PHIL- Revolutions in Science FINAL

The Scientific Revolution of the 17th century is taken to be a ____________ revolution in science

Paradigmatic

Newton & Newtonianism

the new physics that followed Newton in the 18th century was very different from what Newton himself believed. 18th century Newtonians worked to extend explanations of the world according to classical mechanics, going beyond Newton himself

Darwin & Darwinism

Darwin's own contribution has constrained the conceptual and empirical development of evolutionary biology ever after

What did Plato believe about the world?

The world is a mirage, that the only things that really exist are immutable Forms or Ideas, and that objects in the real world are just shadows of the forms.

What time period did Essentialism dominate?

During Plato's time and onward for 2000 years

What concept does biological essentialism deny?

Progress and change in biology

How did animal's forms behave under a biological essentialist point of view?

There is an ideal form of each animal and plant, but since the earth is imperfect, there is a little variation from animal to animal. but the ideal form stays the same.

Who was the first "biologist"?

Aristotle

What is the Great Chain of Being?

Scala Naturae: the procession of nature from plants at the bottom, to animals and humans at the top.

What was the concept of natural history regarded as originally?

Designated very little beyond a collection of observations or reports on geological, meteorological, biological, and astronomical phenomena.

What was the second tradition of natural history?

sought rational theories to explain such matters as the presence of fossils, earthquakes, volcanoes, mountians, and floods by historical processes involving chemical mechanisms

The Bible was not only regarded as a religious text, but also a ____________ text

scientific

What was it called to believe that the animals' species are created by God and unchanging?

Immutability of Species

What is Natural Theology?

the intellectual tradition which seeks to find evidence and reason for God's existence in nature and our experience of nature.

The species must have been designed by a creator that made the hierarchy

What was Descartes' main idea?

A Mechanistic View

What does the mechanistic viewpoint entail?

The functions of life are purely mechanical. Animals do not feel any emotion or pain. They do not have a soul.

who is considered the father of modern taxonomy?

Carl Linnaeus

what are the three kingdoms?

animal, vegetable, mineral

how does the order of taxonomy go?

Classes-> Orders-> Genera-> Species

What did buffon argue about the members of a family?

they all descended from the same ancestors

who was the first to use the term "biology"?

Lamarck

What was Lamarck's evolutionary theory called?

spontaneous generation

what does "spontaneous generation" entail?

transmutation- the changing of organisms into more complex forms in accordance with physical and chemical principles, in a strictly materialistic manner AKA "the force of life"

Lamarck believed that organisms could change from ______ to _______

simple ; complex

Lamarck was big on what idea

Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics.

who established the fields of comparative anatomy and paleontology

George Cuvier

define "catastrophism"

the idea that all present organisms as they are now are exactly as they were when they were created. All fossils that are found are therefore due to an extinction of a species that no longer exists.

Who defended uniformitarianism?

Charles Lyell

Define uniformitarianism

the idea that the Earth was shaped by the same processes still in operation today.

who was the first to argue that the earth is over 300 million years old? ("deep time")

Charles Lyell

what are the key points of uniformitarianism

- James Hutton

-Charles Lyell

-gradual geological process-erosion, deposition, mountain building

-earth must be hundreds of millions of years old

what are the key points of catastrophism

-Almost everyone else believes in this

- All geologic change occurs suddenly, during catastrophes - The Biblical Flood was a key explanatory event

- Earth is only a few thousand years old

who coined the term "dinosaur"?

Richard Owen

Define homology

the same organ in different animals under every variety of form and function

what is "the archetype"?

there must exist a common structural plan for all vertebrates

homology AKA....

unity of type

What were the points of biology before Darwin?

• Linnaeus and classification

• Catastrophism vs. Uniformitarianism

• Establishment of "Deep Time"

• The fossil record: can species go extinct?

• Unity of Type, homology (Buffon, Cuvier, Owen)

• Split between naturalists over the immutability of species

what is natural theology?

the perfection of the natural world is evidence for its creation by an intelligent designer

what did natural theology explain?

- diversity of life

- adaptations

- ecosystems

was darwin a smart student growing up?

no; he was very average

what happened on the voyage of the Beagle

-darwin spent most of the time investigating geology, making natural history collections

-he found important fossils, changing his views on extinctions

-formed new theories about geology

What did darwin notice about the finches of the Galapagos?

Darwin noticed that each island had a finch with different mutations based on the plants there

What economic solution to overpopulation did Thomas Maltheus suggest?

Poor people should not have a lot of kids(...)

what did the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation argue?

It suggests that everything currently in existence has developed from earlier forms: solar system, Earth, rocks, plants and corals, fish, land plants, reptiles and birds, mammals, and ultimately man

what did Alfred Russel Wallace do?

- independently discovered natural selection

- developed theories of transmutations

- sent Darwin drafts on natural selection

what were darwin's goals?

- reject special creation

- the species were not created independently

- no intelligent design

- natural selection is the "true cause" of speciation

- selection happens in nature

- selection can produce changes in organisms

- selection explains a wide range of observations

how is natural selection described?

it works slowly, and continuously.

what was Darwin's novel insight on evolution by natural selection?

small individual variations-- previously regarded as "accidental"

what are some difficulties with Darwin's theory?

- what is the underlying mechanism?

- how can natural selection be creative?

- where are the transitional forms? (why are the species still defined for the most part?)

- complex organs (ex: how did the human eye evolve?)

- viability and the fertility of the hybrids

what are some supports for darwin's theory?

- geographic distribution

- fossil record

- unity of type (homologies)

- rudimentary organs

- embryology

Evolution according to Darwin, contained the following beliefs:

- tree of life (diagram)

- populations evolve, not individuals

- natural selection works very slowly

- natural selection is without purpose (no creator selecting traits)

some unanswered questions regarding natural selection:

• How does heredity work?

• What are species? Are species real?

• Can natural selection create new things?

• Is natural selection the predominate force driving change?

• Is natural selection "progressive"?

• Does evolution leave room for the role of the Selector or Designer?

what were the primary critics of Darwin?

church and religious orgs

-took issue with man emerging from ape

what were the primary supporters of Darwin?

free thinkers and athiests

who coined the term "agnostic"?

Huxley

Who was chiefly responsible for the spread of Darwin's ideas?

Huxley

What did Darwin believe about human racial differences?

sexual selection is the cause

what did people take issue with: transmutation of a species or the mechanism of evolution?

the mechanism of evolution

what are some alternatives to natural selection?

• Theistic evolution: God directly guided evolution

• Neo-Lamarckian: inheritance of acquired characteristics

• Orthogensis: organisms have an innate tendency to evolve in a unilinear fashion, without the stress on adaptive relations

• Mutationism: new species were created by mutations in a single step

What is the difference between inheritance and natural selection?

what is the problem with inheritance?

domestic breeding evidence does not warrant an argument for species change in nature

Who was the father of modern genetics?

Gregor Mendel

What was the goal of the fruit flies lab?

to show that mutations could produce4 new species in "a single leap"

what was the actual outcome of the fruit flies lab?

mutations increased the genetic variation in the population

what was synthesized in the modern synthesis?

ecology, genetics, paleontology, geograpical dist., embryology, systematics, comparative anatomy

what is the result of the aformentioned synthesis?

modern biology

What are the scientific concepts of physics?

time, space, motion

What are the scientific concepts of biology?

genes, species, natural selection

what is conceptual change?

the process by which concepts and the relationships between concepts change over the course of history

what are some examples of conceptual changes?

young earth -> old earth

species fixism -> species transmutationism

how else might we think of theory change?

changes in vocabulary!

ex: time -> spacetime

what is displacement?

the old theory is completely supplanted by the new theory

what is incorporation?

the first theory is some special case of the new theory

what is integration?

two theories are "mixed" together

ex: phenomenological theory of gases and the kinetic theory of gases

define Newton's divine presence:

The omnipresence of God pervaded the Newtonian cosmos, operating as an immaterial "aether" that offered no resistance to bodies but could move them through the force of gravitation

define Newton's infinite:

Newton believed the universe was infinite in all directions, with no center or edge. He thought that if the universe were finite, it would collapse into a spherical mass.

define Newton's universal deterministic laws:

The same laws that govern objects on Earth also apply to everything else in the universe.

Define Newton's absolute time and space:

Newton's laws of motion describe a universe where time is absolute and flows constantly. Space is independent of objects inside of it.

why is Newton's world mechanistic?

newton's laws explain motion; a change in motion is caused by a force

why is Newton's world material?

the world was viewed as being made up of tangible, real objects

why is Newton's world mathematical?

the laws that govern the world are mathematical in nature

What are the three components of Newton's scientific worldview?

Mechanistic, Material, Mathematical

what is the concept of the Newtonian legacy?

no divine intervention, if we knew more or had more precise tools we could measure everything

Newton's thoughts on the following query: If all matter was taken out of the universe, would space and time still remain?

Yes. There is absolute space and absolute time. They are independent of other things in the universe. He understands what his physics needs.

Leibniz's thoughts on the following query: If all matter was taken out of the universe, would space and time still remain?

No. Space and time are not real, absolute entities but are instead relational and ideal. Space is the "order of coexisting phenomena" (things existing at the same time), while time is the "order of successive phenomena" (things happening one after another).

what is the first principle in the Principia?

Space is something distinct from body and exists independently of the existence of bodies

what is the second principle in the Principia?

There is a fact of the matter whether a given body moves and what its true quantity of motion is

what is the third principle in the Principia?

The true motion of a body does not consist of, or cannot be defined in terms of, its motion relative to other bodies.

define Galilean Relativity:

The fundamental laws of physics are the same in all frames of reference moving with constant velocity with respect to one another.

Newton's Bucket thought experiment:

newton spun a bucket on a rop and noticed that the water's surface gradually assumed a concave shape showed that it was spinning with respect to something; how else would it know what to do?

what is the concave shape of the water's surface actually due to?

absolute space

Does the bucket experiment really suggest that there is an absolute reference frame (absolute space) against which motion can be measured?

Mach suggested that the rotation might be relative to the distant stars or the distribution of mass in the universe. Einstein's theory of General Relativity reinterpreted these ideas in terms of spacetime curvature.

Thought experiments are arguments which:

1. Posit hypothetical or counterfactual states of affairs

2. Invoke particulars irrelevant to the generality of the conclusion

what is aether wind?

the motion of the earth through the aether

what did people first believe about light waves

light seems to travel through a vacuum, and there must be a supplemental substance-- "the aether" that permeates everything

Explain the Michelson-Morley experiment:

they were trying to see if the speed of life differed if it followed the direction of the aether wind

what were the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment?

no difference in the speed of light depending on the direction-- proved the constant speed of light

define the relativity of simultaneity

the fact that it is not the case that two spatially separated events occur at the same time

what did einstein suggest about the nature of light?

light isn' just a wave; it's also made up of tiny packets of energy called photons. each photon carries a specific amount of energy, depending on the light's color

How did einstein reason that there was Special Relativity

the laws of physics and the speed of light are the same for everyone, no matter the speed. Therefore, time and space must change depending on how fast you're going.