Chapter 6 Flashcards
According to Darwin, during his time as a student at Cambridge University the extra-curricular activity that gave him the most pleasure was
collecting beetles.
During his time aboard the Beagle Darwin’s nickname was
“Philosopher.”
What was the most revolutionary aspect of Darwin’s theory as published in his 1859 The Origin of Species?
the notion of natural selection as the mechanism for evolution
Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, as presented in his The Origin of Species, presupposed the existence of
inheritable small individual differences.
Prior to becoming a naturalist, Darwin seriously contemplated careers in which of the following fields?
medicine and the clergy
The English geologist Charles Lyell promoted and supported which geological theory?
uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism and catastrophism were opposing theories from the nineteenth century concerning
the processes by which the major natural features of the earth were created.
__________’s widely accepted calculation of the earth’s age as just 6,000 years old lent support to the theory of __________.
James Ussher; catastrophism
What was a major factor that converted Darwin to the uniformitarian viewpoint during his Beagle voyage?
the presence of fossilized seashells high in the mountains
While on his Beagle voyage, Darwin made important observations, which eventually helped lead to his evolutionary theory. These include all the following EXCEPT
a species of short-necked giraffes in Brazil.
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
adaptive functions of animals’ distinctive characteristics.
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?
geology
The philosopher and theologian William Paley is best remembered for promoting which idea?
the argument from design
According to philosopher and theologian __________, studying the structure of an eye was “a cure for atheism.”
John Stevens Henslow
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”?
Thomas Malthus on population
Robert FitzRoy became an important figure in Darwin’s life because he
took Darwin on as his Beagle dining companion and ship naturalist.
Adam Sedgwick and John Stevens Henslow influenced young Darwin in which of the following ways?
They taught him botany and geology at Cambridge
Both __________ and __________ helped bring the idea of evolved species to scientific awareness, but without suggesting a plausible mechanism by which evolution could occur.
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck; Erasmus Darwin
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.
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
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
Thomas Malthus.
Darwin delayed publishing The Origin of Species for 18 years because
he believed the theory would require a massive amount of supporting evidence be-fore being taken seriously.
After years of delay, Darwin made public his theory of evolution because he
discovered that another naturalist had arrived at the same theory.
The theory of evolution by natural selection did not cause a sensation until
Darwin laid out ample evidence for the theory in The Origin of Species.
__________ became known as “Darwin’s Bulldog” and staunchly supported Darwin’s theory in a celebrated 1860 debate with the Bishop of Oxford.
Thomas H. Huxley
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
fossil remains of an ancient bird with “fingers” on its wings.
Darwin’s writings about human psychology issues included all of the following subjects EXCEPT
consciousness and will.
Darwin discussed human psychology in depth in all of the following publications EXCEPT
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Fa-voured Races in the Struggle for Life
In Darwin’s 1871 book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, he theorized that
human beings have descended from animal ancestors.
Unlike Descartes, Darwin argued that animals demonstrate at least the rudiments of
reason.
A Victorian-era theory holding that the mainly non-European, “savage” peoples represented a distinctly different species of being was known as
polygenesis.
Darwin posited a theory of “sexual selection” to help account for
the evolution of qualities such as beauty, which lacked obvious “adaptive” value.
Darwin’s view that males surpass females intellectually while females are stronger than men in the moral virtues is sometimes called the
complementarity hypothesis.
When it came to the intelligence of men and women Darwin believed
the most intelligent men are smarter than the most intelligent women.
Darwin’s so-called “variation hypothesis” suggests that
males have been more modified by evolution and show more variation than fe-males.
One of the purposes of Darwin’s book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, was to show that
many human reactions with no obvious survival or utilitarian value today did have an adaptive purpose in the evolutionary past.
In Darwin’s “Biographical Sketch of an Infant” he reported on
the development of his own child’s reflexes, emotions, and earliest moral development.
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
ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.
__________ 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.
George Romanes
Alfred Russel Wallace is known for which of the following?
independently developing the theory of evolution by natural selection and having a paper on it read jointly with one by Darwin in 1858
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
social Darwinism.
Herbert Spencer is known for being all of the following EXCEPT as a promotor of
sociobiology.
The study of the similarities and differences in the psychological functions of various animals, in order to better understanding human functioning, is known as
comparative psychology.
Support for social Darwinism in the United States subsided after the
economic collapse of the late 1920s and the subsequent Great Depression.
A recently developed approach hypothesizing that the unit of evolution is the individual gene rather than the individual organism or the group is called
sociobiology.
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
evolutionary psychology.
