Please wait while the transcript is being prepared...
0:00
A Brief History
of Evolutionary Biology.
I am Neil Blackstone
from Northern
Illinois University.
0:10
Evolution is as close
to a general theory of biology
as we have.
Remarkably,
even in the age of genomics,
evolutionary theory
can be traced relatively intact
back to the work of
a 19th century individual,
Charles Darwin.
The year 2009 was the 200th
anniversary of Darwin's birth
and 150th anniversary
of the publication
of one of his
most important works,
"On the Origin of Species
by Means of Natural Selection".
0:41
Of course,
Darwin built on earlier ideas.
In particular,
I will mention two.
One of the very powerful
ideas that was developed
in 19th century Europe
was the uniformitarian view
of the Earth's geology.
Developed by
James Hutton and others,
this view summarized
by "the present
is the key to the past",
eventually led to
the geological time scale,
which is central
to our understanding
of the history of life
and is shown in this figure.
Hutton was
unfortunately so brilliant,
no one could really
understand a word he said.
And his theory was popularized
and made more accessible
by Charles Lyell's
principles of geology,
which had a lasting
influence on Darwin.
1:26
Other political and
social developments
in 19th century Europe
include the communist
manifesto published in 1848.
Communism closely identifies
with the evolutionary
theory of Lamarck,
a predecessor of Darwin.
Lamarck's theory of evolution
usually summarized
as the inheritance of
acquired characteristics,
emphasizes that
the organism must strive
for the acquisition
of novel characteristics.
For instance,
a giraffe with a short neck
must struggle
to lengthen its neck,
stretching it every day,
year in, year out.
Only then will it acquire
and pass on the longer neck.
Thus the parallel
to the dialectic
of communist ideology is clear.
