Evolution and Society Exam 1

Tabula rasa

the 20th-century social science paradigm that humans are born as blank slates, thus being purely products of their cultures (nurture \> nature)

Moralistic fallacy

when people reject scientific findings because they do not fit with their moral/ethical ideals of the world

Naturalistic fallacy

the belief that what is natural must also be good and desirable (violence isn’t good just because it may be natural)

Observation, explanation, test hypothesis

How do we seek evidence in science?

Hypothesis

least certain level of scientific opinion, no evidence has yet been gathered

Theory

a moderately certain level of scientific opinion, a lot of evidence has been gathered in support

Law

provable scientific description of what will happen under certain conditions

Scientific fallacy

just because a question cannot be addressed by science does not mean that the idea is incorrect or untrue

Scala Naturae (The natural order or The Great Chain of Being)

early Christian/Roman attempt to organize nature into a hierarchical order where beings with more material and less spirit were below beings with less material and more spirit; inanimate objects \=\> plants \=\> animals \=\> humans \=\> God

Karl Von Linnaeus

Enlightenment thinker who wanted to maintain a biblical explanation of living things while improving communication in science, so he created binomial nomenclature using type specimen thinking

Type specimen thinking

there is one ideal example for every species, usually the most impressive or containing exaggerated features

Binomial nomenclature

a two-word naming system for animal species according to kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species

Count Buffon

French Enlightenment thinker who challenged Linnaeus and his ideas concerning the age of the earth (he was not a biblical thinker); suggested that organisms CAN and DO change over time, but his theory was rejected as he could not explain how or why evolution occurred

George Cuvier

Enlightenment thinker credited with the idea of extinction; challenged Buffon’s theory of evolution on the evidentiary basis that mummified pets found in Egyptian tombs 5000 years old demonstrated no significant differences when compared to living organisms

Mary Anning

a key player in the acceptance of Cuvier’s idea of extinction; she was an expert fossil collector along the coastal cliffs of south England

James Usher

17th-century Biblical chronologist who firmly dated a long-held consensus for the creation of the Earth and universe on October 23, 4004 BC, at 9:00 AM, meaning that there would not have been enough time for evolution to occur

Bernard Palissy

16th-century thinker who argued that the Earth was very old and fossils were remnants of once-living things; either died in prison or burnt at stake as a result

James Hutton

enlightenment thinker and the “father of geology” who lived in Scotland

Hadrian’s Wall

Scottish geographic feature that inspired Hutton’s epiphany that the earth must be significantly older than previously thought in order to explain the large-scale geographic change all around him

Playfair

a friend of James Hutton who rewrote his book on the theory of unconformity that eventually inspired Charles Lyell

Charles Lyell

Scottish Enlightenment scientist and geologist who dedicated his life to gathering evidence and expanding upon Hutton’s unconformity; explained the theory of uniformitarianism (anti-catastrophism) in the first geology textbook “Principles of Geology 1830”; eventually became a friend and mentor to Darwin

Uniformitarianism (anti-catastrophism)

there was no special period of geological aging, geological history is long and uniform, not catastrophic according to stories of the biblical flood

The Great Debate

discussion in 1830 at the French Academy of Science between Saint-Hilaire and Cuvier about the merits of biological evolution; signaled that intellectuals were finally open to “ultimate reasons” beyond biblical orthodoxy and intellectuals realized that fame and fortune would be the prize for explaining evolution

Charles Darwin

began his career as a naturalist in Cambridge as an accomplished collector under Henslow

Captain Fitzroy

Captain of the H.M.S. Beagle sent to map the region around South America, encouraged by Henslow to bring Charles Darwin as a young, wealthy, literate collector of plants and animals to accompany him

Principles of Geology 1831

the book Darwin reads at the beginning of his voyage that helps him recognize the “oceans of time” that changed the landscape of earth and may have similarly allowed animals to change over time (began thinking in long time scales and slow consistent change)

Seashells

found by Darwin on the South American mountaintops without any other animal fossils, disproving the catastrophe theory of the biblical flood

Law of Fossil Succession

living and extinct animal relatives tend to share similar geographic distributions; Darwin observed similarities between glyptodonts and armadillos in the same region

Thomas Malthus

late 18th-century author of “An essay on the Principle of Population” which explains that as population increases exponentially, a lack of resources drives competition in economics; Darwin applied this reasoning to animals and concluded that competition for limited resources for survival drives evolution in organisms

Artificial selection

when an intelligent agent chooses traits to emphasize in a species through selective breeding; used as evidence by Darwin for natural selection

Natural selection

the emergence of certain traits in a species over time that favor survival and reproduction as a result of competition for resources

Glen Roy

Scottish geological feature that Darwin erroneously believed was caused by uplift rather than a glacier, hurting his credibility and confidence in publishing his evolutionary findings; forced him to compile more evidence for evolution

Vestigial traits

evidence for evolution in the form of leftover traits in animals that are no longer useful in their current form; God wouldn’t make a mistake by adding useless features, so evolution must explain this

Transitional forms

if species are related, then some fossils should include a mixture of features belonging to two different species; such is the case with the Archaeopteryx

Lamarckism

theory by August Weismann, noticed that sex cells were segregated from the rest of the body, meaning that “you are descended not from your mother but from her ovary”

Red Queen

a character that runs but never gets anywhere because the scenery moves with them; basically, any evolutionary advantage will only be temporary because all other species will eventually adapt

Sexually selected traits

traits not key to survival but are selected by the opposite sex and passed on

Illusion of design

evolution makes different animals look like they were designed to do or be something specific

Richard Dawkins

said “the body is simply a vehicle for the replication of genes”

Fisher (sexy-sons) effect

pick attractive mates so that your offspring will also be attractive and able to reproduce; more common when choosing a mate is less costly for females

Good genes (good sense) theory

attracted mates that are able to produce offspring that will survive to reproduce; beauty signals the genetic quality of the individual; more common when choosing a mate is more costly for females

Trivers

says to think about reproduction in terms of costs and benefits, females must put in significantly higher amounts of energy to raise offspring than males, so they have the power of choice

Aman Zahavi

observed that traits that are often seen as attractive are actually a handicap to the individual

Hamilton and Zuck

fisherian effects like bright colors also have higher disease resistance and other genetic advantages within species; between species, the brightest-colored species had the most parasites

Forking

High testosterone is necessary for exaggerated features, but high testosterone means you’re less disease resistant