Anthropology Essay Questions

a. What is Darwinian zeitgeist?

A modern person’s view may be extremely different that a Victorian child.

b. List and define the six contributions Darwin contributed to modern scientific thought.

Darwin rejected the supernatural, rejected typology, made teleology unneeded, refutes determinism, and started anthropocentric. Created ethics for the scientific foundation.

According to Lamarck, what is the relationship between the environment, a species’ habits ad
a species’ physical characteristics? What is the doctrine of “acquired characteristics”? Is it
inaccurate? How do we know?

He believed that acquired characteristics were obtained from generation to generation. For example, his thinking was that if the one generation had lost a limb during it’s lifetime, its offspring would also have a lost limb. However this is inaccurate since physical characteristics such has losing a limb has nothing to do the genetics.

List and define the four subfields of anthropology. What is a considered a 5th subfield by
some? What are the aspects of anthropology?

5 sub disciplines are Cultural, Linguistic, Archaeology, Biological, Applied Anthropology.

4 aspects of Anthropology are Holistic, Comparative, Humanistic and Scientific.

What did Mendel contribute to our knowledge of evolution? What is the Law of Independent
Assortment and the Law of Segregation? What could Mendel answer that Darwin could not?

Law of Segregation: Inheritance units are paired with one member coming from one parent and one from the other.

Law of Independent Assortment: Units sort out and recombine in pairs.

He answered whether or not traits of the parent competed or combined in the offspring.