He lived 1707 to 1778, classified plants and animals by structures, and named organisms as genus and species {binomial nomenclature, Linnaeus}.
He lived 1710 to 1784 and related hydra and jellyfish. Hydra and jellyfish parts can move and bud.
He lived 1769 to 1832 and studied fossils, differentiated animals by body structures and nervous systems, and noted adaptations to environment.
He lived 1772 to 1844 and studied fossils and compared fish and land animals, vertebrates and insects, and cephalopods and vertebrates. Fossils have structure homologies {unity of type}. Body type depends on vertebral structure.
He lived 1807 to 1873. Species form hierarchies, with form laws {taxonomy, Agassiz}.
He lived 1804 to 1892 and found horse intermediate fossils. All vertebrates have body plans based on repeating vertebrae, which can evolve.
He lived 1809 to 1882. He developed plant and animals evolution theory. Natural selection of variations leads to the most-successful reproduction {survival of the fittest, Darwin}. Species evolved from earlier species, making branching evolutionary trees. Evolution has caused changes without needing causer. Evolution has support from organism location, because similar environments in different locations have different organisms, and similar, mutually accessible, locations with different environments have similar organisms. Evolution has support from comparative anatomy, because different species have similar hand bones, and species have vestigial structures. Evolution has support from embryology, because segmented-worm and unsegmented-mollusc larvae are similar, and vertebrate embryos have gills. Evolution has support from the fossil record, which shows intermediate forms. Changes have billions of years to happen. Ancient rocks and environment differ from now, and fossil life forms differ from now. Current animals adapted to present environment, not to ancient one. Finches of Galapagos Islands and barnacles were test cases.
He also studied emotions. Human emotional-response and facial-expression origins are pre-human species behaviors.
He lived 1823 to 1913 and independently developed evolution theory with survival of fittest. He studied animal geography and life in Amazon River basin and Malay Archipelago.
He lived 1860 to 1940 and studied integral equations [1883]. Mating, dying, or other-species effects cause predator-number and prey-number change rates {Lotka-Volterra differential equations, Volterra} [1926]. In ecosystems, predator and prey numbers can oscillate until reaching steady state, can continue to oscillate, or can become zero, so species is extinct.
He lived 1893 to 1988 and found Taung child, Australopithecus africanus [1924].
He lived 1880 to 1949. Mating, dying, or other-species effects cause predator-number and prey-number change rates {Lotka-Volterra differential equations, Lotka} [1926]. In ecosystems, predator and prey numbers can oscillate until reaching steady state, can continue to oscillate, or can become zero, so species is extinct.
He lived 1876 to 1956 and studied primates [1929 to 1943].
He lived 1889 to 1988 and discovered genetic drift. Species arise randomly even within clade that has evolutionary direction {Wright's rule}. Selection changes allele frequencies.
He lived 1887 to 1975 and developed cladistics. Organism characteristics are clade units that determine classes and hierarchies. Organisms have homologies, and cladogram nodes represent shared homologies. Cladistics can use property absences.
He lived 1900 to 1975 and studied evolutionary theory.
He lived 1905 to 1975 and studied evolution [1939].
He lived 1904 to 2005 and examined differences between historical and non-historical sciences. New species result from variety geographic isolation {allopatry, Mayr} [1960 to 1970], rather than arising in same location {sympatry, Mayr}.
He lived 1898 to 1976 and opposed evolution by natural selection.
He lived 1903 to 1972 and found fossil hominins [1949 to 1959].
He lived 1927 to ? and developed relaxation methods, to measure 10^-10 second reaction rates [1954]. High mutation rates prevent natural selection [1992].
He lived 1917 to ? and discovered lysosomes [1955] and peroxisomes [1965].
He lived 1936 to 2000. Sexual reproduction results from competition between parasite and host [1963].
He lived 1928 to ?. Small subunit ribosomal RNA can classify organisms [1965].
Genes are natural-selection units, and organisms passively contain them. Evolution changes gene frequency and can make new genes.
He lived 1901 to 1982 and studied evolution.
New speciation is at range fringes in isolated places. Species change little at other times.
He lived 1920 to 2004 and studied population-biology relations {logistic difference equation, Smith}.
Early bacteria incorporated into eukaryotes to make mitochondria and chloroplasts {endosymbiont hypothesis, Margulis} [1970].
He lived 1913 to 1993.
He discovered genus Homo fossils [1974].
He lived 1899 to 1972.
He invented sociobiology.
Ideas or concepts {meme} {mimeme} can exist in brain, replicate, and have selection. Thoughts and ideas in memory or culture replicate themselves in other minds by imitation and transmission. Memes compete for entry into minds. Selective forces act directly on meme physical substrates, because memes restructure brains to make better habitats for themselves and to modify input and output. Perceptions, skills, feelings, and memories have no copies.
Meme sets {memeplex, Wilson} {co-adapted meme complex} can affect survival and reproduction [Dawkins, 1976]. He wrote about Universal Darwinism and replicators [Dawkins, 1995].
Meme copies behavior from another same-species animal {imitation, Dawkins}, but copying varies more than for genes. Memory ties abstractions and agreements together, so imitation is only small part. However, copy does not have same meaning, because brain does not just imitate but processes information. It involves selection and non-selective processes.
Culture also involves sharing knowledge {schema, Dawkins}, not by imitation but by abstraction. Culture also involves sharing beliefs and values {social construction}, not by imitation but by agreement. Culture depends on having a theory of mind and knowing that other people have beliefs, intentions, and desires. Genes {selfish gene} use bodies to reproduce themselves.
Evolution repeats and modifies animal forms {bauplan, Gould}. Evolutionary changes can be in bursts {punctuated equilibrium, Gould}, even after 20,000 years with no change. Most traits are side effects. Timing changes during development cause evolutionary changes.
Organisms produce more offspring than survive to reproduce {superfecundity, Gould}. Darwin defended this idea against people that thought God is more benevolent. Offspring vary in traits. All accept this idea. Offspring pass their traits to offspring. All accept this idea. Therefore, offspring with traits more favorable for survival to reproductive age will produce more offspring with same traits {natural selection, Gould}.
Darwin's evolutionary theory has three main principles to explain natural-selection mechanisms. Natural selection applies to organisms, not classes, genuses, species, tissues, organs, or genes.
Darwin suggested that altruism in humans was trait outside this idea. Perhaps, altruism can explain hybridization and worker-insect sterility. Modern theory suggests genes, cell lines, organisms, demes, species, and clades evolve using selection and drift to change frequencies and parts. They can work synergistically, in opposition, or independently of nearby levels. Other possibilities can be entropy effect or complex system spontaneous ordering.
Natural selection removes unfit and designs fit, because variations from typical or average are small, random, and numerous and not always negative. Small and large variations accumulate over many generations. Variations can have different kinds and sizes {microevolution, Gould}. Modern theory adds structural, historic, and developmental factors. Natural selection gradually makes more-complex organisms and can make new higher-level organism species. However, modern theory adds mass extinctions, species sorting by punctuated equilibrium to alter clades, and other processes taking different times. Other possibilities can be inorganic and organic comparisons or new species-formation ideas.
Because organisms overproduce, nature has competing organisms and species, so new ones must replace or wedge aside existing ones, leading to better-adapted species. This requires that environment changes slowly compared to evolution and observed species changes.
Interactors, rather than replicators, can define selection. Emergent fitness, rather than emergent traits, causes higher-level selection. Species selection is main macroevolution method.
Evolutionary theory involves same framework as other scientific explanations. It involves causation vs. association. Event sequences relate or do not relate. Related events are consequences or not. Structures and functions exist. Logical conclusions come from premises. People can find causation direction. Determinism comes from fundamental-unit laws versus independent-level interactions. Changes are gradual, spurt, maintain stasis, are exponential, or rise and fall. It involves fundamental units, structure hierarchies, change rates, space scales, and time scales.
Darwin felt that nature had progressed, because organism and ecosystem design was good (Paley) and complexity was increasing. Besides, nature ordered itself in the most-efficient way by survival of fittest (Adam Smith).
Increased speciation leads to increased extinction.
Clade selection, species habitat tracking, and grouping in populations can cause stasis.
Organisms tend to evolve to larger size, from individual size advantages and structural factors {Cope's rule, Gould}.
Slow variation and slow environmental change helped ancient organisms alive today survive. Their clades had low speciation.
Clades have various speciation rates, which can change over time and mimic seemingly progressive linear species changes, as in horses and humans.
Humans are stable genetically if punctuated equilibrium is true.
Drift can go into available niches, but bacteria dominate life.
Geometric patterns and physical laws, such as surface-to-volume ratios and coordinate transformations, constrain structures and allow few alternatives. Historical development can impose homologies and regulations. Adaptation consequences {exaptation, Gould} can have later advantages.
Homology is internal structure similarity {homogeny, Gould}. Homology can result from fundamental internal structure {parallelism, Gould} or same external pressures {convergence, Gould}. Organisms can also perform similar functions with different structures {homoplasy, Gould}.
Darwin held that small structure shifts were adaptive, but cumulative-shift adaptations can be different {functional shift, Gould} {cooptation, Gould}. Initial stages have unpredictable uses, constrain future adaptation, and form sequence. Non-adaptive structures {spandrel, Gould} arise in association with adaptive structures, and these structures can later be for adaptation, at all hierarchy levels. Adaptive structures tend to limit further evolution through specialization, but adaptive structures make many more non-adaptive structures with which evolution can work.
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Gene DNA evolves at constant rate in all species over all history. Molecular changes that have less control by natural selection evolve more rapidly, because they have no effects, while harmful ones die out and good ones are rare {Kimura's rule}.
He studied human gene frequencies, race, and population migrations.
Catastrophe has happened at mass-extinction level, and clades, species, demes, organisms, cell lines, and genes can have extinctions {field of bullets model}.
Infections that use intermediate hosts, such as cholera and malaria, evolve to be stronger [1993]. Infections that infect directly evolve to be weak enough to maintain the host. Infections cause most genetic and chronic diseases.
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He studied human origins from hominins [1997].
He studied brain evolution. Brains allow animals to account for environment variations in space and time and make appropriate responses. More advanced brains allow wider spaces and longer times. Brains require much energy and are in animals that can find more and/or better food at higher rate. Complex brains require longer time to develop. Family and group structures were necessary for humans to have advanced brains.
Brains can sense water, food, sexual partners, shelter, and safe locations, as well as predators and dangerous locations. Brains can assign priorities to input. Brains can perform activities to get food or water, reproduce, gain shelter and safe locations, and avoid predators and dangerous locations. Brains can remember input and output.
Brains are more complex if environmental niche is more variable. Animals use larger energy amounts, because warm-blooded. Water, food, sexual partners, shelter, and safe locations are scarcer and predators and dangerous locations are more numerous. Maximize age is higher.
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Date Modified: 2022.0225