BIO 193 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Uniformitarianism, Thomas Robert Malthus, Carl Linnaeus
Document Summary
A collection of fact-based hypotheses that help us understand the natural world. An extensive synthesis of a large and important body of information. Hypothesized that gradual changes in structure occurred as organisms moved from marine to terrestrial ground. Everything is fixed within this ladder, the scale of nature. Linnaeus came up with the nested classification system, like a tree or a bush, nothing moving around, everything stayed in its slot, no changes overtime. People started to questions the enormous amount of diversity, level of adaptedness. Thomas malthus was an economist, published an essay on population growth (1798) Couvier determined that fossils were due to catastrophes that wiped out entire species. Extinction- species appear and disappear over geological time. Determined extinction was only due to catastrophes (floods, earthquakes, etc. ) -- advanced this as a process of creation not as biological evolution. Believed that evolution could occur over a single lifetime.
