Darwin

Question 1

What were Darwin’s 4 biggest achievements?

Answer 1

1. a convincing case for evolutionary change that was widely accepted by biologists for the first time
2. completely debunked essentialism in biology
3. presented a reasonable mechanism for evolution = natural selection
4. debunked teleological explanation in biology = a reasonable natural explanation of design and function in organisms

Question 2

Describe Darwin’s life before the Origin of Species

Answer 2

he was rich

studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh (not interested, horrified by surgery)

became interested in natural history and geology - met Robert Grant (zoologist and Lamarckian) and Robert Jameson (naturalist)

didn’t want to disappoint father so he decided to join the clergy in Cambridge

offered a position to sail internationally around the world on the Beagle as ‘the ship’s naturalist’ but historians think he was just the social companion of the captain

Question 3

What was the name of the ship Darwin sailed on? WHat was Darwin’s role? Where did they survey?

Answer 3

The Beagle

he called himself the ‘ship’s naturalist,’ for official reasons but he was really just the captain’s social companion

sailed to survey South America

Question 4

Was Darwin a good sailor?

Answer 4

no he was often sea sick, which prevented him to pursue naturalism as a hobby

Question 5

When he returned to England, who did Darwin marry and where di dthey move?

Answer 5

Emma Wedgewood
moved to the Down House in London

Question 6

While in London, he published what?

Answer 6

a popular account of his trip on the Beagle

a 5 volume work on vertebrates he collected (he was an editor)

a book on the structure and distribution of coral reefs

Question 7

What did Darwin begin, in secrecy, thinking about after his trip and after working with Richard Owen on the specimen he collected?

Answer 7

evolution, which was then called species transmutation

Question 8

After the Beagle trip, what condition did Darwin fall into and spend the rest of his life struggling with?

Answer 8

deteriorated state including stomach issues like vomiting, and trembling, boils, palpitations and anxiety in stressful times

never diagnosed, but historians think it could have been Chagas’ disease or Chrohn’s disease

Question 9

What is Chagas’ disease? why do people think Darwin had it?

Answer 9

spread via a protozoan that is transmitted by a beetle which Darwin was known to have been bitten by

Question 10

Why was Darwin at the Down House for so long?

Answer 10

his poor health

Question 11

While he was at Down House, what 8 subjects did Darwin mainly study?

Answer 11

1. barnacles (for 8 years)
2. evolution (and human evolution)
3. earth worms
4. animal behaviour and emotional expression
5. insectivorous plants
6. power of movement in plants
7. plant reproduction
8. domesticated plants and animals and their variation

Question 12

Darwin’s work on evolution and the Origin of Species was a result of what?

Answer 12

his own primary observations and observations by others (Richard Owen namely) and not of the ideas of prior evolutionary thinkers (he didn’t agree with a lot of their ideas)

Question 13

How many years had Darwin spent on his evolutionary ideas which led to the Origin of Species?

Answer 13

23 years

he began a notebook on species transmutation based on his observations and materials gathered from his Beagle voyage in 1837

Question 14

What helped Darwin realize that evolution is a fact and is occurring?

Answer 14

Working with specimen with Owen was influential but also his notes about the migration of the finches to Galapagos Islands

Question 15

What construct/process did he use as a blueprint kind of for determining the mechanism/cause of evolutionary change?

Answer 15

artificial selection

Question 16

Why did Darwin name his mechanism ‘natural selection’?

Answer 16

as a direct comparison to artificial selection - suggests a natural selective pressure on adaptation

Question 17

What was ‘The Sketch’ (1842)?

Answer 17

Darwin’s manuscript of evolutionary ideas that was never published in his lifetime

consisted of arguments for:

1. reality of evolution
2. natural selection is the main driver and mechanism of evolution

Question 18

What was ‘The Essay’ (1844)?

Answer 18

Darwin’s expanded version of the sketch, which was also not published until after he died

he told his wife and Hooker about it and to publish it when he died

Question 19

Why did Darwin keep his 1844 essay a secret?

Answer 19

he didn’t care for fame during his lifetime

he knew it was well-argued and would have to be accepted

he was friends with Richard Owen, who maybe would have seen it as a slight as they worked directly together and he never discussed his opposing views to Owen

maybe he needed to first study barnacles for 8 years before he could be taken seriously (publish a monogram)

Question 20

Why did Darwin cram to publish his book in the last few years of his life?

Answer 20

he was warned by Lyell and Hooker that someone else was working along the same ideas

Question 21

What was the original title for the Origin of Species?

Answer 21

he intended to call it Natural Selection

Question 22

Who was the other person who was working along the same lines as Darwin?

Answer 22

Alfred Russel Wallace

Question 23

Who was Alfred Russel Wallace?

Answer 23

an English naturalist living in Indonesia who wrote a brief outline of evolution by natural selection and sent it to Darwin for his feedback, unaware that Darwin also was working on this

this made Darwin panic

Question 24

What did Darwin do in response to Wallace’s letter?

Answer 24

since Wallace was in Indonesia, and had fallen ill with malaria

Darwin sent three papers to be read in a meeting at the Linnaean Society in 1858:

1. 5 page summary of Darwin’s ideas, written by Darwin for this
2. a copy of Darwin’s letter to Asa Grey in 1857 to show he had not stolen Wallace’s ideas
3. Wallace’s paper he had sent to Darwin ‘On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type’

Question 25

In what period of time did Darwin write the Origin of Species?

Answer 25

only in 15 months! it was a shorter version of Natural Selection beause he was not in good health

Question 26

What is included in the Origin of Species?

Answer 26

most of it covers artificial and natural selection

the rest covers how common descent explains morphological similarities in systematic groupings, embryological similarities, and vestigial organs, geographical distribution, and fossil sequences in the strata

Question 27

When was the Origin of Species published?

Answer 27

1859

Question 28

What were Darwin’s 2 proposed causes of evolutionary change? What is similar to Lamarck?

Answer 28

1. natural selection: variance affects adaptation and some adaptations improve fitness which allow for those genes to be passed on
2. use and disuse (somewhat Lamarckian, but improved): to some extent, experience can be encoded into your genes and passed on to offspring (ex. cave fish live in perpetual darkness and have no use for eyes, so they have lost their eyes) - debunked now

Question 29

Why was Darwin thought to be able to come up with these ideas just from one voyage and personal observation having only had medical university training?

Answer 29

highly synthetic mind which could see connections to make a consistent/cohesive thought

photographic memory

Question 30

Why wasn’t Darwin knighted?

Answer 30

timing - he was on the list of honourees, but he published his book with controversial topics right before and was removed

Question 31

What were Darwin’s views on heredity?

Answer 31

1. there are 2 types of variation: sport (phenotype) and individual (continuous variation)
2. hereditary factors were discrete - experiences were encoded somehow through blood into the sex genes (gemmules) and passed on to offpsring

Question 32

Who influenced Darwin’s views on heredity?

Answer 32

Hippocrates and his idea of pangenesis (acquired inheritance - encoding experience in sex genes)

Question 33

How was Darwin’s Origin of Species and evolutionary theory received?

Answer 33

within a decade his ideas were widely accepted in biology and with the general public

some opposition from religious figures, but not all

scientific critiques of natural selection

Question 34

What debates were caused from Origin of Species?

Answer 34

whether Darwin was correct or not

if he was correct, what the meaning of evolution is for society, morality and philosophy

Question 35

What was the major argument against natural selection from scientists?

Answer 35

Fleeming Jenkin:

argued that Darwinian evolution was not consistent with heredity and the nature of species

small variants have fixed limitations on individual variation - includes essentialism

large genetic variants (sports) will be blended out quickly by reproduction because of intermediate offspring

Question 36

How did Darwin defend himself to Jenkin?

Answer 36

species variation is not set by some fixed limit, but only contingent on the evolutionary history

he accepted that there was blending and offspring were mixes of parents, but there was a high rate of mutation (introduction rate)

Question 37

WHat was AW Bennett’s ideas on evolution? What was his source and examples?

Answer 37

based on Bates’ ideas, natural selection doesn’t explain complicated adaptations that would require many steps, as seen in cases of Batesian mimicry, because each step would have to be both small but adaptive

ex. Pierid and Heliconid butterflies - Pierid mimicking the toxic Heliconid only when both are present; Darwin thought this was natural selection, but it is just Batesian mimicry

Question 38

What did Sir William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) think about natural selection and Darwinian evolution?

Answer 38

he didn’t think that Earth had been habitable for long enough to support Darwinian evolution - the sun didn’t have enough energy reserves to have been around for that long

Question 39

What happened to Darwinism (natural selection) by 1900? why?

Answer 39

due to all the critiques and Darwin’s death, the idea of natural selection was ‘dead’

Question 40

What replaced natural selection in 1900s?

Answer 40

theistic evolution (Thomson) very religious but it did embrace evolution but thought the driver was god, not natural selection

Question 41

What was Darwin’s conclusion in the Galapagos chapter?

Answer 41

• originally thought the group of islands would be a ‘satellite’ but instead they are a ‘group of satellites’
• the variation within species across the islands resulted from geographic isolation - diverged from their original parent species and adapted to their specific island’s conditions

Question 42

What other island group did Darwin refer to in the Galapagos chapter?

Answer 42

The Falkland Islands provide more evidence found in the Galapagos

Question 43

Who famously complained about Social Darwinism and Darwinism to Gandhi in the late 1900s? What were the complaints?

Answer 43

Leo Tolstoy wrote letters to Gandhi critiquing and expressing his disdain for Darwinism, evolution and the ‘struggle for existence’ because he had experienced people taking it so literally as a justification for violence and pride in Russia

Question 44

How did the author of ‘Kroptokin was No Crackpot’ defend Darwin against unfair claims against Darwinism?

Answer 44

1. nature provides no basis for our moral values - evolution might help us understand why we have moral feelings but it is not an unconscious driver of our actions - ie., we still have control over our actions
2. Darwin’s ‘struggle for existence’ is a metaphor, not a literal translation for winners and losers

but the author does allow Tolstoy the grace that his complaints were not unfounded - Darwin’s examples did allude to ‘bloody battle’

Question 45

What did Darwin’s disciple, Huxley, add to the idea of the struggle for existence and Darwinism?

Answer 45

he doubled down on the idea that ‘nature is nasty and no guide to morality except, perhaps, as an indicator of what to avoid in human society’

Question 46

What view did J. Gould, the author of ‘Kroptokin was No Crackpot’ take on all this?

Answer 46

he aligned with Darwin’s metaphorical view of struggle and that nature can be nasty and nice, ‘nature favours none and offers no guidelines’

Question 47

Who was Petr Kropotkin? What view did he take on Darwinism?

Answer 47

he was a Russian revolution ‘gentle anarchist’ (libertarian) (notably he was bearded which apparently signified violence?) - communion rather than combat = success

had communist ideas

wrote “Mutual Aid” (1902) as a direct response (collection of articles) to Huxley’s struggle for existence essay

Question 48

What was J. Gould’s conclusion about Kroptokin and why he wasn’t a crackpot? What did he highlight as his 2 main faults?

Answer 48

he agreed with Kroptokin that:

• struggle occurs in many forms, some of which MAY lead to cooperation of members of a species to benefit the individual
• he was no more extreme with his views of socialism and cooperation than western Europeans were with social Darwinism and competition

faults:

• Kroptokin didn’t recognize that natural selection is directed at advantages to individuals, regardless of their type of struggle - he often emphasized cooperation to benefit a GROUP
• Kroptokin’s argument relies on nature and society to be kind, mutual, synergistic, and living in harmony - this is not a strong argument - these properties do not exist in nature

Question 49

Where did J. Gould think the answers to moral dilemmas lay?

Answer 49

not in nature, but within us and the ‘kingdom of God’