Anthro2050 1st Edition Lecture 3 Outline of Last Lecture I Biological Anthropology II The Scientific Method in Biological Anthropology Outline of Current Lecture III Evolutionary Theory IV Important Figures in Evolutionary Theory Current Lecture Evolutionary Theory The history of evolutionary thought and the ideas that led to the development of our current theories on evolution and natural selection Holds the idea that there is a time and a place for every thought and that though Darwin is credited with evolution and natural selection the same ideas would have come up around the same time with any scientist pursuing the research and ideas that already existed Important Figures in Evolutionary Theory Plato main idea essentialism an ideal form exists for every organism and variations are merely flaws or deviation from that perfect form and this is true for every single creature The problem with this idea is that it doesn t allow for gradual changes over time Archbishop James Ussher in 1654 used the Christian religious text the Bible to estimate the age of the Earth His calculation estimated the Earth to have been created in 4004 BCE At this time life forms were ranked in the west in the Great Chain of Being with man at the top between animals and divine figures unlike the tree structure we refer to today that places humans among other animals Nicholas Steno The father of Geology Was brought a shark to examine and noticed that the shark s teeth had similarities to things known as tongue stones These tongue stones became the first recognized fossils of preserved organisms versus casts of shells These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor s lecture GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes not as a substitute Carolus Linnaeus created the contemporary organization scheme we use today The Nested Hierarchy which was the first to place man with other animals and not above them after recognizing the similarities between humans and apes He also created Binomial Nomenclature which refers to living beings by their scientific names the genus and species which helps international scientists communicate when referencing a specific being that may be called vastly different things in different languages Compte de Buffon tried to re date the age of the Earth and believed the Earth to have been formed from hot debris when a commit hit the sun Tested the time balls of iron took to cool after being heated and used the results to estimate the Earth s age at 75000 years Georges Cuvier People knew fossils were the remains of dead animals yet were troubled because the fossils often bore no resemblance to current animals because why would god believed to have created life kill off his creations Cuvier was the first scientist to tackle extinction with his idea Catastrophism Catastrophism is the idea that the Earth has withstood multiple catastrophic events which caused extinction and shaped the Earth James Hutton Contrast to Cuvier no great disasters were needed to create the Earth Uniformatarianism Processes that are at work today were also at work in the past So wind erosion earthquakes etc gradually changed and are changing the face of Earth Charles Lyell Popularized Hutton s ideas and used them to write Principals of Geology in 1830 a book that would later influence Darwin Lyell was also a friend and colleague of Darwin Jean Baptiste Lamark Major evolutionary thinker before Darwin Developed theory on the Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics changes to an individual over their lifetime would be passed on automatically to their children This was thought of before there was much knowledge of genetics Popularized by the idea of giraffes stretching their necks to reach higher leaves on trees thus resulting in the long necked giraffes we see today However research and a knowledge of genetics lets us know that this idea is false Thomas Malthus Interested in the relationship of human populations to resources Wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798 Next lecture will discuss Darwin and his research