Thursday, October 30, 2014
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Darwin and Cuvier: Influence from an Anti-evolutionist
Georges Cuvier, a French naturalist and zoologist studied mammal fossils, specifically mammoth fossils and compared their bone structure to the living species of elephants and declared that both mammals were a separate species with Mammoth's having vanished from existence and that similar fossilized mammals also vanished by means of periodic catastrophe (http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/cuvier.html) which would lead to the idea of extinction.
Interestingly Cuvier rejected the idea of evolution believing that any change to a species's anatomy would render it incapable to survive. despite that his findings on extinction still supported Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, particularly "If the environment changes, the traits that are helpful or adaptive to that environment will be different." or natural selection with the periodic catastrophe's serving as the environmental changes and extinction being the result of the species that lacked the traits to adapt to the changing environment while the species with the traits that allow them to adapt to the environmental change moving onward and breeding creating the next generation the possess the adaptive traits for survival.
I think that Darwin still would have been able to develop his theory of natural selection without the influence of Cuvier since he probably would have come to the same conclusion that species that lack the adaptive traits to survive in a changing environment would end up extinct since there would be no signs of said extinct species over time and fossils would still be present with someone else coming to a similar conclusion as Cuvier.
I believe that the church's attitude would have had some effect on Darwin's publication of On the Origin of Species only because the theory of natural selection would challenge the church and the belief of divine creation. However such attitude wasn't enough to prevent Darwin from publishing On the Origin of Species.
Source(s)
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/cuvier.html
Introduction to Physical Anthropology, 2013-2014 Edition, 14th Edition
Interestingly Cuvier rejected the idea of evolution believing that any change to a species's anatomy would render it incapable to survive. despite that his findings on extinction still supported Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, particularly "If the environment changes, the traits that are helpful or adaptive to that environment will be different." or natural selection with the periodic catastrophe's serving as the environmental changes and extinction being the result of the species that lacked the traits to adapt to the changing environment while the species with the traits that allow them to adapt to the environmental change moving onward and breeding creating the next generation the possess the adaptive traits for survival.
I think that Darwin still would have been able to develop his theory of natural selection without the influence of Cuvier since he probably would have come to the same conclusion that species that lack the adaptive traits to survive in a changing environment would end up extinct since there would be no signs of said extinct species over time and fossils would still be present with someone else coming to a similar conclusion as Cuvier.
I believe that the church's attitude would have had some effect on Darwin's publication of On the Origin of Species only because the theory of natural selection would challenge the church and the belief of divine creation. However such attitude wasn't enough to prevent Darwin from publishing On the Origin of Species.
Source(s)
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/cuvier.html
Introduction to Physical Anthropology, 2013-2014 Edition, 14th Edition
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