Development of Evolutionary Thoughts: General Biology 2

DEVELOPMENT OF
EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHTS
GENERAL BIOLOGY 2
WHAT IS EVOLUTION?
OVERVIEW OF THE
DEVELOPMENT OF
EVOLUTIONARY
THOUGHT
• History of Evolutionary Concepts
• Greek Precursors
• 17th Century Theologians
• 18th Century Catastrophists
• 18th Century Uniformitarians
• Uniformitarians of Hutton and Lyell
• Darwin and Wallace
• Gregor Mendel
• Key Concepts in Evolutionary History
• Essentialism/Chain of Being
• Natural Selection/Mutation
EARLY MODELS: THE GREAT CHAIN OF BEING
In antiquity, biological diversity was classified and placed
on the Great Chain of Being or Ladder of Life, the Scala
Naturae. This perspective held that organisms could be
arranged as the rungs on a ladder, with rocks and minerals
at the bottom moving up through plants and ‘simple’
God
animals, with humans close to the pinnacle. Angels
Demons
Man Being
Woman
Animals Realm of
Plants Being
Minerals
Realm of
Non-being Becoming
EARLY MODELS: ESSENTIALISM
• Essentialism
– the ideal reality against which the perceived reality is compared and
contrasted
• Plato
– is the first to propose the concept of the “ideal entity”
• Aristotle
- also accepted the idea of a perfect universe but disagreed with Plato
regarding his proposition of dichotomy
POSEIDON ATHENA
EARLY THEORISTS: THE CLASSICAL GREEKS
• Anaximander (6th Century B.C)

- He believed that life began at sea but then later on moved to land.
• Empedocles (495 B.C.E. to 435 B.C.E.)
- According to Empedocles, the universe were composed by four fundamental
elements; earth, air, fire, and water. These elements were influenced by two forces;
attraction and repulsion.
• Lucretius (99-55 B.C.E.)
- He laid out his evolutionary theory in his poem titled On the Nature of Things.
ANAXIMANDER EMPEDOCLES LUCRETIUS
EARLY THEORISTS: 17TH CENTURY THEOLOGIANS
• James Ussher (1581 – 1656)

- He is an Archbishop from Ireland, which he pinpoints that the Creation
was at 9:00 A.M. on October 23, 4004 B.C.
• Robert Hooke (1635 – 1703)
- He became one of the first proponents of a theory of evolution due to
his studies of microscopic fossils
CATASTROPHISM
Georges Cuvier (1769 – 1832)

Catastrophism was a theory developed by Georges
Cuvier based on paleontological evidence in the
Paris Basin. It states that natural history has been
punctuated by catastrophic events that altered
that way life developed and rocks were deposited.
EARLY THEORISTS: 18TH CENTURY CATASTROPHISTS
• Carolus Linnaeus (1707 – 1778)

- Invented Taxonomy; classification of life forms according to
similarities and differences.
- Viewed the system as divinely ordained
EARLY THEORISTS: 18TH CENTURY UNIFORMITARIANS
• James Hutton (1726 – 1778)

- He believed Earth's landscapes like mountains and oceans formed over
long period of time through gradual processes.
- Developed the concept of Uniformitarianism along with Charles Lyell.
• Charles Lyell (1797 – 1875)
- In 1830, he published a book entitled “Principles of Geology”
- Challenged the idea of Catastrophism
EVOLUTIONARY THEORIES:
ACQUIRED CHARACTERISTICS
Jean – Baptiste Lamarck (1744 –
1829)
- He is the first person to suggested
the concept of Evolution. His theory
proposed that traits are acquired by
an organism and can be passed down
to its offspring. Also, he stated that
organisms adapt in order to fit their
environment.
EVOLUTIONARY THEORIES:
NATURAL SELECTION
Natural selection is the process
through which populations of
living organisms adapt and
change. Individuals in a
population are naturally
variable, meaning that they are
all different in some ways.
CHARLES DARWIN (1809 – 1882)
• He is an English naturalist that developed the idea of “Natural
Selection”
• In 1859, he brought the idea of natural selection to the
attention of the world in his best-selling book, On the Origin
of Species.
GALAPAGOS ISLANDS
Charles Darwin did not much mentioned the finches But, he did so in his previous journal. In 1835, during
that he observed on Galapagos Islands on his book his five-week stay on the island he was inspired by
On the Origin of Species the wildlife.
“ “The remaining land-birds form a most singular group of finches, related to each other
in the structure of their beaks, short tails, a form of body and plumage.”
“There are thirteen species, which Mr. Gould has divided into four subgroups. All these
species are peculiar to this archipelago; and so is the whole group, with the exception
of one species of the sub-group Cactornis, lately brought from Bow Island, in the Low
Archipelago.”
”
He later summarized his interpretation of the nature of these finches.
“Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of
birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago,
one species had been taken and modified for different ends.”
- Charles Darwin
ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE (1823-1913)
• He suggested the same conclusions but it was Darwin who
first published it.
• Wallace produced scientific journals with Darwin in 1858,
which prompted Darwin to publish On the Origin of Species the
following year.
THEORIES OF EVOLUTION:
GENETICS
Johann Gregor Mendel (1822-1884)
He is the one who discovered the fundamental
laws of inheritance. Through his work on pea
plants, he deduced that genes come in pairs and
are inherited as distinct units, one from each
parent. Mendel tracked the segregation of parental
genes and their appearance in the offspring as
dominant or recessive traits. He recognized the
mathematical patterns of inheritance from one
generation to the next.
MENDEL'S LAWS OF HEREDITY:
1) The Law of Segregation: Each inherited trait is defined by a gene pair. Parental
genes are randomly separated to the sex cells so that sex cells contain only one gene
of the pair. Offspring therefore inherit one genetic allele from each parent when sex
cells unite in fertilization.
2) The Law of Independent Assortment: Genes for different traits are sorted
separately from one another so that the inheritance of one trait is not dependent on
the inheritance of another.
3) The Law of Dominance: An organism with alternate forms of a gene will express
the form that is dominant.
MOLECULAR GENETICS
• The final step in understanding the origins of species is the
discovery by James Watson and Francis Crick.
• Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) – a double helix molecule that

determines the traits of all species
James Watson Francis Crick

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DEVELOPMENT OF

• Anaximander (6th Century B.C)

• James Ussher (1581 – 1656)

Georges Cuvier (1769 – 1832)

• Carolus Linnaeus (1707 – 1778)

• James Hutton (1726 – 1778)

• Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) – a double helix molecule that

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