History Review Flashcards
Name the scientific process.
Question, hypothesis, experiment, data, interpretation of data to ask whether support for hypothesis
What is “question”?
What is it that you want to know about the natural world? What are you trying to figure out?
What is hypothesis/prediction?
a tentative, proposed answer to your question; might be supported by your experimental data, but your data may be inconsistent with hypothesis and hypothesis is wrong
Can you ever prove your hypothesis true?
No, you can just have overwhelming evidence in support of it.
What is experiment/observation?
An experiment is a manipulation of a system, where the manipulation is designed to test a hypothesis.
What is fact?
Something that has actual existence: a matter of objective reality
What is theory?
A coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena. A set of hypotheses that have been supported by many multiple experiments, and have all of the hallmarks of truth
Why are facts and observations important?
Are used to test hypotheses. They are interpreted in the context of theory
What is an inference?
Made on the basis of one or more facts
Who was Jean Baptiste Lamarck? What did he propose?
Organisms evolve from simple to complex, with many origins. Famous for proposal that individual organisms adapt to their environment and pass along acquired adaptations to offspring.
What were Darwin’s insights after his trip on The Beagle?
- Organisms change over time, with a history of ancestry and descent.
- Natural selection is a mechanism of evolutionary change.
Name the 3 pieces of evidence Darwin had for the idea of “common descent”.
- Fossils
- Stratigraphy
- Homology – homologous traits and analogous traits
What is the law of succession?
Living species in an area are frequently closely related to fossils in that area.
What is stratigraphy?
The study of rock layers; scientists realized they could date layers from different areas based on the fossils they contained. Youngest layers on top and oldest on bottom.
What do homologous traits reveal about connections between two organisms?
Organisms share homologous traits due to descent from a common ancestor.
What are examples of vestigial structures?
They are homologous structures that have lost their original function in an organism, like hip structure in whales and coccynx in humans.
How are homologous traits different from analogous traits?
Analogous traits are similar but not derived from a common ancestor. Ex. butterfly wing and bird wing
Who was Alfred Russel Wallace?
He was a naturalist who independently derived the Theory of Natural Selection.
Why did Darwin become more famous than Wallace?
- Darwin was already famous.
2. Had strong advocates who argued for him against critics.
What is the definition of evolution by natural selection?
Individuals with a particular heritable trait have a greater reproductive success than other individuals within a population because that trait confers an advantage in competition for limited resources. Therefore the trait increases in frequency in the population with successive generations.
Who was Linnaeus?
He was a Swedish naturalist who created a hierarchy of groups, known as taxa; his system of taxonomy is still used today
Who was Charles Lyell?
He created uniformitarianism, which argues that processes that alter Earth are uniform through time. He viewed the history of Earth as being vast and directionless. Believed things changed gradually, like valleys are eroded by glaciers
