OBJECTIVES Ch 20
After reading this chapter and attending lecture, the student should be able to:
1. State the two major points Darwin made in The Origin of Species concerning the Earth's biota.
2. Compare and contrast Plato’s philosophy of idealism and Aristotle's scala naturae.
3. Describe Carolus Linnaeus' contribution to Darwin's theory of evolution.
4. Describe Georges Cuvier's contribution to paleontology.
5. Explain how Cuvier and his followers used the concept of catastrophism to oppose evolution.
6. Explain how the principle of gradualism and Charles Lyell's theory of uniformitarianism influenced Darwin's ideas about evolution.
7. Describe Jean Baptiste Lamarck's model for how adaptations evolve.
8. Describe how Charles Darwin used his observations from the voyage of the HMS Beagle to formulate and support his theory of evolution.
9. Describe how Alfred Russel Wallace influenced Charles Darwin.
10. Explain what Darwin meant by the Principle of common descent and "descent with modification".
11. Explain what evidence convinced Darwin that species change over time.
12. State, in their own words, three inferences Darwin made from his observations, which led him to propose natural selection as mechanism for evolutionary change.
13. Explain why variation was so important to Darwin's theory.
14. Explain how Reverend Thomas Malthus' essay influenced Charles Darwin.
15. Distinguish between artificial selection and natural selection. 16. Explain why the population is the smallest unit that can evolve.
17. Using some contemporary examples, explain how natural selection results in evolutionary change.
18. Explain why the emergence of population genetics was an important turning point for evolutionary theory.
19. Describe the lines of evidence Charles Darwin used to support the principle of common descent.
20. Describe how molecular biology can be used to study the evolutionary relationships amongn organisms.
21. Explain the problem with the statement that Darwinism is "just a theory".
22. Distinguish between the scientific and colloquial use of the word "theory".