organism’s lifetime, such as through the use or disuse of specific body parts.

Answer 19

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

Question 20

A British political economist and demographer whose writings on population growth influenced Charles Darwin’s development of the theory of evolution by natural selection was

Answer 20

Thomas Malthus.

Question 21

Darwin delayed publishing The Origin of Species for 18 years because

Answer 21

he believed the theory would require a massive amount of supporting evidence be-fore being taken seriously.

Question 22

After years of delay, Darwin made public his theory of evolution because he

Answer 22

discovered that another naturalist had arrived at the same theory.

Question 23

The theory of evolution by natural selection did not cause a sensation until

Answer 23

Darwin laid out ample evidence for the theory in The Origin of Species.

Question 24

__________ became known as “Darwin’s Bulldog” and staunchly supported Darwin’s theory in a celebrated 1860 debate with the Bishop of Oxford.

Answer 24

Thomas H. Huxley

Question 25

In the years immediately after he made the theory of evolution public, Darwin’s theory received support from two new scientific discoveries: an ancient gorilla with features previously thought to be exclusively human and

Answer 25

fossil remains of an ancient bird with “fingers” on its wings.

Question 26

Darwin’s writings about human psychology issues included all of the following subjects EXCEPT

Answer 26

consciousness and will.

Question 27

Darwin discussed human psychology in depth in all of the following publications EXCEPT

Answer 27

On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Fa-voured Races in the Struggle for Life

Question 28

In Darwin’s 1871 book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, he theorized that

Answer 28

human beings have descended from animal ancestors.

Question 29

Unlike Descartes, Darwin argued that animals demonstrate at least the rudiments of

Answer 29

reason.

Question 30

A Victorian-era theory holding that the mainly non-European, “savage” peoples represented a distinctly different species of being was known as

Answer 30

polygenesis.

Question 31

Darwin posited a theory of “sexual selection” to help account for

Answer 31

the evolution of qualities such as beauty, which lacked obvious “adaptive” value.

Question 32

Darwin’s view that males surpass females intellectually while females are stronger than men in the moral virtues is sometimes called the

Answer 32

complementarity hypothesis.

Question 33

When it came to the intelligence of men and women Darwin believed

Answer 33

the most intelligent men are smarter than the most intelligent women.

Question 34

Darwin’s so-called “variation hypothesis” suggests that

Answer 34

males have been more modified by evolution and show more variation than fe-males.

Question 35

One of the purposes of Darwin’s book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, was to show that

Answer 35

many human reactions with no obvious survival or utilitarian value today did have an adaptive purpose in the evolutionary past.

Question 36

In Darwin’s “Biographical Sketch of an Infant” he reported on

Answer 36

the development of his own child’s reflexes, emotions, and earliest moral development.

Question 37

In Darwin’s “Biographical Sketch of an Infant” he suggested that perhaps an individual’s development proceeds along roughly the same lines as the previous evolution of the species to which it belongs. This idea became summarized by the term

Answer 37

ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.

Question 38

__________ was a younger friend and follower of Darwin’s who used Darwin’s notes on animal behavior in helping to found the new field of comparative psychology.

Answer 38

George Romanes

Question 39

Alfred Russel Wallace is known for which of the following?

Answer 39

independently developing the theory of evolution by natural selection and having a paper on it read jointly with one by Darwin in 1858

Question 40

The idea that political systems and societies evolve and “progress” due to unbridled competition and “the survival of the fittest” is often referred to as

Answer 40

social Darwinism.

Question 41

Herbert Spencer is known for being all of the following EXCEPT as a promotor of

Answer 41

sociobiology.

Question 42

The study of the similarities and differences in the psychological functions of various animals, in order to better understanding human functioning, is known as

Answer 42

comparative psychology.

Question 43

Support for social Darwinism in the United States subsided after the

Answer 43

economic collapse of the late 1920s and the subsequent Great Depression.

Question 44

A recently developed approach hypothesizing that the unit of evolution is the individual gene rather than the individual organism or the group is called

Answer 44

sociobiology.

Question 45

A recently developed subdiscipline that analyzes psychological functions in terms of independently evolved “modules” and their possible adaptive value in the distant evolutionary past is called

Answer 45

evolutionary psychology.