ANTHR101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Industrial Revolution, Heredity, Gradualism
8 Mar 2016
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All that natural selection cares about is the survival of the population. Cuvier"s catastrophism" came around, where he suggested that mass extinction" occurs and the creator or divine authority then repopulates the hierarchy. Sir charles lyell"s uniformitarianism: he was operating in geology at this time but his theory was lined with early evolution as well. He focused on physical changes on the planet erosion, etc. The forces that we can observe in the natural world today were the same as in the past but it is simply gradual macroevolution. He found that all were the same species but they had a lot of differences; beak shapes, eye shapes, colour, etc. He came up with three points: population variation: why the variation in species, heritability: passing on of favourable traits. He wasn"t able to express the mechanism of heritability but it was explained by gregory mendel: differential reproductive success: survival. If we didn"t have mutation, we would all be the same.
