In: Nitecki MH (ed) Evolutionary progress. Gould SJ (1988) On replacing the idea of progress with an operational notion of directionality. University of Chicago Press, Chicago Press, IL, pp 75–96 Freeman, New YorkĪyala EJ (1988) Can “progress” be defined as a biological concept? In: Nitecki MH (ed) Evolutionary progress. Wiley, New York, pp 521–553Ĭarroll RL (1988) Vertebrate paleontology and evolution. In: Roth G, Wullimann ME (eds) Brain evolution and cognition. Jerison HJ (2001) The evolution of neural complexity. In: RothG, Wullimann ME (eds) Brain evolution and cognition. Hofman MA (2001) Evolution and complexity of the human brain: some organizing principles. Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, pp 1–21īutler AB, Hodos W (2005) Comparative vertebrate neuroanatomy: evolution and adaptation, 2nd edn. In: Kesner R, Olton D (eds) Animal cognition. Hodos W, Campbell CBG (1990) Evolutionary scales and comparative studies of cognition. Lovejoy AO (1936) The great chain of being. Hodos W, Campbell CBG (1969) Scala naturae: why there is no theory in comparative psychology.
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Clarendon Press, Oxford, UK (Translated by A Platt) Clarendon Press, Oxford, UK (Translated by W Ogle)Īristotle (1912) De Generatione Animalium. Clarendon Press, Oxford, UK (Translated by W Ogle)Īristotle (1912) De Partibus Animalium. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Contrary to the Sambourne picture, evolution is better represented as a process producing continuous branching and divergence of populations of organisms. While less pithy, it might be better for the public’s knowledge of science if these T-shirts and bumper stickers ditch the step by step images and use branching diagrams to make a more nuanced and correct point about evolution. Meanwhile, science writers and educators face the challenge of explaining the gradual branching processes that explain the diversity of life.
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Historians can work to unravel how such a simple caricature could have helped distort Darwin’s theory. The iconic version of this concept is, of course, the depiction of a supposed ape-to-human “progression.” Variations of all kinds have been made of this depiction, some with a humorous spirit, but most to ridicule the monkey-to-man theory.Ī linear depiction of evolution may, consciously or not, confirm false preconceptions about evolution, such as intelligent design-the idea that life has an intelligent creator behind it.
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Given centuries of religious belief in a “great chain of being,” the idea of linearity was an easy sell. And there’s the appearance of the human species from a monkey ancestor.
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There’s the jump from the inanimate to the animate: the origin of life. Two transitions are of particular interest to evolutionary biologists. All life on Earth is the product of gradual transformations, which diversified and gave rise to the exuberance of organisms that we know today. Gradual changes, in every directionĪt least since Darwin, though, scientists’ idea of the world is organized through transitions-from inanimate molecules to life, from earlier organisms to different kinds of plants and animals, and so on. His idea was that, although life is somewhat branched, there is direction in evolution, a progression toward greater cognitive complexity and, ultimately, to identification with the divine, that is, God. In the 1960s a variation of the scala naturae conceived by Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin became popular. Each level is a watertight compartment of similar complexity-a barnacle and a coral reef on the same rung are equally complex. And thirdly, it supposes there are no intermediary stages between levels in this hierarchy.