Download The men behind evolution…

The men behind evolution…
PLEASE DO NOT WRITE ON THESE SHEETS!!!
Read the following clips of articles below and answer the questions following each on your answer
sheet. These will serve as your notes (which you will be responsible for knowing)
James Hutton (1726–1797), a Scottish farmer and naturalist, is known as the founder of modern
geology. He was a great observer of the world around him. More importantly, he made carefully
reasoned geological arguments. Hutton came to believe that the Earth was perpetually being formed;
for example, molten material is forced up into mountains, eroded, and then eroded sediments are
washed away. He recognized that the history of the Earth could be determined by understanding how
processes such as erosion and sedimentation work in the present day. His ideas and approach to
studying the Earth established geology as a proper science.
In the late eighteenth century, when Hutton was carefully examining the rocks, it was generally
believed that Earth had come into creation only around six thousand years earlier (on October 22,
4004 B.C., to be precise, according to the seventeenth century scholarly analysis of the Bible by
Archbishop James Ussher of Ireland), and that fossils were the remains of animals that had perished
during the Biblical flood. As for the structure of the Earth, “natural philosophers” agreed that much
bedrock consisted of long, parallel layers which occurred at various angles, and that sediments
deposited by water were compressed to form stone. Hutton perceived that this sedimentation takes
place so slowly that even the oldest rocks are made up of, in his words, “materials furnished from the
ruins of former continents.” The reverse process occurs when rock exposed to the atmosphere
erodes and decays. He called this coupling of destruction and renewal the “great geological cycle,”
and realized that it had been completed innumerable times.
(http://www.amnh.org/education/resources/rfl/web/essaybooks/earth/p_hutton.html)
Charles Lyell (1797-1875)
“Lyell is most famous for his great geological opus: The Principles of Geology: Being an Attempt to
Explain the Former Changes of the Earth's Surface, by Reference to Causes now in Operation (3 vols
1830-33).
Lyell advocated what William Whewell later dubbed an uniformitarian view of geology. This assumed
first of all the constancy of natural laws (except as regarded the origin of new species which was left
rather vague). The kinds of causes which affected the earth in the past must be assumed to have
been exactly those we see in operation today (such as erosion, sediment deposition, volcanic action,
earthquakes etc.) Furthermore, these causes must be assumed to have been of the same intensity in
the past as we observe them today. To demonstrate that gradual processes could be responsible for
great changes, Lyell used an engraving of the temple at Serapis as his frontispiece. (example) The
temple had, during the course of human history, been above sea level, then for a long period partially
submerged, and again was above sea level as attested by the dark bands of damage caused by
waterborne life across the columns.” (http://www.victorianweb.org/science/lyell.html)
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829)
What was the mechanism for evolution? ”Lamarckism" or "Lamarckianism" is now often used in a
rather derogatory sense to refer to the theory that acquired traits can be inherited. What Lamarck
actually believed was more complex: organisms are not passively altered by their environment, as his
colleague Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire thought. Instead, a change in the environment causes changes in the
needs of organisms living in that environment, which in turn causes changes in their behavior. Altered
behavior leads to greater or lesser use of a given structure or organ; use would cause the structure to
increase in size over several generations, whereas disuse would cause it to shrink or even disappear.
This rule -- that use or disuse causes structures to enlarge or shrink -- Lamarck called the "First Law"
in his book Philosophie zoologique. Lamarck's "Second Law" stated that all such changes were
heritable. The result of these laws was the continuous, gradual change of all organisms, as they
became adapted to their environments; the physiological needs of organisms, created by their
interactions with the environment, drive Lamarckian evolution.
(http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/lamarck.html)
Thomas Malthus (1766-1834)
This often quoted passage reflects the significance Darwin affords Malthus in formulating his theory of
Natural Selection. What "struck" Darwin in Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) was Malthus's
observation that in nature plants and animals produce far more offspring than can survive, and that
Man too is capable of overproducing if left unchecked. Malthus concluded that unless family size was
regulated, man's misery of famine would become globally epidemic and eventually consume Man.
Malthus' view that poverty and famine were natural outcomes of population growth and food supply
was not popular among social reformers who believed that with proper social structures, all ills of man
could be eradicated.
Although Malthus thought famine and poverty natural outcomes, the ultimate reason for those
outcomes was divine institution. He believed that such natural outcomes were God's way of
preventing man from being lazy. Both Darwin and Wallace independently arrived at similar theories of
Natural Selection after reading Malthus. Unlike Malthus, they framed his principle in purely natural
terms both in outcome and in ultimate reason. By so doing, they extended Malthus' logic further than
Malthus himself could ever take it. They realized that producing more offspring than can survive
establishes a competitive environment among siblings, and that the variation among siblings would
produce some individuals with a slightly greater chance of survival.
(http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/malthus.html)
Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913)
Apart from playing the role of collector and explorer, Wallace had an overriding reason for coming to
the Amazon: to investigate the causes of organic evolution…Lyell's work (Principles of Geolog) had
become the bible of uniformitarianism [for Wallace], and instilled in [him] an appreciation of how longterm change could be effected through the operation of slow, ongoing processes…
Wallace…very quickly recognized how he might go about demonstrating that evolution did in fact take
place: by tracing out, over time and space, the geographical/geological records of individual
phylogenies. He soon focused on two particular elements of this study: (1) the way geography limited
or facilitated the extension of species range, and (2) how ecological station seemed to influence the
shaping of adaptations more than did closeness of affinity with other forms. His investigation of these
subjects included efforts to come to grips with the region's ornithology, entomology, primatology,
ichthyology, botany, and physical geography, but in the end he was unable to come to any conclusion
about the actual mechanism of evolutionary change…
With no other prospects immediately apparent, Wallace decided to carry on with his collecting
activities. He chose the Indonesian Archipelago for his next base of operations…He arrived in
Singapore on 20 April 1854, to begin what would turn out to be the defining period of his life.
Wallace's name is now inextricably linked with his travels in the Indonesian region. He spent nearly
eight full years there; during that period he undertook about seventy different expeditions resulting in
a combined total of around 14,000 miles of travel. He visited every important island in the archipelago
at least once, and several on multiple occasions. His collecting efforts produced the astonishing total
of 125,660 specimens, including more than a thousand species new to science…
Three years earlier he had still been cogitating on the causes of organic evolution when an article
by another naturalist prompted him to write and publish the essay 'On the Law Which Has Regulated
the Introduction of New Species', a theoretical work that all but stated outright Wallace's belief in
evolution…
Now that he had a provisional model of the relation of biogeography to organic change, Wallace
quickly applied the related concepts in two further studies, published in 1856 and 1857. In February of
1858, while suffering from an attack of malaria...Wallace suddenly, and rather unexpectedly,
connected the ideas of Thomas Malthus on the limits to population growth to a mechanism that might
ensure long-term organic change. This was the concept of the "survival of the fittest," in which those
individual organisms that are best adapted to their local surroundings are seen to have a better
chance of surviving, and thus of differentially passing along their traits to progeny. Excited over his
discovery, Wallace penned an essay on the subject as soon as he was well enough to do so, and
sent it off to Darwin…Darwin, as the now well-known story goes, had been entertaining very similar
ideas for going on twenty years, and now a threat to his priority on the subject loomed. He contacted
Lyell to plead for advice on how to meet what just about anyone would have to admit was a very
awkward situation. Lyell and Joseph Hooker, a prominent botanist and another of Darwin's close
friends, decided to present Wallace's essay, along with some unpublished fragments from Darwin's
writings on the subject, to the next meeting of the Linnean Society. This took place on 1 July 1858,
without obtaining Wallace's permission first (he was contacted only after the fact).
(http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/index1.htm)
Charles Robert Darwin was born on February 12, 1809 in Shrewsbury, England... Darwin was the
British naturalist who became famous for his theories of evolution and natural selection. Like several
scientists before him, Darwin believed all the life on earth evolved (developed gradually) over millions
of years from a few common ancestors.
From 1831 to 1836 Darwin served as naturalist aboard the H.M.S. Beagle on a British science
expedition around the world. In South America Darwin found fossils of extinct animals that were
similar to modern species. On the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific Ocean he noticed many variations
among plants and animals of the same general type as those in South America. The expedition
visited places around the world, and Darwin studied plants and animals everywhere he went,
collecting specimens for further study.
Upon his return to London Darwin conducted thorough research of his notes and specimens. Out of
this study grew several related theories: one, evolution did occur; two, evolutionary change was
gradual, requiring thousands to millions of years; three, the primary mechanism for evolution was a
process called natural selection; and four, the millions of species alive today arose from a single
original life form through a branching process called “speciation.”
Darwin's theory of evolutionary selection holds that variation within species occurs randomly and that
the survival or extinction of each organism is determined by that organism's ability to adapt to its
environment. He set these theories forth in his book called, On the Origin of Species by Means of
Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859) or “The
Origin of Species” for short. After publication of Origin of Species, Darwin continued to write on
botany, geology, and zoology until his death in 1882. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.
(http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96feb/darwin.html)
Now, there appears to be a common misconception regarding the religious views of Charles Darwin.
First of all, Darwin was never an atheist. While it is true that in his later years he was not religious to
any extent, he never entirely discounted the existence of god. In his Autobiography, Darwin says he
was a theist by the time he wrote "Origin of Species" and that he believed in an intelligent first cause.
However, it was his view that the nature of this "first cause" was something beyond man's vision. The
death of his daughter, Annie, on 23 April 1851 was a crushing blow to his religious beliefs, and from
this time forward he stopped attending church with his family. It was only after a very long and slow
process spanning his entire life that Darwin came to be an agnostic.
How did Charles Darwin resolve the supposed conflict between science and religion? Well, for Darwin
there never was much of a conflict. He saw religion as a strictly personal matter and regarded science
as completely separate from religion. In general, he thought that the question of god's existence was
outside the scope of scientific inquiry. However, and this may seem contradictory, he did think that his
theory of evolution was compatible with a belief in god, but did not think that the natural laws of
evolution imply a purposeful god created them.
(http://www.aboutdarwin.com/darwin/WhoWas.html)