Transcript Biological Anthropology: The Natural History of Humankind

Chapter 2
Origins of Evolutionary Thought
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What is Science?
The Scientific Method
Standard scientific research procedure in which a
hypothesis is stated, data are collected to test it,
and the hypothesis is either supported or refused
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The Scientific Method
Observation
deduction
hypothesis
experimentation
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The Early Thinkers
The Roots of Modern Science
• Ancient Greeks
often are credited with the first written efforts to
understand the natural world and our place in it
• Aristotle
First known animal and plant classification
Immutability of species
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The Roots of Modern Science (cont’d)
• The Renaissance (14th – 16th centuries)
• “Rediscovering” the Greeks and Romans
• Sense of time
• Sense of cultural variation
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The Roots of Modern Science (cont’d)
• The study of human anatomy
• Global exploration
• European Naturalism
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Linnaeus and the Natural Scheme of Life
taxonomy
Binomial
nomenclature
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The Road to the
Darwinian Revolution
• Comte de Buffon (1707 – 1788)
– Accepted the notion of biological change
• Georges Cuvier (1769 – 1832)
– Catastrophism
• Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772 – 1844)
– Opposed Cuvier
• Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744 – 1829)
– Theory of the inheritance of acquired
characteristics
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The Uniformitarians:
Hutton and Lyell
• Theory that the same gradual geological
process we observe today was operating
in the past
• James Hutton (1726 – 1797)
• Charles Lyell (1797 – 1875)
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The Darwinian Revolution
• Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882)
• Voyage on the HMS Beagle
– 1831-1836
– Southern Hemisphere
• The Galapagos
– Variations of tortoise
– Finch variation
– Adaptive radiation
– Biogeography
– Natural Selection
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Refining the Theory of Evolution by
Natural Selection
• Observation 1: All organisms have the
potential for explosive population growth
• Observation 2: Yet populations are roughly
stable…
• Deduction 1: There must be a struggle for
existence
• Observation 3: Nature is full of variation
• Deduction 2: Some variations are favored
while others are not
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Natural Selection
• The trait in question must be inherited
• The trait is question must show variation
between individuals
• The environment must exert some pressure
on the trait
Fitness
Population
Mutation
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Science and Creationism
Faith vs. Testable Evidence
Supreme Court Rulings
“Creation Science”
“Intelligent Design”
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