S22 - Lesson Notes

Video 22.01: Darwin's Theory

● Darwin presented evidence suggesting that many of the species currently inhabiting the
Earth are actually the descendants of ancestral species, and that the modern species are
different from the ancestral species in both minor and fundamental ways.
● Natural selection:
○ A population can change over generations if individuals with certain heritable
traits produce more offspring than other individuals.
● Evolution:
○ To develop gradually, especially from a simple to a more complex form
● Carolus Linnaeus gave each organism two names:
○ Genus
○ Species
● Lamark believed:
○ Microscopic organisms would appear spontaneously, and then gradually evolve
into complex forms as the result of an innate desire to strive for complexity and
perfection.
○ He proposed that giraffes evolved to have long necks because each generation had
to stretch their neck further to get leaves in the trees.
○ Lamarck made a significant contribution toward the theory of evolution when he
recognized that evolutionary change occurs gradually as populations acquire
beneficial characteristics.
● Cuvier advocated a theory called catastrophism.
● Charles Lyell:
○ He concluded that Cuvier's catastrophism theory was wrong, and that changes in
the Earth's geography have been the result primarily of much slower, more
progressive changes.
○ Lyell's theory was called uniformitarianism.

Video 22.02: Darwin's Research & Natural Selection in Action

● Charles Darwin was born in England in 1809. At this time it was generally believed that
the Earth was only a few thousand years old and that species had remained unchanged
since their creation.
● These observations reinforced Darwin's knowledge of Lyell's research, which indicated
that Earth was not merely a few thousand years old, but rather that Earth had been
gradually changing over many thousands of years at least.
● On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin proposes a mechanism to explain the origin of
species by adaptation.
● The common ancestor of all modern dogs is the gray wolf. But artificial selection in dog
breeding has been the influencing of behavior, shape, and size of dogs for the past 14,000
years.
● He points out, that natural selection acts only to improve the organisms ability to live in
their environment and survive to reproduce. As such, reproduction is the crucial factor
rather than survival.
● Darwin also points to embryology as evidence for common ancestry among organisms.
● Members of a population produces more offspring than the environment can support is a
false statement about Darwin's theory of evolution.