Pre-Darwinian Theories (palomar.edu) Flashcards
- strongly reinforced the traditional Judeo-Christian version of creationism
- counting the generations of the Bible and adding them to modern history
James Ussher
What date did James Ussher fix the creation
October 23, 4004 B.C
- held that God created an infinite and continuous series of life forms, each one grading into the next, from simplest to most complex, and that all organisms, including humans, were created in their present form relatively reently and thaty they have remained unchanged since then
- hierarchical structure of all matter and life, thought by medieval Christianity to have been decreed by God
Great Chain of Being
Great Chain of Being sequence
- God
- Angels
- Humans
- Animals
- Plants
- Minerals
- apparently believed that he was just revealing the unchaning order of life created by God
- his 180 books are filled with precise descriptions of nature, but he did little analysis or interpetation
Carolus Linnaeus
Most important contribution of Carolus Linnaeus to scince
logical classification system in his book, Systema Naturae
who actually developed the concept of genus and species in the late 1600s
John Ray
Linnaeus used the system of John Ray to name humans to __ __
Homo sapiens
Homo sapiens meaning
wise men
Order of humans
Primates
“living things do change through time”
George Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
what is George Louis Leclerc Comte de Buffon speculation as to how living things change through time
result of influences from environment or even chance
how old did Comte de Buffon believe the earth was
at least 75,000 years old
book of Buffon
Histoire Naturelle
- believed that evolution has occurred in living things, including humans, but only had fuzzy ideas about what might be responsible for this change
- grandfather of Charles Darwin
Erasmus Darwin
scientific publication of Erasmus Darwin
Zoonomia or Laws of Organic Life
what did Erasmus Darwin suggest about the earth and life on it
evolving for millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind
- believed that evolution occurs when an organisms uses a body part in such a way that it is altered during its lifetime and this change is then inhertied by its offspring
- believed that evolution was mostly due to the inheritance of acquired characteristics as creatures adapted to their environment
- first evolutionist who confidently and very publicly stated his ideas about the processes leading to biological change
Jean-Baptiste Chevalier de Lamarck
- first scientist to document extinctions of ancient animals
- rejected the idea that their existence implied that evolution had occured – he dogmatically maintained the “fixity” of species
- discredit Lamarck’s theory
George Cuvier
what did George Cuvier advocate
theory of catastrophism
Earth’s history was dominated by catastrophic events that shaped the structure and types of life on Earth
Theory of catastrophism
- conclude that Cuvier’s catastrophism theory was wrong
- believed that there primarily have been slower, progressive changes
- documented the fact that the earth must be very old and that it has been subject to the same sort of natural processes in the past that operate today in shaping the land
Charles Lyell
book of Charles Lyell stating that natural processes in the past still operate today in shaping the land
Principles of Geology
forces that shape the land according to Charles Lyell
- erosion
- earthquakes
- glacial movements
- volcanoes
- decomposition of plants and animals
Lyell provided conclusive evidence for what theory
theory of uniformitarianism
who originally developed the theory of uniformitarianism
James Hutton
- natural forces now changing the shape of the earth’s surface have been operating in the past much the same way
- present is the key to understanding the past
theory of uniformitarianism
- strongly disagreed aout how the earth got to be the way it is today
- both rejected the idea of biological evolution
- George Cuvier
- Charles Lyell
