User:SLUEvolution/sandbox
Chapters:
1. Evolution Overview
2. Scientific Method - Craig
-TERMINOLOGY: Fact, Hypothesis, Law, Theory
-Types of Logic (inductive, deductive)
-Hume: what’s his problem?
-Scientific Method (classic; 5-7 steps)
-What’s science? What’s NOT science?
-EXAMPLE: scientific method applied to an evolutionary question
3. Historical Context of Evolutionary Thought (make chronological)
Aristotle - Craig
Anaximander - Ryan
Anaximander should come first as he was about 200 years before Aristotle
Anaximander ( /əˌnæksɨˈmændər/; Greek: Ἀναξίμανδρος Anaximandros; c. 610 – c. 546 BC) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived in Miletus, a city of Ionia; Milet in modern Turkey. He belonged to the Milesian school and learned the teachings of his master Thales. He succeeded Thales and became the second master of that school where he counted Anaximenes and arguably, Pythagoras amongst his pupils.
Among a multitude of other realms of science pondered, Anaximander speculated about the beginnings and origin of animal life. Taking into account the existence of fossils, he claimed that animals sprang out of the sea long ago. The first animals were born trapped in a spiny bark, but as they got older, the bark would dry up and break.[40] As the early humidity evaporated, dry land emerged and, in time, humankind had to adapt. The 3rd century Roman writer Censorinus reports: Anaximander of Miletus considered that from warmed up water and earth emerged either fish or entirely fishlike animals. Inside these animals, men took form and embryos were held prisoners until puberty; only then, after these animals burst open, could men and women come out, now able to feed themselves.[41] Anaximander put forward the idea that humans had to spend part of this transition inside the mouths of big fish to protect themselves from the Earth's climate until they could come out in open air and lose their scales.[42] He thought that, considering humans' extended infancy, we could not have survived in the primeval world in the same manner we do presently. Even though he had no theory of natural selection, some people consider him as evolution's most ancient proponent. (The theory of an aquatic descent of man was re-conceived centuries later as the aquatic ape hypothesis.) These pre-Darwinian concepts may seem strange, considering modern knowledge and scientific methods, because they present complete explanations of the universe while using bold and hard-to-demonstrate hypotheses. However, they illustrate the beginning of a phenomenon sometimes called the "Greek miracle": men try to explain the nature of the world, not with the aid of myths or religion, but with material principles. This is the very principle of scientific thought, which was later advanced further by improved research methods.
John Ray - Jesse
John Ray (29 November 1627 – 17 January 1705) was an English naturalist, sometimes referred to as the father of English natural history. He published important works on botany, zoology, and natural theology. His classification of plants in his Historia Plantarum, was an important step towards modern taxonomy. Ray rejected the system of dichotomous division by which species were classified according to a pre-conceived, either/or type system, and instead classified plants according to similarities and differences that emerged from observation. Thus he advanced scientific empiricism against the deductive rationalism of the scholastics.
Ray was the first person to produce a biological definition of what a species is. This definition comes in the 1686 History of plants: "... no surer criterion for determining species has occurred to me than the distinguishing features that perpetuate themselves in propagation from seed. Thus, no matter what variations occur in the individuals or the species, if they spring from the seed of one and the same plant, they are accidental variations and not such as to distinguish a species... Animals likewise that differ specifically preserve their distinct species permanently; one species never springs from the seed of another nor vice versa".[7]
Usher - Laura
Linnaeus -Carl Linnaeus 1707-1778
Carl Linnaeus (Swedish original name Carl Nilsson Linnæus, 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), was a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of binomial nomenclature. He is known as the father of modern taxonomy, and is also considered one of the fathers of modern ecology.
The Linnaean system classified nature within a nested hierarchy, starting with three kingdoms. Kingdoms were divided into classes and they, in turn, into orders, and thence into genera (singular: genus), which were divided into Species (singular: species). Below the rank of species he sometimes recognized taxa of a lower (unnamed) rank; these have since acquired standardised names such as variety in botany and subspecies in zoology. Modern taxonomy includes a rank of family between order and genus that was not present in Linnaeus' original system.
While the underlying details concerning what are considered to be scientifically valid "observable characteristics" have changed with expanding knowledge (for example, DNA sequencing, unavailable in Linnaeus' time, has proven to be a tool of considerable utility for classifying living organisms and establishing their evolutionary relationships), the fundamental principle remains sound.
Major publications Systema Naturae(1735) , Species Plantarum(1737) , Genera Plantarum (1737), Philosophia Botanica(1751)
Buffon - Craig
Lamarck - Ryan
Cuvier - Jesse
Georges Chrétien Léopold Dagobert Cuvier or Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier (sources differ on his name) (August 23, 1769 – May 13, 1832), known as Georges Cuvier, was a French naturalist and zoologist. Cuvier was a major figure in natural sciences research in the early 19th century, and was instrumental in establishing the fields of comparative anatomy and paleontology through his work in comparing living animals with fossils. He is well known for establishing extinction as a fact, being the most influential proponent of catastrophism in geology in the early 19th century, and opposing the evolutionary theories of Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire.
Cuvier was critical of the evolutionary theories proposed by his contemporaries Lamarck and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, which involved the gradual transmutation of one form into another. He repeatedly emphasized that his extensive experience with fossil material indicated that one fossil form does not, as a rule, gradually change into a succeeding, distinct fossil form. The harshness of his criticism and the strength of his reputation continued to discourage naturalists from speculating about the gradual transmutation of species, right up until Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species more than two decades after Cuvier's death
At the time Cuvier presented his 1796 paper on living and fossil elephants, it was still widely believed that no species of animal had ever become extinct. Authorities such as Buffon had claimed that fossils found in Europe of animals such as the woolly rhinoceros and mammoth were remains of animals still living in the tropics (i.e. rhinoceros and elephants), which had shifted out of Europe and Asia as the earth became cooler. Cuvier's early work demonstrated conclusively that this was not the case.[25]
Malthus - Laura
Hutton - Justin
Lyell - Craig
Darwin - Ryan
Darwin invented evolution...or did he?
Wallace - Jesse
Alfred Russel Wallace, (8 January 1823 – 7 November 1913) was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist. He is best known for independently proposing a theory of evolution due to natural selection that prompted Charles Darwin to publish his own theory.
Wallace was strongly attracted to unconventional ideas. His advocacy of Spiritualism and his belief in a non-material origin for the higher mental faculties of humans strained his relationship with the scientific establishment, especially with other early proponents of evolution.
Unlike Darwin, Wallace began his career as a travelling naturalist already believing in the transmutation of species. The concept had been advocated by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Erasmus Darwin, and Robert Grant, among others.
Wallace deliberately planned some of his field work to test the hypothesis that under an evolutionary scenario closely related species should inhabit neighbouring territories.[46] During his work in the Amazon basin, he came to realise that geographical barriers—such as the Amazon and its major tributaries—often separated the ranges of closely allied species.
In February 1855, while working in the state of Sarawak on the island of Borneo, Wallace wrote "On the Law which has Regulated the Introduction of New Species". In this paper, he discussed observations regarding the geographic and geologic distribution of both living and fossil species, what would become known as biogeography. His conclusion that "Every species has come into existence coincident both in space and time with a closely allied species" has come to be known as the "Sarawak Law".
Wallace trusted Darwin's opinion on the matter and sent him his February 1858 essay, "On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type", with the request that Darwin would review it and pass it on to Charles Lyell if he thought it worthwhile
While Wallace's essay did not employ Darwin's term "natural selection", it did outline the mechanics of an evolutionary divergence of species from similar ones due to environmental pressures. Darwin emphasised competition between individuals of the same species to survive and reproduce, whereas Wallace emphasised environmental pressures on varieties and species forcing them to become adapted to their local environment.
After the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, Wallace became one of its staunchest defenders.
In many accounts of the development of evolutionary theory, Wallace is mentioned only in passing as simply being the stimulus to the publication of Darwin's own theory.[96] In reality, Wallace developed his own distinct evolutionary views which diverged from Darwin's, and was considered by many (especially Darwin) to be a leading thinker on evolution in his day, whose ideas could not be ignored.
Huxley - Justin
Pastuer - Laura
Mendel - Justin
Modern Synthesis
Weismann - Laura
De Vries - Jesse
Hugo Marie de Vries (February 16, 1848, Haarlem – May 21, 1935, Lunteren) was a Dutch botanist and one of the first geneticists. He is known chiefly for suggesting the concept of genes, rediscovering the laws of heredity in the 1890s while unaware of Gregor Mendel's work, for introducing the term "mutation", and for developing a mutation theory of evolution.
In 1889, De Vries published his book Intracellular Pangenesis,[4] in which, based on a modified version of Charles Darwin's theory of Pangenesis of 1868, he postulated that different characters have different hereditary carriers. He specifically postulated that inheritance of specific traits in organisms comes in particles. He called these units pangenes, a term 20 years later to be shortened to genes by Wilhelm Johannsen.
To support his theory of pangenes, which was not widely noticed at the time, De Vries conducted a series of experiments hybridising varieties of multiple plant species in the 1890s. Unaware of Mendel's work, De Vries used the laws of dominance and recessiveness, segregation, and independent assortment to explain the 3:1 ratio of phenotypes in the second generation
In his own time, De Vries was best known for his mutation theory. In 1886 he had discovered new forms among a display of the evening primrose (Oenothera lamarckiana) growing wild in a meadow. Taking seeds from these, he found that they produced many new varieties in his experimental gardens; he introduced the term mutations for these suddenly appearing variations. In his two-volume publication The Mutation Theory (1900–1903) he postulated that evolution, especially the origin of species, might occur more frequently with such large-scale changes than via Darwinian gradualism, basically suggesting a form of saltationism. De Vries's theory was one of the chief contenders for the explanation of how evolution worked, leading, for example,Thomas Hunt Morgan to study mutations in the fruit fly, until the modern evolutionary synthesis became the dominant model in the 1930s
Fisher - Craig
Haldane - Ryan John Burdon Sanderson Haldane FRS (5 November 1892 – 1 December 1964[1]), known as Jack (but who used 'J.B.S.' in his printed works), was a British-born geneticist and evolutionary biologist generally credited with a central role in the development of neo-Darwinian thinking. He was also one of the founders (along with Ronald Fisher and Sewall Wright) of population genetics.
Haldane made many contributions to human genetics. His greatest contribution was in a series of ten papers on "A Mathematical Theory of Natural and Artificial Selection", which was a major series of papers on the mathematical theory of natural selection. It treated many major cases for the first time, showing the direction and rates of changes of gene frequencies. It also pioneered in investigating the interaction of natural selection with mutation and with migration. Haldane's book, The Causes of Evolution (1932) was a component of what came to be known as the "modern evolutionary synthesis", re-establishing natural selection as the premier mechanism of evolution by explaining it in terms of the mathematical consequences of Mendelian genetics. His contributions to theoretical population genetics and statistical human genetics included the first methods using maximum likelihood for estimation of human linkage maps, and pioneering methods for estimating human mutation rates. His was the first to calculate the mutational load caused by recurring mutations at a gene locus, and to introduce the idea of a "cost of natural selection".
He is famous for the (possibly apocryphal) response that he gave when some theologians asked him what could be inferred about the mind of the Creator from the works of His Creation: "An inordinate fondness for beetles."[12] This is in reference to there being over 400,000 known species of beetles in the world, and that this represents 40% of all known insect species (at the time of the statement, it was over half of all known insect species)
Wright - Jesse
Sewall Green Wright (December 21, 1889 – March 3, 1988) was an American geneticist known for his influential work on evolutionary theory. With R. A. Fisher and J.B.S. Haldane, he was a founder of theoretical population genetics. He is the discoverer of the inbreeding coefficient and of methods of computing it in pedigrees. He extended this work to populations, computing the amount of inbreeding of members of populations as a result of random genetic drift, and he and Fisher pioneered methods for computing the distribution of gene frequencies among populations as a result of the interaction of natural selection, mutation, migration and genetic drift.
His papers on inbreeding, mating systems, and genetic drift make him a principal founder of theoretical population genetics. Wright was the inventor/discoverer of the inbreeding coefficient and F-statistics, standard tools in population genetics. He was the chief developer of the mathematical theory of genetic drift, which is sometimes known as the Sewall Wright effect, cumulative stochastic changes in gene frequencies that arise from random births, deaths, and Mendelian segregations in reproduction. In this work he also introduced the concept of effective population size. Wright was convinced that the interaction of genetic drift and the other evolutionary forces was important in the process of adaptation.
He described the relationship between genotype or phenotype and fitness as fitness surfaces or fitness landscapes. On these landscapes mean population fitness was the height, plotted against horizontal axes representing the allele frequencies or the average phenotypes of the population. Natural selection would lead to a population climbing the nearest peak, while genetic drift would cause random wandering.
Wright's explanation for stasis was that organisms come to occupy adaptive peaks. In order to evolve to another, higher peak, the species would first have to pass through a valley of maladaptive intermediate stages. This could happen by genetic drift if the population is small enough. If a species was divided into small populations, some could find higher peaks. If there was some gene flow between the populations, these adaptations could spread to the rest of the species. This was Wright's shifting balance theory of evolution. There has been much skepticism among evolutionary biologists as to whether these rather delicate conditions hold often in natural populations. Wright had a long standing and bitter debate about this with R. A. Fisher, who felt that most populations in nature were too large for these effects of genetic drift to be important.
Wright and Fisher, along with J.B.S. Haldane, were the key figures in the modern synthesis that brought genetics and evolution together. Their work was essential to the contributions of Dobzhansky, Mayr, Simpson, Julian Huxley, and Stebbins. The modern synthesis was the most important development in evolutionary biology after Darwin.
Stebbins - Laura
Dobzhansky - Justin
Mayr - Craig
Simpson - Ryan
Homer Simpson had 139 references; this Simpson only had 14
George Gaylord Simpson (June 16, 1902 – October 6, 1984) was an American paleontologist. Simpson was perhaps the most influential paleontologist of the twentieth century, and a major participant in the modern evolutionary synthesis, contributing Tempo and mode in evolution (1944), The meaning of evolution (1949) and The major features of evolution (1953).
Simpson's Tempo and Mode attempted to draw out several distinct generalizations: That evolution's tempo can impart information about its mode. That multiple tempos can be found in the fossil record (bradytelic, tachytelic, horotelic). That the facts of paleontology are consistent with the genetical theory of natural selection. Moreover, that theories such as orthogenesis, Lamarckism, mutation pressures, and macromutations are either false or play little to no role. Most evolution—"nine-tenths"—occurs by the steady phyletic transformation of whole lineages (anagenesis). In contrast to Ernst Mayr's interpretation of speciation by splitting, particularly allopatric and peripatric speciation. The lack of evidence for evolutionary transitions in the fossil record is best accounted for, first, by the poorness of the geological record, and secondly as a consequence of quantum evolution (which is responsible for "the origin taxonomic units of relatively high rank, such as families, orders, and classes."). Quantum evolution built upon Sewall Wright's theory of random genetic drift.