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Orthogenesis
Orthogenesis, also known as orthogenetic evolution, progressive evolution, evolutionary progress, or progressionism, is an obsolete biological hypothesis that organisms have an innate tendency to evolve in a definite direction towards some goal (teleology) due to some internal mechanism or "driving force". According to the theory, the largest-scale trends in evolution have an absolute goal such as increasing biological complexity. Prominent historical figures who have championed some form of evolutionary progress include Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and Henri Bergson. The term ''orthogenesis'' was introduced by Wilhelm Haacke in 1893 and popularized by Theodor Eimer five years later. Proponents of orthogenesis had rejected the theory of natural selection as the organizing mechanism in evolution for a rectilinear model of directed evolution. With the emergence of the modern synthesis, in which genetics was integrated with evolution, orthogenesis and othe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alternatives To Darwinism
Alternatives to Darwinian evolution have been proposed by scholars investigating biology to explain signs of evolution and the relatedness of different groups of living things. The alternatives in question do not deny that evolutionary changes over time are the origin of the diversity of life, nor that the organisms alive today share a common ancestor from the distant past (or ancestors, in some proposals); rather, they propose alternative mechanisms of evolutionary change over time, arguing against mutations acted on by natural selection as the most important driver of evolutionary change. This distinguishes them from certain other kinds of arguments that deny that large-scale evolution of any sort has taken place, as in some forms of creationism, which do not propose alternative mechanisms of evolutionary change but instead deny that evolutionary change has taken place at all. Not all forms of creationism deny that evolutionary change takes place; notably, proponents of theisti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
March Of Progress
''The March of Progress'', originally titled ''The Road to Homo Sapiens'', is an illustration that presents 25 million years of human evolution. It was created for the ''Early Man'' volume of the '' Life Nature Library'', published in 1965, and drawn by the artist Rudolph Zallinger. It has been viewed as a picture of the discredited theory, orthogenesis, that evolution is progressive. As such, it has been widely parodied and imitated to create images of progress of other kinds. The picture of progress in evolution was anticipated by Thomas Henry Huxley's 1863 ''Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature''. Illustration Context The illustration is part of a section of text and images commissioned by Time-Life Books for the ''Early Man'' volume (1965) of the '' Life Nature Library'', by F. Clark Howell.Howell, F. Clark and the Editors of Time-Life Books (1965), ''Early Man'', New York: TIME-LIFE Books, pp. 41–45. The illustration is a foldout entitled "The Road to Homo Sapie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theodor Eimer (Professorengalerie Universität Tübingen)
Gustav Heinrich Theodor Eimer (22 February 1843 – 29 May 1898) was a German zoologist. He was a popularizer of orthogenesis, a form of directed evolution through mutations that made use of Lamarckian principles. Life and work Eimer was born in Stäfa, Switzerland where his father, who had taken refuge following an attempted coup against the German Confederation in Frankfurt in 1833, practiced medicine. Eimer's mother, Albertine Pfenniger, was Swiss. After studying at gymnasiums in Bruchsal and Freiburg where his father worked, Eimer matriculated at Tübingen, where he was influenced by Franz von Leydig. He then studied from 1863 at Freiburg, and 1864 at Heidelberg to pass examinations in natural sciences. He spent the winter semester of 1865 at the University of Tübingen and in 1866 he worked in Berlin at Rudolf Virchow’s laboratory. He obtained a medical degree in 1867 and then studied zoology at Freiburg under August Weismann followed by studies in Paris. He received a D ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theodor Eimer
Gustav Heinrich Theodor Eimer (22 February 1843 – 29 May 1898) was a German zoologist. He was a popularizer of orthogenesis, a form of directed evolution through mutations that made use of Lamarckian principles. Life and work Eimer was born in Stäfa, Switzerland where his father, who had taken refuge following an attempted coup against the German Confederation in Frankfurt in 1833, practiced medicine. Eimer's mother, Albertine Pfenniger, was Swiss. After studying at gymnasiums in Bruchsal and Freiburg where his father worked, Eimer matriculated at Tübingen, where he was influenced by Franz von Leydig. He then studied from 1863 at Freiburg, and 1864 at Heidelberg to pass examinations in natural sciences. He spent the winter semester of 1865 at the University of Tübingen and in 1866 he worked in Berlin at Rudolf Virchow’s laboratory. He obtained a medical degree in 1867 and then studied zoology at Freiburg under August Weismann followed by studies in Paris. He received a D ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Teilhard De Chardin
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin ( (); 1 May 1881 – 10 April 1955) was a French Jesuit priest, scientist, paleontologist Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ..., Theology, theologian, philosopher and teacher. He was Charles Darwin, Darwinian in outlook and the author of several influential theological and philosophical books. He took part in the discovery of Peking Man. He conceived the vitalism, vitalist idea of the Omega Point. With Vladimir Vernadsky he developed the concept of the noosphere. In 1962, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith condemned several of Teilhard's works based on their alleged ambiguities and doctrinal errors. Some eminent Catholic figures, including Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis, have made positive comments on some of his ideas sin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wilhelm Haacke
Johann Wilhelm Haacke (23 August 1855 – 6 December 1912) was a German zoologist born in Clenze, Lower Saxony, who served as Director of the South Australian Museum in Adelaide from 1882 to 1884. Career He studied zoology at the University of Jena, earning his doctorate in 1878. Afterwards he worked as an assistant of Ernst Haeckel in Jena and at the University of Kiel. In 1881 he emigrated to New Zealand, working at the museums in Dunedin, under Professor Parker, and Christchurch under Professor von Haast. The following year he moved to Australia, where he replaced F. G. Waterhouse as Director of the South Australian Museum in Adelaide, and was a founding member of the Field Naturalists Society of South Australia. In August 1884 he laid to rest an old mystery about echidnas, proving they are oviparous not viviparous, with a specimen sent to the Museum by a naturalist on Kangaroo Island. His work and the liberality with which he was treated attracted some criticism, as did h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Modern Synthesis (20th Century)
The modern synthesis was the early 20th-century synthesis of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and Gregor Mendel's ideas on heredity into a joint mathematical framework. Julian Huxley coined the term in his 1942 book, ''Evolution: The Modern Synthesis''. The synthesis combined the ideas of natural selection, Mendelian inheritance, Mendelian genetics, and population genetics. It also related the broad-scale macroevolution seen by paleontology, palaeontologists to the small-scale microevolution of local population, populations. The synthesis was defined differently by its founders, with Ernst Mayr in 1959, G. Ledyard Stebbins in 1966, and Theodosius Dobzhansky in 1974 offering differing basic postulates, though they all include natural selection, working on heritable variation supplied by mutation. Other major figures in the synthesis included E. B. Ford, Bernhard Rensch, Ivan Schmalhausen, and George Gaylord Simpson. An early event in the modern synthesis was R. A. Fisher's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Evolution Of Biological Complexity
The evolution of biological complexity is one important outcome of the process of evolution. Evolution has produced some remarkably complex organisms – although the actual level of complexity is very hard to define or measure accurately in biology, with properties such as gene content, the number of cell types or morphology all proposed as possible metrics. Many biologists used to believe that evolution was progressive (orthogenesis) and had a direction that led towards so-called "higher organisms", despite a lack of evidence for this viewpoint. This idea of "progression" introduced the terms " high animals" and " low animals" in evolution. Many now regard this as misleading, with natural selection having no intrinsic direction and that organisms selected for either increased or decreased complexity in response to local environmental conditions. Although there has been an increase in the maximum level of complexity over the history of life, there has always been a large majority ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Ruse
Michael Ruse (born 21 June 1940) is a British-born Canadian philosopher of science who specializes in the philosophy of biology and works on the relationship between science and religion, the creation–evolution controversy, and the demarcation problem within science. Ruse currently teaches at Florida State University. Career Ruse was born in Birmingham, England, attending Bootham School, York. He took his undergraduate degree at the University of Bristol (1962), his master's degree at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario (1964), and Ph.D. at the University of Bristol (1970). Ruse taught at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada for 35 years. Since his retirement from Guelph, he has taught at Florida State University and is the Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy (2000–present). In 1986, he was elected as a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Canada and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has received honorary doctorates from the Univ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vitalism
Vitalism is a belief that starts from the premise that "living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than are inanimate things." Where vitalism explicitly invokes a vital principle, that element is often referred to as the "vital spark," "energy," or "''élan vital''," which some equate with the soul. In the 18th and 19th centuries vitalism was discussed among biologists, between those who felt that the known mechanics of physics would eventually explain the difference between life and non-life and vitalists who argued that the processes of life could not be reduced to a mechanistic process. Vitalist biologists such as Johannes Reinke proposed testable hypotheses meant to show inadequacies with mechanistic explanations, but their experiments failed to provide support for vitalism. Biologists now consider vitalism in this sense to have been refuted by empirical evidence ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, chevalier de Lamarck (1 August 1744 – 18 December 1829), often known simply as Lamarck (; ), was a French naturalist, biologist, academic, and soldier. He was an early proponent of the idea that biological evolution occurred and proceeded in accordance with Naturalism (philosophy), natural laws. Lamarck fought in the Seven Years' War against Prussia, and was awarded a commission for bravery on the battlefield. Posted to Monaco, Lamarck became interested in natural history and resolved to study medicine.#Packard, Packard (1901), p. 15. He retired from the army after being injured in 1766, and returned to his medical studies. Lamarck developed a particular interest in botany, and later, after he published the three-volume work ''Flore françoise'' (1778), he gained membership of the French Academy of Sciences in 1779. Lamarck became involved in the Jardin des Plantes and was appointed to the Chair of Botany in 1788. When the French Nationa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Largest-scale Trends In Evolution
The history of life on Earth seems to show a clear trend; for example, it seems intuitive that there is a trend towards increasing complexity in living organisms. More recently evolved organisms, such as mammals, appear to be much more complex than organisms, such as bacteria, which have existed for a much longer period of time. However, there are theoretical and empirical problems with this claim. From a theoretical perspective, it appears that there is no reason to expect evolution to result in any largest-scale trends, although small-scale trends, limited in time and space, are expected (Gould, 1997). From an empirical perspective, it is difficult to measure complexity and, when it has been measured, the evidence does not support a largest-scale trend (McShea, 1996). History Many of the founding figures of evolution supported the idea of ''Evolutionary progress'' which has fallen from favour, but the work of Francisco J. Ayala and Michael Ruse suggests is still influential. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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