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Home , Andreas Vesalius

1/21/2019

The History of Evolutionary Thought: Pre 1800 Chapter 2  Comparative : Andreas Vesalius  Observation and Natural Theology: & William Paley :  Fossils and the Birth of Paleontology: Nicholas Steno From to  Nested Hierarchies, the Order of Nature: Carolus Linnaeus Darwin  Old Earth, Ancient Life: Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon  The of Human Populations: Thomas Malthus

The History of Evolutionary The History of Evolutionary Thought: 1800s Thought: 1800s

 Extinctions: Georges Cuvier  Early and Development: Ernst  Early Concepts of Evolution: Jean Baptiste Haeckel Lamarck  Biogeography: Wallace and Wegener  Developmental Similarities: Karl von Baer  Fossil Hominids, Human Evolution: Thomas  Biostratigraphy: William Smith Huxley & Eugene Dubois  Uniformitarianism:  Chromosomes, Mutation, and the Birth of Modern :  Discrete Genes Are Inherited:

 Natural Selection: &

The History of Evolutionary The History of Evolutionary Thought: 1900 to present Thought: 1900 to present

 Random Mutations and Evolutionary  Evolution and Development for the 21st Change: , JBS Haldane, & Century:  Genetic Similarities: Wilson, Sarich, Sibley, &  Starting "The Modern Synthesis": Ahlquist  Speciation:  DNA, the Language of Evolution: &  Radiometric Dating: Clair Patterson  Endosymbiosis:

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The History of Evolutionary Thought

 Just as life has a history, science has a history.

 Understanding the history of evolutionary

thinking illuminates the nature of science. Link to figure

 In this section, you will see how study in four disciplinary areas — Earth's history, life's history, mechanisms of evolution, and development and genetics — has contributed to our current understanding of evolution.

Evolution = change

 Concept that species change over time, Founders of Natural has roots in antiquity Science Ancient Greeks Romans Chinese From Ancient Times to the Medieval Islamic science. Enlightenment

Evolution in St. Augustine of Hippo

 Philosophical notion of descent with  Theistic evolution? with modification  Believed that God created all things ex  Concept of origination nihilo, instantaneously in the form of  All things originated from water or air seminal principals  All things descended from one central, guiding principle  Seeds St. Augustine of Hippo  (384 – 322 BC)  Believe in (354-430 AD)  Suggests a transition between the living and the  Therefore, seeds existed in living and nonliving non-living matter  Theorizes that in all things there is a constant desire to  “In the beginning” was the beginning of move from the lower to the higher, finally becoming the time divine  Very important idea for creationism -  Purpose for every organism, fixity of species, ladder of life (Scala Naturae)

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St. Augustine of Hippo Medieval Theories

 Evolution was not discussed  Creation in 7 days - may not be 24 hr days  Dominated by the Christian theory of  “Day” was figurative special creation  Adam created < 5600 years  All living things came into existence in unchanging  Nature has the potential to produce and evolve? forms due to divine will  Argument about what he meant by seeds  Confused by the idea of spontaneous generation  Could they yield molecules to living things – theistic  Rotten meat gave rise to maggots creation?  Rags produced rats  or - Were they fixed at the time of creation?  Frogs came from slime

 This concept prevented both genetic thinking and speculation about evolution or descent with modification

John Ray Galileo, Bacon, Descartes John Ray 1627-1705

 Supported the theory that fossils were  Physicists, Astronomers break with once living organisms traditional beliefs  Died in “Flood.”  Solar system debate - earth versus sun as  Fossils that resembled no living organism due to ignorance of the full range of living center of the universe organisms  Insight that fossils were once living organisms was a significant advance Galileo Galilei over most other theories of his time, 1564 –1642  Questions as to what fossils might indicate about the Earth's age and history would be investigated by generations of paleontologists.

The History of Evolutionary The History of Evolutionary Thought: Pre 1800 Thought: Pre 1800

 Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564)  William Harvey (1578 –  Flemish anatomist 1657)  Corrected errors in Galens’ early  English physician work  Discovered how blood  (Greek physician) circulates  Famous for his exquisite  Observation and Natural anatomical charts Theology: William Harvey  Research led to conclusion that & William Paley humans are not unique, share : many characteristics with Andreas Vesalius other animals

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John Ray (1628-1705) Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)  First ideas about the Big Bang that  Often referred to as the father of in Britain. created the solar system  Developed a concept of descent  Published systematic works on plants, birds, mammals, fish, and insects similar to modern ideas  brought order to the chaotic mass of names in use by  Speculated that organisms may have come from the naturalists of his time. a single ancestral source  Searched for the "natural system," a classification of  Based on similarities between organisms organisms that would reflect the Divine Order of  an orang-outang or a chimpanzee may develop the creation. organs which serve for walking, grasping objects, and  Classified plants by overall morphology speaking-in short, that lie may evolve the structure of

 Would become a powerful tool for evolutionary man, with an organ for the use of reason, which shall biologists trying to infer evolutionary relationships gradually develop itself by social culture

The History of Evolutionary William Paley Thought: Pre 1800

 William Paley (1743–1805)  Darwin took from his reading of Paley a belief in  1802: Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the adaptation -- that organisms are somehow fit for the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, environments in which they live, that their structure Collected from the Appearances of Nature, reflects the functions they perform throughout their lives.  Laid out a full exposition of natural theology, the belief that the nature of God could be  Living organisms, Paley argued, are even more understood by reference to His creation, the complicated than watches, in a degree which exceeds all natural world. computation. How else to account for the often amazing  Introduced one of the most famous metaphors adaptations of animals and plants? Only an Intelligent in the philosophy of science, the image of the Designer could have created them, just as only an watchmaker. Intelligent Watchmaker can make a watch: …  Richard Dawkins – The Blind Watchmaker  Observation and Natural Theology: William Harvey & William Paley

 . . . when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive. . . The History of Evolutionary that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, e.g. that they are so formed and adjusted as to Thought: Pre 1800 produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day; that if the different parts had been differently shaped from what they are, or placed after any other manner or in any other order than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it. . . . the inference we think is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker -- that there must have existed, at some time and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to Nicolas Steno (1638-86): Father answer, who comprehended its construction and of geology and stratigraphy designed its use. Fossils and the Birth of Paleontology: Nicholas Steno

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Some recognized record of historical change  Niels Stensen (better known as Steno) Danish anatomist Preludes to  Recognized record of historical change Proposed that fossils belonged to once living Evolution creatures  Fossils were snapshots of life at different moments in Earth’s history  Birth of paleontology Law of Superposition  Rock layers formed slowly over time  Older rocks lie below younger rocks

Early naturalists classified life’s  Carl von Linne' diversity  Latinized to Carolus Linnaeus  Swedish naturalist  Followed in footsteps of Aristotle who also tried to categorize living organisms  Plant classification was based entirely on floral reproductive organs  Identified every known species according to a standard binomial nomenclature,  Binomial epithet (genus species: (1707-78): Homo sapiens or Homo sapiens) Father of modern taxonomy Nested Hierarchies, the Order of Nature: Carolus Linnaeus  Humans as primates

Erasmus Darwin Carolus Linnaeus (1731-1802)

 At first, he believed in the fixed nature of  Darwin’s grandfather species, but was later swayed by hybridization  Distinguished naturalist experiments in plants, which could produce new  Argued that all life could a have a single species. common ancestor  Saw the new species created by plant hybridization to  Struggled with the concepts of a mechanism for this have been part of God's plan descent  Maintained belief in special creation in the  Discussed the effects of competition and sexual Garden of Eden selection on possible changes in species  Believed that the use or disuse of parts could in itself make them grow or shrink, and that unconscious striving by the organism was responsible for adaptation.

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Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788) Early ideas about evolution  Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de  Fascinated by the diversity of life; and was not Buffon content with existing explanations of the  Old Earth, Ancient Life natural world  Earth formed according to laws of  During the eighteenth century, two church physics and chemistry, non-biblical doctrines provided sweeping biblical explana- explanation tions for most questions about biological diversity:  Older than previously thought  Separate Creation, the idea that all creatures have  > 70,000 years been created independently of one another by God  Spontaneous origins of life and organized into a hierarchy ("chain of being") with  Species emerged as distinct types Georges Buffon Man occupying the most elevated rank beneath  Diverse environments give rise to (1707-88) God; new varieties (Proto-evolution)  The 6,000 year limit on the age of the planet.

Buffon

 Historie Naturelle  44 volume encyclopedia describing everything known about the natural world,  Discussed the similarities of humans and apes and talked about common ancestry of Man and apes.

 Although Buffon believed in organic change, he did not provide a coherent mechanism for Buffon believed that modern Indian and such changes. African elephants were migratory  Thought that the environment acted directly on descendants of Siberian mammoths. organisms through what he called "organic particles.“  Fats separate, salts dissolve

The Ecology of Human Buffon  Also published Les Epoques de la Nature (1788) Populations: Thomas Malthus  Openly suggested that the planet was much older  An Essay on the Principle of than the 6,000 years proclaimed by the church Population as it affects the  Discussed concepts very similar to Charles Lyell's Future Improvement of Society "uniformitarianism" which were formulated 40 years  Population growth vs. the later. food supply  Different approach from others of his time  Looked at humans as  Empirical and philosophical pursuits of causes populations of individuals; and explanations beyond the accepted explanations studied them like an ecologist of his time studies populations  Biogeography of mammals (predatory cats)  Influenced Darwin & Wallace  Concept of species based on reproductive isolation  Competition for resources Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) (basis for modern biological species concept)  Struggle for existence

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The History of Evolutionary The History of Evolutionary Thought: 1800s Thought: 1800s

 Extinctions: Georges Cuvier  Early Concepts of Evolution: Jean Baptiste Lamarck  Developmental Similarities: Karl von Baer  Biostratigraphy: William Smith  Uniformitarianism: Charles Lyell  Discrete Genes Are Inherited: Gregor Mendel  Natural Selection: Charles Darwin & Alfred Russel Wallace

Georges Cuvier (1769- Georges Cuvier 1832)

 Founded vertebrate paleontology as a  Paleontology provided evidence that life scientific discipline and created the changed comparative method of organismal biology  Did not believe in organic evolution  Cuvier saw organisms as integrated wholes,  Any change in an organism's anatomy would have in which each part's form and function were rendered it unable to survive integrated into the entire body.  Studied mummified cats and ibises brought back  No part could be modified without impairing this from Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, and showed that functional integration they were no different from their living counterparts;  Used this to support his claim that lifeforms did not evolve over time.

Georges Cuvier Georges Cuvier  Established the fact of the extinction of past lifeforms  Organisms are functional wholes  Believed that the Earth was immensely old  Any change in one part would destroy the delicate balance  Most of its history conditions had been more or less  The functional integration of organisms meant that each like those of the present. part of an organism, could give info about the whole  Periodic natural "revolutions", or catastrophes  It was therefore possible to reconstruct organisms from (had befallen the Earth; each one wiped out a number fragmentary remains, based on rational principles. of species. (99% of all species are now extinct)  Had a amazing ability to reconstruct organisms from fragmentary fossils, and many of his reconstructions turned out to be strikingly accurate.

 He based his reconstructions less on rational principles than on his deep knowledge of comparative anatomy of living organisms.

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Early Concepts of Evolution Early Concepts of Evolution

 Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de la  Lamarck: Inheritance of acquired Marck characteristics  Species not fixed and  Evolution by natural processes immutable, but rather in a  Adaptation through inheritance of acquired constantly changing state. characteristics  Envisioned evolutionary change  Organism could pass on to its offspring any for the first time characteristics it had acquired in its lifetime  Presented a multitude of  Change through use and disuse different theories that he  Example: giraffes neck stretching to reach food believed combined to explain Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine descent with modification of de Monet, Chevalier de la Marck (1744-1829) these changing species

So why the long neck?

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Lamarck (cont)

 Had false beliefs about inheritance  Argued for strong effects of the use and disuse of parts  Parts change size or shape in accordance with their use  Believed that all organisms fundamentally want to adapt themselves to their environment, and so they strive to become better adapted (more complex) Neck is used in combat between males for mating rights with females. The longer the neck, the more powerful the blow to the opponent.

Lamarck (cont) Different from Darwin

 Evolution as striving Life driven from simple to complex

 Complex species descended from microbes  Life (Microbes) continually generated spontaneously

reproduction

Evolution by natural processes

 Lamarck died in poverty and obscurity  Cuvier attacked his work  British Naturalists were steeped in natural theology  Rejected his claim that natural forces caused evolution. Complained this left no role for God.  French naturalist Geoffroy St. Hilaire  1820’s Proposed diff’t version of evolutionary change  British writer Robert Chambers  1844 Published a best selling argument for evolution

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