BIOL 112 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Natural Selection, Special Creation, Scientific Theory
Document Summary
Evolution by natural selection is one of the best supported and most important theories in modern biology. Populations of organisms evolve, or change through time. Charles darwin: on the origin of species by means of natural selection, 1859. Claims of the idea of special creation: Life on earth is young (~ 6000 years old) Explains a broad class of observations and is widely supported by evidence. Theory of natural selection replaced existing idea of special creation. Every organism was an example of a perfect essence, or type, created by. Aristotle ordered known organisms into the linear great chain of being (or scale of nature) Species were organized into a sequence based on increasing size and complexity. Sequence started with minerals and lower plants. Humans were at the top of the chain. Species are higher (in the sense of being more complex, or better") than others. 1809: lamarck, first to propose a formal theory of evolution:
