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A significant example of directional selection in populations is the fluctuations of light and dark phenotypes in peppered moths in the 1800s. [16] During the industrial revolution, environmental conditions were rapidly changing with the newfound emission of dark, black smoke from factories that would change the color of trees, rocks, and other ...
Objections to evolution have been raised since evolutionary ideas came to prominence in the 19th century. When Charles Darwin published his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, his theory of evolution (the idea that species arose through descent with modification from a single common ancestor in a process driven by natural selection) initially met opposition from scientists with different ...
Evolutionary progress as a tree of life. Ernst Haeckel, 1866 Lamarck's two-factor theory involves 1) a complexifying force that drives animal body plans towards higher levels (orthogenesis) creating a ladder of phyla, and 2) an adaptive force that causes animals with a given body plan to adapt to circumstances (use and disuse, inheritance of acquired characteristics), creating a diversity of ...
Gould presents an alternative hypothesis, however, which states that the history of life is better described as "decimation followed by diversification within a few remaining stocks", [4] represented as a pyramid with a wide base of anatomical disparity that becomes increasingly constrained by natural selection and extinction level events as ...
Reese implies that non-teleological statements are called teleonomic when they represent an "if A then C" phenomenon's antecedent; where, teleology is a consequent representation. The concept of purpose, as only being the teleology final cause, requires supposedly impossible time reversal ; because, the future consequent determines the present ...
When a hypothesis has survived a sufficient number of tests, it may be promoted to a scientific theory. A theory is a hypothesis that has survived many tests and seems to be consistent with other established scientific theories. Since a theory is a promoted hypothesis, it is of the same 'logical' species and shares the same logical limitations.
Phylogenetic comparative methods (PCMs) use information on the historical relationships of lineages (phylogenies) to test evolutionary hypotheses.The comparative method has a long history in evolutionary biology; indeed, Charles Darwin used differences and similarities between species as a major source of evidence in The Origin of Species.
In 1944 George Gaylord Simpson integrated paleontology into the synthesis by statistically analyzing the fossil record to show that it was consistent with the branching non-directional form of evolution predicted by the synthesis, and in particular that the linear trends cited by earlier paleontologists in support of Lamarckism and orthogenesis ...