Biology 1002B Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Thomas Robert Malthus, Uniformitarianism, Georges Cuvier
3 Feb 2017
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Evolution: what is it: evolution means gradual change, biological evolution refers to gradual change of populations or organisms over time, measuring time in generations rather than years. Pre-darwin knowledge of the natural world: aristotle, observed nature and natural history in a ladderlike classification that put gods above human, humans above animals etc the different kinds could never change or become extinct. This was known as natural theology: biogeography, studies of the world distribution of plants (now called biogeography) raised questions as to the limits to the number of species created by. And after each event they became a different set of fossils in the next higher layer: james hutton believed that the earth changed slowly over its history. Strongly contradicting cuvier"s catastrophism: charles lyell, came up with the concept of uniformitarianism ( the concept that the geologic processes that sculpted the earth"s surface over long periods of time are exactly as the processes observed today)
