BIO 185 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Directional Selection, Natural Selection, Gibbon
Document Summary
Hypothesis: a tentative explanation about some phenomenon. Theory: an extensive synthesis of a large and important body of info about some related group of phenomena. What is the difference between theories and hypotheses: theories are broader in scope, theories are general enough to motivate many specific hypotheses, theories are supported by a very large body of evidence. There is descent with modification (simply passing traits from parent to offspring, one of the fundamental ideas from darwin"s theory of evolution): evolution has primarily been caused by natural selection (differential reproduction). What is a paradigm: a pervasive way of looking at a subject, bigger than a theory because it impacts the way people do science, examples: basic atomic structure, solar system, most scientists hold evolution as a paradigm. It"s important if the organism survives to reproduce-- genetic contribution to the next generation: mass extinctions limit diversity.
