CHAPTER IV:

EVOLUTION AS A WAY
SEEING THE NATURAL
WORLD
REPORTERS:

BUCASAS, TATEL, MARK ALPAPARA, LABRAGUE, REGIO,

ROBIN ANTHONY JOSHUA SAEL KYLE MARIE ANGELA M.
 SECTION I:
What is Evolution?
 What is Evolution?
Evolution can be simply
defined as a kind of change
that happens through a long
period of time.
 DIFFERENT WAYS OF
SEEING THE WORLD

Since the dawn of mankind

(anatomically modern humans)
some ten thousand years ago,
man has continually forged his
perspectives in seeing the world.
 DIFFERENT WAYS OF
SEEING THE WORLD

Man has no choice but to

force himself to modify his
way of life according to the
situation nature is providing.
DIFFERENT WAYS OF
SEEING THE WORLD

Religions was Judaism.

Later on Judaism paved
way to Christianity.
 DIFFERENT WAYS OF SEEING
THE WORLD

The Jews were a simple shepherding

nation but their beliefs were strong that
they influenced the whole world. From
being a multi-deity culture, the world
soon became a monotheistic world.
 DIFFERENT WAYS OF
SEEING THE WORLD
This way of thinking was later on called
“Intelligent Design”. The concept of intelligent
design prefers to the creation of everything
including all creatures that walk the earth.
According to the concept, there is an ultimate
Designer that imprinted an intelligent design to
all creation.
 SECTION II:
DEVELOPMENT OF
EVOLUTIONARY
THEORY
 DEVELOPMENT OF
EVOLUTIONARY THEORY

As scientist became more and more

curious about the natural world,
more and more theories were
devised as well but most of them are
not really scientific.
 SECTION II:
DEVELOPMENT OF
EVOLUTIONARY THEORY
Most of these theories explaining the natural
ordering of things including the origin of
everything are pseudo-scientific in nature. That is
to say that they are employing under the guise of
science but in reality, they are tainted with
religious preconceptions that blur its objectivity.
 SECTION II: DEVELOPMENT OF
EVOLUTIONARY THEORY

Most of these theories explaining the natural

ordering of things including the origin of
everything are pseudo-scientific in nature. That is
to say that they are employing under the guise of
science but in reality, they are tainted with
religious preconceptions that blur its objectivity.
 GREEK DISCOVERY OF
RATIONALITY
Rationality has been used by philosophers and thinkers
to refer to the different facets of human thinking
capacity. However the most generic of all these
meanings imputed to it would be man’s ability to
logically or systematically analyze different situations
and in turn inferring from certain set of premises a
logically valid conclusion to answer a particular issue or
address a problem.
 GREEK DISCOVERY OF
RATIONALITY
Who actually started western philosophy, they were also the
ones who formally started to analyze and study human
reason.

From the Ionian city states in the outskirts of Greece to the

humongous figures in philosophy such as Socrates, Plato and
Aristotle, rationality has been understood as the inherent
capacity of man to understand the natural laws governing the
entire cosmos.
 GREEK DISCOVERY OF
RATIONALITY

Aristotle who made the first scientifically valid attempt to

utilize human reason as a means of understanding the
world.

Comparative method – to study the different natural

variations found in the world. The comparative method
compares different life forms with one another in order to
understand and illustrate their varying characteristics.
 GREEK DISCOVERY OF
RATIONALITY
Rome was more than a political and military power.
It was powerful but because it was the center of
intellectualism during that time. The Romans carried on
the Greek philosophical and scientific tradition through
its scholars such as Cicero, Marcus Aurelius and
Lucretius.

Lucretius believed that other species die through

natural causes living a wider room for other species to
flourish.
 THEOLOGY AND THE CHAIN OF
BEING
The renaissance came after the Dark Ages. The people of
Italy became wary of the backwardness of the existing way of life
and started to take matter into their own hands by trying to revive
the Hellenistic culture of the Greeks and the Romans. It started
from the revival of Hellenistic arts through painting, music and
pottery. It soon triggered a deeper awakening when Italian scholars
like Da Vinci used scientific adventures to dig unknown
knowledge and investigate in the spirit of science.
Biology, characterized as the science of the life was pursued
in order to explain intelligent design through scientific means.
 THEOLOGY AND THE CHAIN OF
BEING
Biology, characterized as the science of the
life was pursued in order to explain intelligent
design through scientific means.

The chain of being is a mechanism to

classify different life forms according to a
measurement of perfection.
 NEWTON’S SCIENTIFIC
BREAKTHROUGH
Sir Isaac Newton was one of those few scientists whom we can
consider as to have a revolutionized the world and began a whole new
scientific era. Newton as a physicist observed matter as a part of the
universe which operated through natural laws.
Newton also introduced the idea of cause and effect to be the
major force that governs matter in motion.
The church soon acknowledged explaining his laws that govern
the universe. The church soon acknowledged Newton’s scientific
exploits as valid being consistent with Christian dogmas.
 NEWTON’S SCIENTIFIC
BREAKTHROUGH

Matter is in motion, there has to be

someone who must have started
this motion.
 TAXONOMY AS THE PRECURSOR
TO EVOLUTIONARY THEORY
Taxonomy became prominent in the 18th century. It is another
mode of classifying living organisms, but unlike the chain of being,
taxonomy is a mode of classifying organisms by looking closely at
their physical characteristics. The most widely used of all the system
of classifying organisms was that of the Linnaean Hierarchy
developed by the taxonomist Carolus Linnaeus. Linnaean hierarchy
classifies different organisms having similar characteristics into one
category. An example of this would be animals which have a
mammary glands are all mammals and all animals that have a
backbones are called vertebrates.
 TAXONOMY AS THE PRECURSOR
TO EVOLUTIONARY THEORY
Taxonomy as a science was not et fully
free from the biases set by the dogmatic
way of thinking of medieval world.
However it paved way for more
advanced scientific discoveries in the
th
18 century such as the geophysical
formation of the Earth
 DISCOVERY OF EARTH’S
GEOLOGICAL FORMATION
Isaac Newton admitted that change is a part of the natural order of the
world. James Hutton, father of modern geology who started to study the
geophysical characteristic of the earth. He concluded that the earth was not
simply as young as it was thought to be and that slow, gradual and continues
natural changes .

Charles Lyell’s book “Principles of Geology” that made a profound

explanation about the geophysical formation of the earth. He conceived that
the earth was very old and that gradual changes occur within its geophysical
structure on a consistent basis. These changes in the geologic structure of the
earth were brought about by a steady array of natural forcer such as strong
winds, pressure, heat and rain.
 DISCOVERY OF
EARTH’S GEOLOGICAL
FORMATION

• Uniformitarianism
• Catastrophism
 SECTION III:
EARLY EVOLUTION
THEORY
 COMTE DE BUFFON
Comte De Buffon was a scientist who
contended that organisms sometimes
exhibit changes that can happen over a long
period of time. He also believed that
continuity played a vital role in
proliferation of the diversity of species.
 Erasmus Darwin
Erasmus Darwin is Charles Darwin’s grandfather and
contributed greatly in the forming of Charles Darwin’s scientific
attitude. Erasmus himself was a distinguished scientist. We was able
to read Buffon’s writings and from there formulated his own
theories. His major contribution to the development of evolutionary
theory was his idea that there are similarities among species and
that all creatures are descendants of a common ancestral entity.
Nevertheless, his ideas were never fully understood because he
published it through poetic themes that concealed its real training.
 Jean Baptiste Lamarck
Lamarck believed that the earth was already very old
and gradual changes were constantly occurring among
species. He recognized the environment as a major factor
that shapes the evolution of organisms. He conceived that
the environment forces an individual to evolve in order to
continue to survive. He contended that an individual
species unconsciously strive to perfectly adapt to its
environment and in turn changes according to this
unconscious force
 SECTION IV:
CHARLES DARWIN
AND HIS THEORY
OF EVOLUTION
 CHARLES DARWIN
Father of modern evolutionary
theory

Charles Darwin was known to be the Father of the Theory

of Evolution but in reality some of his claims were not
originally his.
His completed theory was a product of the development of
evolutionary theory that started centuries before he was
even born.
Charles Darwin was born from an upper
middle-class and was educated in the best
schools existing during his time.

Unlike Newton who was a born genius,

Darwin was just an average student.

His graves were not that high and his

achievements when he was young were
unnoticeable.
Charles Darwin became a trained naturalist,
a scientist studying the underlying general
laws that surrounds nature.
He observed the close connection between the
organism and its environment

Darwin after he published his work on evolution

was labeled to be atheist but what they did not
know was the fact that Darwin was supposed to
become a minister of his church when he was
young, however, he changed his mind after
realizing that what he really wanted to pursue
was science.
 Principle of Common
Descent
Darwin argued that the world is not fixed just
like other theories suggests. The world is continuously
changing and as it changes, the organisms inhabiting it
also changes. Some organisms die out while others
thrive and continue to live. He also argued that all
species came from a common ancestry.

In this principle, new species are not created

outright but are descendants of older species.
 NATURAL SELECTION AS THE CORE OF
DARWIN’S EVOLUTIONARY THEORY

Darwin’s trip to map South America became very fruitful he was

able to observed natural occurrences happening around without
people noticing. After the voyage, he started contemplating and
analyzing his observations. He continued with his research and
reading. He was very much influenced by the two works, Lyell’s
Principles of Geology and Thomas Robert Malthus’ economic
theory. Through the Principles of Geology, Darwin learned that the
earth was a very old planet and had undergone so many geological
changes through time and is still continuing the change.
Darwin also learned from Malthus that
organisms competed with other
organisms over finite resources.
Overtime resources were sufficient but
when famine started or a calamity
stroke resources became scarce and the
competition became stiffer. When such
things happen, nature became a
survival game, a game of survival of
the fittest. Through these ideas,
Darwin was about to unravel the deep
mysteries that the besieged scientists
for centuries regarding the origin of
species.
The Theory of Blending Inheritance

The characteristics of parents will

blend in the offspring erasing the original
characteristic forever. Darwin died without
knowing that there was already an Austrian
monk who answered the perplexing
questions that beset his brilliant mind. That
Austrian monk was none other than the
father of genetics, Gregor Johann Mendel.
 Mendel’s Genetics: Answer to
Darwin’s Problem

Charles Darwin was intrigued by

biodiversity. This seemingly endless
variation inspired Darwin to conduct
research and experimentation that led
him to evolutionary theory.
 Mendel’s Genetics: Answer to
Darwin’s Problem

• Biological evolution happens when

there is a change in the genetic make-up
of a particular population over time and
this population exhibits inbreeding and
is living within a limited area.
 Mendel’s Genetics: Answer to
Darwin’s Problem

Cultural evolution on the other

hand refers to a kind of changes
that occur within a cultural
tradition and way of life that leads
to its development or progress.
 Mendel’s Genetics: Answer to
Darwin’s Problem

The word evolution has also been employed in other fields

such as social evolution, political evolution and others but
the main focus of this chapter is biological evolution and
how it affects the development of not only human
civilization but the entire picture of the natural world.
With the scientific breakthrough of Gregor Mendel, it was
indeed proven that traits are never lost despite the fact that
some of it seemed disappear.
 SECTION V:
EVOLUTION AND
MODERN SCIENCE
 EVOLUTION AND MODERN
SCIENCE

During the time of Charles Darwin, he

was opposed by major threats to his
theory such as the dogmatic way of
thinking of the people of his time
coupled with the lack of technological
devices that could have proven his
claims.
 SECTION V: EVOLUTION AND
MODERN SCIENCE
DNA is also capable of creating exact
replicas of itself. It is a unique ability that
makes life thrive all over the world.
 MUTATION, NATURAL
SELECTION, RANDOM GENETIC
DRIFT AND GENE FLOW

There are several things to consider

in studying evolution. These are
mutation, natural selection, random
genetic drift and gene flow.
 MUTATION, NATURAL
SELECTION, RANDOM GENETIC
DRIFT AND GENE FLOW

MUTATION
In the preceding section, we have learned that mutation is
the mistake in the process of self-replication in the DNA.
Mutation is also the major factor to consider in studying
the evolution of all organisms.
 MUTATION, NATURAL
SELECTION, RANDOM GENETIC
DRIFT AND GENE FLOW

• Mutation is a natural process that can even

occur in evolution of all organisms.
• Mutations occur in every population but it
cannot outright affect evolution.
 MUTATION, NATURAL
SELECTION, RANDOM GENETIC
DRIFT AND GENE FLOW

NATURAL SELECTION
Natural Selection has already been discussed in
the previous sections. It is one of the driving
forces of evolution in all species. It was
conceived by Charles Darwin to explain his
evolutionary theory.
 MUTATION, NATURAL
SELECTION, RANDOM GENETIC
DRIFT AND GENE FLOW

RANDOM GENETIC DRIFT

Scientists agree that natural selection plays a vital role in
evolution however there is a growing number of scientists
contending that natural selection is not the only major
player in evolutionary theory, evolution is also affected by
random events.
 MUTATION, NATURAL
SELECTION, RANDOM GENETIC
DRIFT AND GENE FLOW

GENE FLOW
Gene Flow is another natural event that affects
evolution. It happens when a subpopulation of the
same species mates with individuals from another
sub-population.
 MUTATION, NATURAL
SELECTION, RANDOM GENETIC
DRIFT AND GENE FLOW

Macroevolution and Microevolution

What was discussed in the topics on mutations,
natural selection, random genetic drift and gene
flow is actually microevolution.
 MUTATION, NATURAL
SELECTION, RANDOM GENETIC
DRIFT AND GENE FLOW

Microevolution is the short term changes in the genes of a

generation of s particular species to the next one.

Macroevolution on the other hand occurs over very long periods

of time and has the effect of changing entirely both the genetic
make-up and physical attributes of an organisms.
 MUTATION, NATURAL
SELECTION, RANDOM GENETIC
DRIFT AND GENE FLOW

The natural process such as mutation, natural

selection, random genetic drift and Gene Flow
do not only underlie microevolution but also
inspire macroevolution as well. The only
difference is the time element.