Study Questions for Test 2, Philosophy 2233:
I. Early work
What made classification by ‘logical division’ produce such different results for different
specialists?
2. What is it about life that leads us to think of it purposively? What analogy is often used to express
this feature of life?
3. What is a ‘final cause’? Distinguish this sort of cause from efficient causes.
4. What made the new insistence on efficient causation in scientific explanations awkward for
biologists to accept?
5. How did Tyson’s work showing the detailed similarities between chimpanzees and humans fit
with the idea of the ‘chain of being’?
6. Describe the system of taxonomy developed by Carl Linneaus.
7. What, in Linneaus’ view of how species are related to their environments, undermines the idea
that all forms of life originated in one place and migrated from there to their present locations?
8. How did Cuvier’s account of the correlation of parts lead to his rejection of the possibility of
evolution?
9. How did Cuvier argue for the reality of extinction?
10. How did Lamarck explain the ‘branchings’ that had occurred in the course of evolution?
11. What is the significance, for Lamarck, of fetal teeth in the jaws of baleen whales?
12. How did von Baer describe the process of development? How is his account related to
hierarchical taxonomy?
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II. Leading up to/ including Darwin:
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How did Lyell explain extinction?
What was the main gap in Lyell’s account of the history of life?
What is the difference between secondary or intermediate causes and primary ones?
What is the difference between ‘empirical laws’ and ‘causal laws’, for Herschel?
Explain Darwin’s analogy between artificial and natural selection.
What is a homology?
What did Owen see as the ‘usual trend in the fossil record of the vertebrates’? What did this view
imply about progress and the ‘ladder’ or ‘chain’ of being?
What is Wallace’s law?
Explain how reproduction, variability and the ‘struggle for existence’ combine to produce a
process of ‘natural selection’.
How does evolution explain the fact that older fossils combined traits now seen in separate
groups?
How does evolution explain ‘rudimentary features’?
What was it about taxonomic work on species that made Darwin’s proposals plausible to
taxonomists?
How did evolution explain the distribution of different forms of life around the world?
Why is archaeopteryx taken to be a good intermediate form between dinosaurs and birds?
In what respect did Darwin succeed in persuading other biologists to adopt his views in Origin of
Species? In what respect did he fail?
III. Post-Darwin.
16. What is Batesian mimicry?
17. Explain Lyell’s invocation of Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma in his response to Darwin’s views on
natural selection.
18. How did Darwin respond to Mivart’s objection to natural selection as the cause of evolution?
19. What was the main gap in the theory Darwin offered in The Origin?
20. How did Bateson think that new species arose?
21. Explain how Mendel accounted for the 3:1 ratio of traits in the second generation raised after
cross-breeding two distinct pure forms.
22. Define ‘allele’, ‘homozygote’ and ‘heterozygote’.
23. How did embryological evidence support the ‘segmental theory of the head’?
24. Describe some respects in which the mammal-like reptiles became more and more like mammals.
25. Explain one way in which selection could favour a balance between two alternative alleles in a
population.
26. Why did Sumner conclude that natural selection, rather than climate, was the best explanation of
colour differences between these different subspecies?
27. Explain the observations that Dobzhansky regarded as ‘the best proof of the effectiveness of
natural selection’.
28. What is the ‘biological species concept’?
29. How did Lack think the different species of finches on the Galapagos had arisen?
30. How did Simpson’s work on the rate of change in various traits contribute to the evidence for
evolution by natural selection as described in the modern synthesis?
IV. Biochemistry and more.
31. What did Watson and Crick discover about DNA?
32. How did immunological studies demonstrate the close similarity between human and chimpanzee
DNA sequences?
33. How did DNA hybridization studies demonstrate the close similarity between human and
chimpanzee DNA sequences?
34. Describe the evidence for natural selection obtained from the Grants’ studies of Geospiza fortis.
35. What is kin selection?
V. Possible Essay Questions
36. How well does the last half-century of fossil finds and other ideas an evidence about human
ancestry confirm the hypothesis that we have evolved from non-human animals and ultimately
from a common ancestor with the chimpanzees? Cite as much of the evidence as you can and
explain what you think it shows or does not show.
37. Fossils cannot reveal whether they have descendents today—so we always have to be reserved—
we cannot firmly identify a fossil type as an ancestor to any present group. How much does this
weaken the evidence from human paleontology for our descent from earlier, ultimately non-human
ancestors? Some? Not at all? Explain your position.
38. How do you think religion and science are related? Are they in conflict? Sometimes? All the
time? Can such conflicts be avoided? How should we respond when science indicates that a
religious belief (literal reading of Genesis for example) is wrong? Why?
39. Describe how evolution (descent from common ancestors) unifies various fields of biology. How
much does this contribute to the evidence for evolution? Is such unification an indicator of
(likely/probable) truth? Why, or why not?