02/01/06
From Biol301
Notes from 02/01/06
- Aristotle
- There is an essence about each thing in our world (essentialism)
- Life appears in clumps --not mixes. We call each clump a species
- Things occur on a ladder: God/Angels/.../humans/etc. (Great Chain of Being)
- Carl Linnaeus (1700s)
- Wanted to name and categorize everything (Taxonomy)
- Invented species naming scheme
- 1^st^ edition of classification book had 10 pages, 13^th^ edition had 3000
- said that study of nature reveals God's nature
- Ussher (1500 - 1600s)
- Proposed a 6k year age for Earth based on biblical generation records
- Number of spots on a ladybug is 2 or 7 depending on the species; it has nothing to do with age.
- Elytra on herculese beetle, are the front pair of wings, they are hardened which is a characteristic that defines beetles.
- These two examples show that the hierarchy is objective, not subjective.
- Hence though dolphins and fish seem together, dolphins are actually closer to humans than fish. Hence we can see how we've made the system subjective.
- So if evolution exists, it must explain 3 things:
- Life is divided into groups (species)
- Life has common designs
- Life is organized with an hierarchy
- Paley (1700s)
- Wrote Natural Theology
- First to argue Watchmaker standpoint
- The Age of Enlightenment
- Was skepticism of traditional beliefs and dogmas. It focused on the power and goodness of human rationality.
- Kant (1700s) separated God (noumenal) and real life (phenomena). We could study phenomena with science; we cannot study God with science.
- Kant removed the necessity of God without removing the possibility of God
- Reason is the most significant and positive capacity of the human
- Reason allows us to be free of dogmatic beliefs
- Reason makes all humans equal and therefore deserving of equal treatment
- Beliefs can only be accepted on the basis of reason, not on traditional authority
- Hutton showed that the earth must be older than 6k because of the weathering of the Hadrian Wall vs. canyons
- Showed that slow processes shpae Earth
- suggested infinite timeline
- 98% of Earth's species are now extinct
- Cuvier showed that it couldn't be infinite
- Jefferson was on Lyell's side; sent out Lewis and Clark to learn
- Conte de Buffon (1700s) noted that we group too easily, argued for limited evolution noting that its the reason for human diversity.
