Week 1 Scientists

• • John Ray SAGITTARIUS (mid to late-1600s)
  • An English naturalist 

  The first scientist to carry out a thorough study of the living and developed an early classification (arrangement of animals and plants in taxonomic groups according to their observed similarities) system for plants and animals based on anatomy and physiology.
• • Ideas on classification were later on expanded by *Carolus Linnaeus GEMINI (Swedish Naturalist)
• • Georges Buffon VIRGO (French zoologist)
  • Proposed that populations of living things change through time
• • *Jean-Baptiste Lamarck LEO (French naturalist)
  • At the same time as Buffon, suggested an intimate relationship between variation and evolution
  • Popularized the view that species change throughout many generations by new environments (adapting)
  • Advocated that all living things evolve only upwards - from dead matter to “human perfection”
  • Noted organisms altered their behavior as a response to environmental traits
• • Catastrophism
  • Proposed by Georges Cuvier VIRGO (French Zoologist)
  • Suggested that Earth has been shaped by sudden, violent events, and that the planent was about 6,000 years ago
• • Uniformitarianism
  • Proposed by James Hutton GEMINI (Scottish geologist) and popularized by Charles Lyell SCORPIO (Scottish also)
  • Suggested that changes in the Earth are directly caused by recurring events
• • Thomas Malthus AQUARIUS (English Economist)
  • Suggested that population size of humans can increase linearly (straight line) from increased land usage and improvements in agriculture in contrast to reproductive potential being exponential (doubling with each generation)
  • Theory: the supply of food cannot keep up with the growth of the human population, inevitably resulting in disease, famine, war, and calamity
• Darwin and Wallance hypothesized that natural selection changes populations from populations from generation to generation
• Darwin’s and Wallace’s ideas about evolution were most influenced by his own observations as naturalists and particularly noted the distinctive traits of island species compared to mainland species
• “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” - Theodosius Dobzhansky (influential evolutionary scientists of the 1900s)