AAAH - influences on Darwin?! (1 Viewer)

[hotpotflo]

does somebody,

ANYBODY,

have info for that dotpoint

'analyse info from secondary sources on the historical development of theories of evolution and use available evidence to assess social and political influences on these developments'

????

PLEASE with many cherries on top!

 

[~TeLEpAtHeTiC~]

if you hav 'spotlight-biology' textbook it has excellent historical explanation of the development of evolution theorums

it has the three essential ones..well the ones i think

darwin/wallace - gradualism

lamark - aquired characteristic

eldrige - punctuated

and it has many others but.... if u cant get hold on this...get back to me and i'll type it all up..seeya

 

[tempco]

Well, this is the timeline I've learnt:

1735 - Linnaeus published a classification system in which he classified humans and apes together.

Late 1700 - Erasmus Darwin suggested that all life came from one source.

1809 - Jean Baptiste de Lamark put forward the first theory of evolution - changes in a species are brought about by the "use" or "disuse" of certain body parts. These changes are passed down from generation to generation. (Although the theory was disproved, it helped in the acceptance of Darwin's theory of evolution)

Late 1800s - Herbert Spencer first mentioned the concept of the "survival of the fittest".

1859 - Charles Darwin published his work, On the Evolution of Species by Means of Natural Selection. Alfred Wallace also published his works, but Darwin took precedence because of his more detailed research.

mid 1900s -> Present - The rise of Neo-Darwinism. Darwin's theories have been refined, because of the many new concepts and technologies that have been developed.

Where does Gould/Eldrige fit into all of this? I guess it would be good if I mentioned their theory of evolution.

And regarding the second part of the dot point, just refer to social classes, and how the upper classes used Darwinism as an excuse to ignore/oppress the lower classes. Also, I've read that Hitler was influenced by Darwinism, in his quest for the "perfect" Aryan race.

 

[hotpotflo]

TA MUCHLY, guys, this will all help so much!!!!

nekkidserpent, the reason why i was having kittens over this is because the second dotpoint is not on the influences OF his theories but rather ON. i only realised that a short while ago.

i scrabbled around the net last night and i think we have to deal with things like, it was the mid-18th century and they were getting a bit more accepting of ideas which went against the Bible. also i found this one sentence somewhere that said that, at that time, the ultimate goal for a scientist was to formulate a theory that explained fundamental ideas of Earth.

stuff n tings like that.

 

[tempco]

Oh crap!! I totally misread the dot point! :/

Thanks for pointing that out... yeh I guess you could include how it was initially rejected by the creationists, since society at that time revolved around Christianity and such... and as you said, it's acceptance should also be highlighted. That's the society part of it, but I'm unsure of the political part of it. Maybe the debates that were taken place during Darwin's time, and that it conflicted with the beliefs of the goverment (Queen Elizabeth was it?)?

I have no idea what I'm going on about, but yeh..

 

[hotpotflo]

ahoy!

i found some stuff on the ol' guy:

there were social and political influences. In the 1830s there was a real fear that revolution might spread to Britain from abroad; by 1860 this was no longer the case. And in the second half of the century it was possible for a man to become a professional scientist without private means and without taking Holy Orders: a change that helped to weaken the influence of religion.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

Darwins aim was to be the Newton of Biology; and to do that he needed to know what exactly were the precise merits of a theory like Newtons.

Philosophy of Science in England (1830-1840)

Herschel and Whewell

The highest form of science was Newtonian astronomy; the ultimate aim of the scientist was the derivation of fundamental or formal laws

The law of gravitation being 'the most universal truth at which human reason has yet arrived' (Herschel)

'Newtons theory is the highest point of the inductive ascent; the point to which mens minds had been journeying for two thousand years' (Whewell)

Two main features to their philosophy of science:

1) A hypo-deductive model (i.e. science based on logical empiricism, inductivist)

2) The ultimate test of a theory is its ability to explain phenomena either hostile or of a different kind to those contemplated in the formation of the hypothesis. Whewell termed this 'the consilience of inductions'

By 1880s most scientists and educated people accepted evolution although still some controversy over natural selection as a mechanism.

RECKON THIS MIGHT BE WHAT THEY WANT?