On the Shoulders of Giants

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On the Shoulders of Giants

• Understanding Diversity

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Question
How are living things related to each other?
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Aristotle
The School of Athens by Raphael
Scala Naturae the Great Chain of Being
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What are the implications of this world view?

• Stable natural (and social) hierarchy
• Change creates chaos
• MAN predominates
• EARTH is center of universe

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The Copernican Revolution

• 1473-1543
• Heliocentrism

This statue is in the Jagilleonian University,
Cracow, Poland, where he studied as a youth.
Photo by Soshichi Uchii http//www.bun.kyoto-u.ac
.jp/phisci/Gallery/copernicus.html
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Carolus Linnaeus 1707-1778

• Father of Taxonomy
• Systema Naturae

From The Hundred Greatest Men (New York D.
Appleton Company, 1885).
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Linnean Classification

• Kingdom Animalia
• Phylum Chordata (Subphylum vertebrata)
• Class Mammalia
• Order Primate
• Family Hominidae
• Genus Homo
• Species sapiens
• (Variety)

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Erasmus Darwin 1731-1802

• Charles Grandfather
• Physician and naturalist
• Formulated one of the first formal theories of
  evolution

http//www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/Edarwin.html
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Robert Thomas Malthus (1766-1834)

• Essay on the Principle of Population

http//www.econ.duke.edu/Economists/
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Georges Léopole Chrétien Frédéric Dagobert, Baron
Cuvier (1769-1832)

• Vertebrate Paleontologist
• Established Extinction as a natural phenomenon
• Did not accept evolution
• Any similarities between organisms were due to
  common functions, not to common ancestry

http//www.english.upenn.edu/jlynch/Frank/People/
cuvier.html
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Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829)

• Inheritance of acquired characteristics
• Whats wrong with that idea?
• Darwin wrote of him in 1861
• Lamarck was the first man whose conclusions on
  the subject excited much attention. This justly
  celebrated naturalist first published his views
  in 1801. . . he first did the eminent service of
  arousing attention to the probability of all
  changes in the organic, as well as in the
  inorganic world, being the result of law, and not
  of miraculous interposition.

http//www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/lamarck.html
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Sir Charles Lyell (1779-1875)

• Principles of Geology (1830-33)
• Earth has changed form slowly over long periods
  of time

http//users.hol.gr/dilos/prehis/prerm1.htm
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Captain Robert Fitzroy (1805-1865)

• Captain of the HMS Beagle
• Invited Darwin as a companion
• Disagreed with Darwins ideas on Evolution

http//chemistry.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?
sitehttp//www.magma.ca/7Ejdreid/fitzroy.htm
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Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

• 1831 Agrees to accompany Fitzroy on a 2 year
  surveying voyage
• Identified NATURAL SELECTION as the mechanism of
  evolution
• 1859 Publishes On the Origin of Species

http//www.lib.virginia.edu/science/parshall/darwi
nport.html
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On the Origin of Species Title page in Darwins
hand
http//www.amphilsoc.org/library/exhibits/treasure
s/darwin.htm
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Darwins Dangerous Idea

• Observation Over-reproduction
• Observation Overpopulation leads to competition
  between individuals of one species
  (interspecific) and between species
  (intraspecific)
• Observation Random variation between
  individualssome variations are heritable
• Inference Favorable variations enhance survival
  and reproduction. Parents may pass favorable
  variations to offspring
• Inference Speciation results from accumulated
  variations

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Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)

• Darwins Bulldog
• 1863 Evidence on Mans Place in Nature
  specifically addresses the evolution of humans,
  which Darwin shied away from
• Grandfather of Aldous Huxley

http//users.hol.gr/dilos/prehis/prerm1.htm
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Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913)

• Naturalist, primarily worked in the Amazon and
  Malaysia
• Developed an evolutionary theory SIMILAR to
  Darwins
• Controversy resolved by Darwins presentation of
  BOTH works at the Linnean Society meeting in
  July, 1858

http//www.wku.edu/smithch/index1.htm
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The Controversy Continues

• 1925 Tennessee vs John Scopes The Monkey Trial
• State of Tennessee, House Bill 185Section 1. Be
  it enacted by the General Assembly of the State
  of Tennessee, That it shall be unlawful for any
  teacher in any of the Universities, Normals and
  all other public schools of the State which are
  supported in whole or in part by the public
  school funds of the State, to teach any theory
  that denies the story of the Divine Creation of
  man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead
  that man has descended from a lower order of
  animals.
• 1950 Inherit the Wind, play by Jerome Lawrence
  Robert Lee

http//www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/s
copes/tennstat.htm
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