1. If I have to select one of the five individuals listed, I would chose Charles Lyell as the one who had the most influence over Darwin’s development of his theory of Natural selection.
2. Charles Lyell is considered the founder of modern geology and a friend and mentor of Charles Darwin. Lyell had earned acceptance in Europe’s most prestigious scientific circles to his highly praised Principles of Geology. Lyell was noted for establishing the principles of uniformitarianism, the idea that features of the Earth’s surface were produced by natural forces operating for long times. He believed that rocks and the landscape were formed over vast periods of time by very slow processes. However Lyell did not believe that one species of animal could change into another. Charles Darwin read, and was much influenced by, Lyell’s Principles of Geology while aboard HMS Beagles. Lyell had proposed that all species remained unchanged since their creation, but that new species were occasionally created and others became extinct. This non progressionist theory was in fact the basis upon which Darwin formed his Theory of Evolution by natural selection. Lyell later came to accept Darwin’s theory.
3.The bullet point: If the environment changes, the traits that are helpful or adaptive to that environment will be different. I believe that this bullet point affected Charles Lyell because he demonstrated that forces such as wind, water erosion, local flooding, frost, decomposition of vegetable matter, volcanoes, earthquakes, and glacial movements had all contributed in the past to produce the geological landscape that we see today.
4. I don’t think Darwin could have developed his theory of natural selection without the influence of Charles Lyell. Lyell influenced Darwin so deeply that Darwin envisioned evolution as a sort of biological uniformitarianism. Uniformitarianism was embraced by those who also supported the theory of evolution because evolutionary processes also occurred over very long time scales. Lyell supported Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution
5. Darwin slow down on publication of his book On the Origin of Species because he knew it would be a highly controversial work that will affect people, church, and religious believe.
i wanted to read your post because you chose a different person for the most influential to Darwin's natural selection. i chose Malthus, and i see why you chose Lyell. in a way i think all five had a pretty large role in Natural selection. i liked the way you gave the background of Lyell, so even if i had no idea about who Lyell was, i would leave your blog knowing a lot about him and his accomplishments. it is so surreal to know that back then, Darwin could not even publish his book with out there being chaos with the church, and now you can pretty much publish anything and not have much opposition.
ReplyDelete"Lyell influenced Darwin so deeply that Darwin envisioned evolution as a sort of biological uniformitarianism."
ReplyDeleteThat is an excellent comment. That does a great job of describing natural selection and meshes it perfectly with the changes that occur in the earth itself.
Great post!