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
You touched on Cuvier's biggest influence on Darwin when you mentioned "catastrophe". This needed to be expanded as it is key. Cuvier suggested that organisms did indeed go extinct, but primarily due to catastrophic events (he used the great flood described in the Bible as an example). This called "castastrophism". The problem is, while he recognized that organisms died off, he was faced with evidence that new species appeared in the fossil record. If he didn't agree with the concept of evolution, how did he explain this appearance of new organisms? This allows you to directly contrast Darwin's work with Cuvier.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the point on environmental change would be the issue that Cuvier's work addressed, even though you would probably need to consider his work a "negative" influence on Darwin. Darwin didn't take Cuvier's work and build on it as a positive influence. He saw the problems with Cuvier's work and try to resolve them.
I agree as well with your conclusion that Darwin likely would have developed his theory without Cuvier but that is because there were other scientist that had more direct influence on his work, such as Malthus and Lyell. Cuvier was part of the foundation of information Darwin worked from, having learned about him in school, much like a evolutionary biologist today uses Darwin as his/her foundation for their work.
Correct, the church didn't prevent Darwin from publishing... eventually. But Darwin delayed publishing for more than 20 years? Why? What prevented him from publishing earlier? And did the influence of the church on the scientific community have anything to do with this delay?
A few points to consider, but otherwise good first post.
You did a wonderful job. I like the comparisons you chose. My choice was Darwin and Wallace. Something about Alfred Wallace and how him and Charles Darwin shared a lot of similarities. Caught my eye the most.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely loved your post, it is well composed and taught me very much. I did not know that Cuvier was this negative when it came down to evolution and believed that species would not survive if their traits were different. Very Interesting!
ReplyDeleteThis is interesting because Cuvier mentioned Catastrophes for the reasons extinction, and the scientist i researched was Malthus, who seen those catastrophes as good checks and balances on population control!
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