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• 1 Evolution

• 1.1 History of Evolutionary Thought

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• What are characteristics of the Classical Philosophers?

  • Species are static and unchanging
  • Life is unchanging
  • Ladder of organic life
  • Species are in a fixed position and can not move up and down the ladder 

• What are the characteristics of Taoism?

  • Denies fixity of species
  • Humans, nature and the heavens are in a constant state of transformation 
  • Not exactly evolution, because species can turn into other species 

• What are the characteristics of the Islamic Golden Age?

  • Organic states are in a constant state of competition
  • First writings on the struggle for life; 
  • How things are struggling
  • How certain species have certain advantages and live longer 
  • Transmutation from the non-living to the living

• What are characteristics of the Christian West?

  • Literal interpretations of the bible
  • Fixed date for the creation of the earth
  • Based on the bible by James Usher, he calculated back in time

  • Some humans were considered better than other humans
  • Species organized in a vertical orientation

• What are characteristics of the Age of Exploration?

  • Earth is no longer the centre of the universe

  • Telescope to find new worlds

  • Invention of the microscope

  • Diversity of people, plants and animals discovered

  • Discovery of the great apes

• What are the contributions of de Buffon?

  • Attempted to describe all variation in the natural world
  • Species are the highest level at which animals could be organized
  • Defines species as those who can interbreed
  • Biological variation is a product of adaptation to ones environment
  • Wrote Histoire Naturelle    

• What are the contributions of Linnaeus?

  • Identification of species
  • Classifies species
  • Talks about a relationship that Buffon did not quite get
  • Creates a nested hierarchy

  • Classification of people

  • Not published, because of the church

• What are the contributions of Cuvier?

  • Found fossil bones that have never been seen before

• What are the contributions of Lyell?

  • Determined that the Earth is very old
  • Using modern processes to extrapolate what had happened in the past

  • Theory of Uniformitarianism

• What are the contributions of Erasmus Darwin?

  • Life evolved from a single common ancestor
  • Species can evolve from one into another