ANTH 242 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon, Georges Cuvier, James Hutton
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Importantly, recognized that human variation was continuous, and so classifications would be arbitrary. Caucasian (europe, west asia, north africa), mongolian (east asia, Darwin and his predecessors: comte de buffon (1707 1788): environment has an effect on living forms. Could not identify the mechanism: georges cuvier (1769 1832) Theory that all geological change occurs suddenly. Did(cid:374)(cid:859)t (cid:271)elie(cid:448)e spe(cid:272)ies (cid:272)ould (cid:272)ha(cid:374)ge o(cid:448)er ti(cid:373)e: geoffroy saint-hilaire (1722 1844) Unity of form: all vertebrates have a basic unity of form. Famous form/function debate with cuvier (cuvier-function; s-h-form) Worked with lamarck and supported his work: jean-baptiste lamarck (1744 1829) Once believed was false, now epigenetics kind of changing that: uniformitarianism. Gradualism: large scale change the result of slow, ongoing processes: example: canyons cut by rivers over time. Creationist but embraced the antiquity of earth. Uniformitarianism: the same gradual process that shape the earth today operated in the past: thomas malthus (1766 1834) An essay on the principle of population (1798)
