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Pangenesis
Pangenesis was Charles Darwin's hypothetical mechanism for heredity, in which he proposed that each part of the body continually emitted its own type of small organic particles called gemmules that aggregated in the gonads, contributing heritable information to the gametes. He presented this 'provisional hypothesis' in his 1868 work '' The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication'', intending it to fill what he perceived as a major gap in evolutionary theory at the time. The etymology of the word comes from the Greek words ''pan'' (a prefix meaning "whole", "encompassing") and ''genesis'' ("birth") or ''genos'' ("origin"). Pangenesis mirrored ideas originally formulated by Hippocrates and other pre-Darwinian scientists, but using new concepts such as cell theory, explaining cell development as beginning with gemmules which were specified to be necessary for the occurrence of new growths in an organism, both in initial development and regeneration. It also accounted ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lamarckism
Lamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or neo-Lamarckism, is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime. It is also called the inheritance of acquired characteristics or more recently soft inheritance. The idea is named after the French zoologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829), who incorporated the classical era theory of soft inheritance into his theory of evolution as a supplement to his concept of orthogenesis, a drive towards complexity. Introductory textbooks contrast Lamarckism with Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. However, Darwin's book ''On the Origin of Species'' gave credence to the idea of heritable effects of use and disuse, as Lamarck had done, and his own concept of pangenesis similarly implied soft inheritance. Many researchers from the 1860s onwards attempted to find evidence for Lamarckian inheritance, but ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Variation Of Animals And Plants Under Domestication
''The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication'' is a book by Charles Darwin that was first published in January 1868. A large proportion of the book contains detailed information on the domestication of animals and plants but it also contains in Chapter XXVII a description of Darwin's theory of heredity which he called pangenesis. Background Darwin had been working for two years writing his "big book", provisionally titled ''Natural Selection'', when on 18 June 1858 he received a parcel from Alfred Wallace, who was then living in Borneo. It enclosed a twenty pages manuscript describing an evolutionary mechanism that was similar to Darwin's own theory. Under pressure to publish his ideas, Darwin started work on an " abstract" summary, which was published in November 1859 as ''On the Origin of Species''. In the introduction he announced that in a future publication he hoped to give "in detail all the facts, with references, on which my conclusions have been grounded ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 – 8 December 1903) was an English philosopher, psychologist, biologist, anthropologist, and sociologist famous for his hypothesis of social Darwinism. Spencer originated the expression " survival of the fittest", which he coined in ''Principles of Biology'' (1864) after reading Charles Darwin's 1859 book '' On the Origin of Species''. The term strongly suggests natural selection, yet Spencer saw evolution as extending into realms of sociology and ethics, so he also supported Lamarckism. Riggenbach, Jeff (24 April 2011The Real William Graham Sumner, Mises Institute. Spencer developed an all-embracing conception of evolution as the progressive development of the physical world, biological organisms, the human mind, and human culture and societies. As a polymath, he contributed to a wide range of subjects, including ethics, religion, anthropology, economics, political theory, philosophy, literature, astronomy, biology, sociology, and ps ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heredity
Heredity, also called inheritance or biological inheritance, is the passing on of traits from parents to their offspring; either through asexual reproduction or sexual reproduction, the offspring cells or organisms acquire the genetic information of their parents. Through heredity, variations between individuals can accumulate and cause species to evolve by natural selection. The study of heredity in biology is genetics. Overview In humans, eye color is an example of an inherited characteristic: an individual might inherit the "brown-eye trait" from one of the parents. Inherited traits are controlled by genes and the complete set of genes within an organism's genome is called its genotype. The complete set of observable traits of the structure and behavior of an organism is called its phenotype. These traits arise from the interaction of its genotype with the environment. As a result, many aspects of an organism's phenotype are not inherited. For example, suntanned ski ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (; 7 September 1707 – 16 April 1788) was a French naturalist, mathematician, cosmologist, and encyclopédiste. His works influenced the next two generations of naturalists, including two prominent French scientists Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Georges Cuvier. Buffon published thirty-six quarto volumes of his '' Histoire Naturelle'' during his lifetime, with additional volumes based on his notes and further research being published in the two decades following his death. Ernst Mayr wrote that "Truly, Buffon was the father of all thought in natural history in the second half of the 18th century".Mayr, Ernst 1981. ''The Growth of Biological Thought''. Cambridge: Harvard. p 330 Credited with being one of the first naturalists to recognize ecological succession, he was later forced by the theology committee at the University of Paris to recant his theories about geological history and animal evolution because they contradicted the Bi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gregor Mendel
Gregor Johann Mendel, OSA (; cs, Řehoř Jan Mendel; 20 July 1822 – 6 January 1884) was a biologist, meteorologist, mathematician, Augustinian friar and abbot of St. Thomas' Abbey in Brünn (''Brno''), Margraviate of Moravia. Mendel was born in a German-speaking family in the Silesian part of the Austrian Empire (today's Czech Republic) and gained posthumous recognition as the founder of the modern science of genetics. Though farmers had known for millennia that crossbreeding of animals and plants could favor certain desirable traits, Mendel's pea plant experiments conducted between 1856 and 1863 established many of the rules of heredity, now referred to as the laws of Mendelian inheritance. Mendel worked with seven characteristics of pea plants: plant height, pod shape and color, seed shape and color, and flower position and color. Taking seed color as an example, Mendel showed that when a true-breeding yellow pea and a true-breeding green pea were cross-bred their ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended from a common ancestor is now generally accepted and considered a fundamental concept in science. In a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace, he introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding. Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history and was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey. Darwin's early interest in nature led him to neglect his medical education at the University of Edinburgh; instead, he helped to investigate marine invertebrates. His studies at the University of Cambridge's Christ's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pierre Louis Maupertuis
Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (; ; 1698 – 27 July 1759) was a French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters. He became the Director of the Académie des Sciences, and the first President of the Prussian Academy of Science, at the invitation of Frederick the Great. Maupertuis made an expedition to Lapland to determine the shape of the Earth. He is often credited with having invented the principle of least action; a version is known as Maupertuis's principle – an integral equation that determines the path followed by a physical system. His work in natural history is interesting in relation to modern science, since he touched on aspects of heredity and the struggle for life. Biography Maupertuis was born at Saint-Malo, France, to a moderately wealthy family of merchant- corsairs. His father, Renė, had been involved in a number of enterprises that were central to the monarchy so that he thrived socially and politically. The son was educated in mathematics by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pietro De' Crescenzi
Pietro de' Crescenzi ( 1230/35 – c. 1320), la, 'Petrus de Crescentiis', was a Bolognese jurist,Robert G. Calkins, "Piero de' Crescenzi and the Medieval Garden", in ''Medieval Gardens'', ed. Elisabeth B. MacDougall, Dumbarton Oaks, 1986: 155–173Selected pages at Google Books/ref> now remembered for his writings on horticulture and agriculture, the ''Ruralia commoda''. There are many variant spellings of his name. Life Pietro de' Crescenzi was born in Bologna in about 1235; the only evidence for his date of birth is the annotation "septuagenarian" in the ''Ruralia commoda'', dated with some certainty between 1304 and 1309. He was educated at the University of Bologna in logic, medicine, the natural sciences and law, but did not take his doctorate. Crescenzi practiced as a lawyer and judge from about 1269 until 1299, travelling widely in Italy in the course of his work. In January 1274 he married Geraldina de' Castagnoli, with whom he had at least five children. She died in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paracelsus
Paracelsus (; ; 1493 – 24 September 1541), born Theophrastus von Hohenheim (full name Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim), was a Swiss physician, alchemist, lay theologian, and philosopher of the German Renaissance. He was a pioneer in several aspects of the " medical revolution" of the Renaissance, emphasizing the value of observation in combination with received wisdom. He is credited as the "father of toxicology". Paracelsus also had a substantial influence as a prophet or diviner, his "Prognostications" being studied by Rosicrucians in the 1600s. Paracelsianism is the early modern medical movement inspired by the study of his works. Biography Paracelsus was born in Egg an der Sihl, a village close to the Etzel Pass in Einsiedeln, Schwyz. He was born in a house right next to a bridge across the Sihl river (known as ''Teufelsbrücke''). The historical house, dated to the 14th century, was destroyed in 1814. The ''Restaurant Krone'' now stands in it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jerome Cardan
Gerolamo Cardano (; also Girolamo or Geronimo; french: link=no, Jérôme Cardan; la, Hieronymus Cardanus; 24 September 1501– 21 September 1576) was an Italian polymath, whose interests and proficiencies ranged through those of mathematician, physician, biologist, physicist, chemist, astrologer, astronomer, philosopher, writer, and gambler. He was one of the most influential mathematicians of the Renaissance, and was one of the key figures in the foundation of probability and the earliest introducer of the binomial coefficients and the binomial theorem in the Western world. He wrote more than 200 works on science. Cardano partially invented and described several mechanical devices including the combination lock, the gimbal consisting of three concentric rings allowing a supported compass or gyroscope to rotate freely, and the Cardan shaft with universal joints, which allows the transmission of rotary motion at various angles and is used in vehicles to this day. He made sig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nicolas Venette
Nicolas Venette (28 May 1633–18 August 1698) was a physician, sexologist and French writer. He has also been identified as the writer of an anonymous work on nightingales ''Traite du rossignol'' published in 1697. Biography Born in La Rochelle, he studied medicine at Bordeaux where he received his doctorate in 1656. He then went to Paris where he studied under Guy Patin and Pierre Petit, before travelling to Spain, Portugal and Italy. He then returned to La Rochelle working as a doctor at the Charite hospital in 1664, Saint-Louis hospital in 1669 while also becoming Regius Professor of Anatomy and Surgery in 1668. He married Marie Texler in 1673 and they had eleven children. Works In 1671, Venette wrote ''Traité du scorbut'' (Treatise on scurvy), and the better known ''Tableau de l’amour conjugal, ou l'Histoire complète de la génération de l’homme''. This book, published in 1686 in Amsterdam under the title ''Tableau de l'amour humain considéré dans l'état du ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
