ANTH 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Carl Linnaeus, Heritability, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon
Document Summary
Dark ages is where our own western tradition in science begins. Belief in the fixity of species, paired with religion. Principles of stasis: life forms don"t change. All natural things are fixed and unchanging. Recent, earth would be 6,000 years old. Worms and insects were at the bottom of the chain. Developed species genus concept to identify organisms. Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. King phillip came over for great spaghetti. Argued that species could change because of changes in their environment. Introduced ideas of evolution, competition, and environmental influence in evolutionary processes. If environment changed, an animal"s activity pattern would change to accommodate new changes. Use-disuse theory / inheritance of acquired characteristics. A trait acquired by an animal during its lifetime can be passed onto offspring. Catastrophism: the belief that the earth"s geological features are the result of sudden, worldwide cataclysmic events. To explain the disappearance of animals represented by fossils.