Early Evolutionary Ideas And Darwin's Insights

Front 1

Catastrophism

Back 1

The theory that the geology of the modern world is the result of sudden, catastrophic, large-scale events. (p. 34)

Front 2

Evolutionary synthesis

Back 2

The collected efforts, primarily in the 1930s and 1940s, of evolutionary biologists, systematists, geneticists, paleontologists, population biologists, population geneticists, and naturalists in shaping modern evolutionary theory to show that a Darwinian view of small-scale and large-scale evolution alike is compatible with the mechanisms of genetic inheritance. Also known as the modern synthesis. (p. 56)

Front 3

Hypotheses

Back 3

Proposed explanations for a natural phenomenon. Scientists are interested in hypotheses that generate testable predictions. (p. 32)

Front 4

Inheritance of acquired characteristics

Back 4

The hypothesis that traits acquired during the lifetime of an organism are passed on to its offspring. This idea was championed by J. B. Lamarck. (p. 39)

Front 5

Methodological naturalism

Back 5

An approach in which the world is explained solely in terms of natural, rather than supernatural, phenomena. (p. 31)

Front 6

Modern synthesis

Back 6

The collected efforts, primarily in the 1930s and 1940s, of evolutionary biologists, systematists, geneticists, paleontologists, population biologists, population geneticists, and naturalists in shaping modern evolutionary theory to show that a Darwinian view of small-scale and large-scale evolution alike is compatible with the mechanisms of genetic inheritance. Also known as the modern synthesis. (p. 56)

Front 7

Natural history

Back 7

The comprehensive study of organisms in their natural environment. (p. 35)

Front 8

Population

Back 8

A group of individuals of the same species that are found within a defined area and, if they are a sexual species, interbreed with one another. (p. 37)

Front 9

Saltationism

Back 9

The hypothesis that evolutionary change occurs primarily as a result of large-scale changes. (p. 55)

Front 10

Spontaneous generation

Back 10

The now-disproven hypothesis that complex life-forms can arise, de novo, from inorganic matter. (p. 36)

Front 11

Struggle for existence

Back 11

Darwin's idea that organisms are continually in competition for resources. (p. 37)

Front 12

Systematics

Back 12

The scientific study of classifying organisms. (p. 52)

Front 13

Transformational process

Back 13

A process of change in which the properties of a group change because every member of that group changes.

Front 14

Uniformitarianism

Back 14

Charles Lyell's theory that the very same geological processes that we observe today have operated over vast stretches of time, and explain the geology of the past and the present. (p. 34)