Biology 3rd
5-8-14
Evolution Discussion Essay
Evolution is a descent of organisms from common ancestors with the development of genetic and phenotypic changes over time that make them more suited to the environment, evolving into something more efficient, more able to survive. Everything starts out as primitive. Babies with every species cannot defend themselves until they are trained and learn how to do all of that to stay alive.
There were many people involved in the learning and exploring of the evolution theory. Most were successful but some were shunned and disliked. 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.
One of the more disliked evolutionists, Jean Baptiste Lamarck, wasn’t as successful as all the others. His 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.
Georges Cuvier was 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!
"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.
In December 1831, a new chapter in the history of biology had its humble origins. A 22-year old naturalist, Charles Darwin, set sail on a journey of a lifetime aboard the British naval vessel the HMS Beagle. Darwins mission jon his journey around the world was to expand the navy’s knowledge of natural resources such as water and food in foreign lands. The captain of the Beagle, Robert Fitzroy, also hoped that Darwin would find evidence to support the biblical account of creation. Other than Fitzroy’s wishes, Darwin amassed observations that would eventually support another way of thinking and change the history of biology and science foredcer. The pre-Darwinian worldview and the post-Darwinian worldview are contrasted. Before Darwin, the worldview was forged by deep seated beliefs that were held to be intractable truths and not by experimentation and observation of the natural world. It is often believed that Darwin forged this change in worldview by himself, several biologists during the preceding century and some of Darwin’s contemporaries slowly began to accept the idea that species change over time. This concept would eventually be known as evolution.
There were also mid-eighteenth-century contributions. Taxonomy, which was one of them, is the science of classifying organisms, was important during the mid-eighteenth century. Leader of the taxonomists was Carolus Linnaeus, who developed the binomial system of nomenclature and who developed a system of classification for things. Linnaeus, like other taxonomists of his time, believed in the fixity of species. Each species had an “ideal” structure and function and also a place in the scala naturae, a sequential ladder of life. The simplest and most material being was on the lowest rung of the ladder, and the most complex and spiritual being was on the highest rung. Looking at it this way, humans are at the highest rung on the ladder.
Darwin took Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology on the voyage around the world. This book presented arguments to support a theory of how the land on earth changes, proposed by James Hutton. Different from the catastrophics, Hutton believed the Earth had slow but continuous erosion and uplift. Both land and marine fossils are found throughout sedimentary deposits. Rivers washed down any but not all, fossils on land that were small.
My opinion on evolution to me, is real. Theres so much proof of evolution besides that one missing link that we never found but just because there is only ONE missing link does not mean that aaaallll of that evidence and proof is just false and lies. When you think with logic and not faith, evolution is real. You gotta have evidence to make or prove a point and that is exactly what all of these evolutionists did! They got evidence, wrote down all the possible things and together, figured out evolution and that humans came from, not necessarily specs but somewhat like that, starting in the ocean and over billions and billions of years, here we are! Evolution was not just for humans either. It happened and maybe still is happening to us and other animals and things in the ocean! Evolution, to me, did happen and is still happening. Theres no other way to say it. You either believe it happened or not.
In conclusion about evolution, it was/is a timely process for all living organisms to evolve and go through all of their stages of evolution and its how we got to be what we are now. Darwin, Lamarck, and the other evolutionists were very smart and gained a lot of knowledge and did a lot of work to find out what we know today and it is much appreciated by everyone that believes evolution now-a-days.
Sources Cited:
Biology book from school pages 283-303
A History of Evolutionary Thought, http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/evothought.html
Accessed May 8, 9, 2014
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