BIOL 400 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Intelligent Design, Social Darwinism, Spontaneous Generation
Document Summary
Includes change and branching: what is evolution, evolution is heritable change in a population or species over generational time, and the divergence of lineages from a common source, evolution involves the following. If an animal gives birth to o spring that lacks some important part, has a defect, then that o spring will die. Not just the elimination of forms but the appearance of forms that are favoured in an environment. creative adaptation of new forms that are suited to out compete existing forms. It is more than just elimination of inviable forms. There is no theoretical form that is perfect. Some people still dislike this view: obstacles to evolutionary thinking, essentialism implies fixed species characteristics. Idea that species have some unchangeable essence for thro,logical regions. Earth has copies that are imperfect: everyday experience shows us generational continuity, not radical discontinuity. Evolution doesn"t happen quickly so we can"t easily observe evolution.
