Exam 2: Early Evolutionary Ideas and Darwins Insight

Both Wallace and Darwin traveled extensively and were struck by the strong patterns they observed in the geographic distribution of nature's diversity.Which of the following observations were made by Wallace?

Even if philosophers accept and study the importance of change,a full theory of evolution by natural selection cannot exist without

Which of the following examples best illustrates the concept of spontaneous generation?

The text presents several examples of the belief in spontaneous generation.Why do you think this theory persisted for thousands of years,until Darwin's time,even after the experiments of Francesco Redi?

Choose one of the three pigeon varieties from the figure above,and describe what steps breeders may have gone through to produce the unusual characteristics depicted.

Building on the ideas first proposed by Hutton,Lyell aimed to explain Earth's geological features using an approach known as uniformitarianism,which depends on

Before Darwin,scientists such as Lamarck envisioned evolutionary change as transformational-properties of an ensemble change because every member of the ensemble changes.Darwin's theory of evolutionary change was,by contrast,a variational one-the properties of an ensemble change because of the action of some sorting process acting on preexisting variation within the ensemble.Referring to the figure above,describe the kind of sorting process that takes place (a)when we use artificial selection to change the characteristics of a breed of animals or plants and (b)when natural selection operates on a population.

Two important differences between the processes of natural selection and artificial selection are

James Hutton,a Scottish geologist and naturalist,argued that the geological processes of erosion and sedimentation suggested that the world was created

The Greek philosopher Empedocles recognized that plant life preceded animal life.Xenophanes (570-470 B.C.)studied fossils in sedimentary rock and concluded that the rocks must have been underwater at one time.Explain why these were important shifts in logical thinking.

Francesco Redi's experiment,illustrated in the figure above,addressed the question of whether flies spontaneously generated from meat carcasses.Which of the following statements regarding this experiment is (are)true?

Darwin read Lyell's book,Principles of Geology,while serving as ship's naturalist on the HMS Beagle.Describe how Lyell's work influenced Darwin.

Early Greek philosophers failed to exploit one of the greatest advantages of methodological naturalism,which is that explanations can

Charles Darwin's grandfather Erasmus Darwin,an English physician and philosopher,

Why was it such a brilliant strategy for Darwin to open On the Origin of Species with a discussion of artificial selection?

In 1858,Darwin received a manuscript from Wallace in which Wallace proposed a theory very similar to his own.Darwin first presented his ideas in a joint paper with Wallace,which was read to the Linnaean Society,also in 1858.Why do you think history primarily associates Darwin's,not Wallace's,name with the theory of evolution?

The Greek philosopher Anaximander (ca.610-546 B.C.)provided a mechanistic rather than divine explanation of the celestial bodies,as illustrated in the figure above.We now know the details were wrong.Explain why,given the state of knowledge during his lifetime,this was a conception of the universe that made sense and was a breakthrough.

Write a short counter to Paley's argument that as it is virtually impossible for a fully working watch to come into being simply by chance,it is just as impossible for even more complex living creatures to come into being without a fully conscious creator.

The approach known as catastrophism explains Earth's geological features appealing to

In the 1880s,experimental work by August Weisman demonstrated that traits acquired during a lifetime could not be inherited.This dealt a deathblow to previous theories of Lamarckian inheritance and left scientists with which of the following possible processes of evolution?