Did Darwin Do It All?

Nicolle Pagliacci

Part 1.

1. Erasmus Darwin- (1731-1802)

Charles Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, was one of the leading intellectuals of eighteenth century England, a man with a lot of interests and goals. Erasmus Darwin was a respected physician, a well known poet, philosopher, botanist, and naturalist. He was a naturalist that put together one of the first formal theories of Evolution in Zoonomia, or, The Laws of Organic Life (1794-1796). He also presented his evolutionary ideas in verse in particular in the published poem The Temple of Nature. He did not come up with natural selection but he did discuss ideas that his grandson elaborated on sixty years later, such as how life evolved from a single common ancestor, forming "one living filament". Erasmus had a hard time with the question of how one species could evolve into another. His ideas on evolution were similar to Lamarck's ideas on evolution. Erasmus Darwin also talked about how competition and sexual selection could cause changes in living things: "The final course of this contest among males seems to be, that the strongest and most active animal should propagate the species which should thus be improved" He arrived at his conclusions using an integrative method: he used his observations of domesticated animals, the behavior of wildlife, and he integrated his heavy knowledge of many different fields, such as paleontology, biogeography, systematics, embryology, and comparative anatomy.

2. Jean Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829)

Scientific theories were largely ignored or attacked during his lifetime. Lamarck never won the acceptance and esteem of his colleagues Buffon and Cuvier. The name Lamarck is associated merely with a harmed theory of heredity, the "inheritance of acquired traits. Evolutionists like Charles Darwin, Lyell, Haeckel, and other early evolutionists acknowledged him as a great zoologist and as a forerunner of evolution. Darwin noted this about him, “Lamarck was the first man whose conclusions on the subject excited much attention. This justly celebrated naturalist first published his views in 1801. . . he first did the eminent service of arousing attention to the probability of all changes in the organic, as well as in the inorganic world, being the result of law, and not of miraculous interposition.” He died in poverty and obscurity.

3. Georges Cuvier (1769-1832)

Born on August 23, 1769, at Montbéliard, a French-speaking community in the Jura Mountains that was not under French order at the time. Cuvier studied at the Carolinian Academy in Stuttgart, from 1784 to 1788. Tutored a nice, good family in Normandy. It kept him out of the way of violence from the French Revolution. There he was put in a position in the local government and started making his reputation as a naturalist. In 1795, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire invited him to come to Paris. There he was appointed as an assistant, and shortly after, a professor of animal anatomy at the newly reformed Musée National d'Histoire Naturelle (National Museum of Natural History). He stayed at his post when Napoleon came to power. Then he was appointed to several government positions, including Inspector-General of public education and State Councillor, by Napoleon. He continued being a state councillor under the three successive Kings of France. All the while, Cuvier lectured and did research at the Musée National, amazing his colleagues with his energy and devotion to science. By the time of his death he had been knighted and made a baron and a peer of France.

Georges did not believe in organic evolution. He thought any change in an organism's anatomy would have made it unable to survive. He studied the mummified cats and ibises that Geoffroy brought back from Napoleon's invasion of Egypt. It showed that they were no different from their living equals. Cuvier used this evidence to support his claim that life forms did not evolve over time. Organisms were functional wholes and that any change in one part would mess up the sensitive balance. The functional integration of organisms meant that each part of an organism, no matter how small, bore signs of the whole. So then it was possible to regenerate organisms from small remains of the organism, based on rational principles. He could put together organisms from their little remains and many of his reconstructions turned out to be strikingly accurate!

4. Thomas Malthus (1766-1834)

"In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long- continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The results of this would be the formation of a new species. Here, then I had at last got a theory by which to work".

Charles Darwin, from his autobiography. (1876)

This quoted passage is referred to often and it reflects the significance that Darwin affords Malthus in putting together his theory of Natural Selection. What "struck" Darwin in Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) was Malthus's observation that nature plants and animals produce far more offspring than can survive, and that Man is too capable of overproducing if left unchecked. He concluded that unless the family size was regulated, man's famine would become globally epidemic and eventually consume us. According to Thomas, poverty and famine were natural outcomes of population growth and food supply was not plenty among the people who believed that with good social structures, all of mans problems could be solved.  Although he thought that poverty and famine was normal, 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 separately arrived at similar theories of Natural Selection after reading Malthus. They realized that producing more babies than can survive creates a competitive environment among siblings, and that the difference among siblings would produce some individuals with a slightly greater chance of survival.

Part 2.

1. What interesting evidence of geological change did Darwin observe while visiting the Galapagos?

That the earth changes over time.

2. What did Darwin learn about the Galapagos finches when he returned to England? What vital information had he neglected to record when he collected them?

he learned that his finches comprised 13 species.

3. Describe the distribution pattern of Galapagos mockingbirds. What question did this raise in Darwin's mind?

He cound 13 different spiecies on the islands.