1. The individual that I have chosen to have influenced Charles Darwin's Natural Selection theory the most would be Charles Lyell who carried his belief in uniformitarianism: which is "the theory that changes in the earth's crust during geological history have resulted from the action of continuous and uniform processes.". He was the founder of modern geology who contributed to Darwin's Natural selection theory by proving catastrophism to be wrong which further proved his theory to be correct and giving more evidence that natural selection is true with is findings.
2. The contribution that Lyell had made positively to the scientific community is that uniformitarianism is logical and supports Darwin's natural selection. Darwin believed in constant evolution whereas Lyell ruled out what would have falsified his theory of consistency from George Cuvier who argued that catastrophism (the theory that changes in the earth's crust during geological history have resulted chiefly from sudden violent and unusual events) would counter his belief of natural selection and the evolution of species. Lyell contributed to proving Darwin's theory when he proved that the Earth would not be able to "withstand multiple catastrophic events" resulting in loss of regions, species, etc. This helped the process of Natural selection be validated.
3. The point that "Organisms with better access to resources will be more successful in their reproductive efforts," traces back to the geological process of uniformitarianism that Lyell implemented. This shows that the geology of an organism in an area will evolve well with consistent access to what they need.
4. Darwin could have continued to prove natural selection to be true without Lyell's input because he had already obtained other evidence, I believe Lyell's contribution was extra evidence to strengthen but not necessary to complete his process.
5. The attitude of the church affected Darwin's Theory by giving him hesitation of going against his families religious views. Yet his work was threatened and almost credited to someone else so he had to publish his work before he could be discredited for all his years of work.
"Sir Charles Lyell". AllAboutScience.org. N.p., 2017. Web. 10 Feb. 2017.
An initial comment on your sources: When using online sources, it is easy to get stuck with unreliable sources, and unfortunately you have found not just one, but two. The AllAboutScience site is actually part of a site called AllAboutGod, which is a religious site. This doesn't automatically mean their information is wrong, but unfortunately in this case, their information is biased and misinformed.
ReplyDeleteIn my old Blackboard course, I had a separate page with a guide on how to choose good sources and avoid bad ones. Canvas won't allow for that much flexibility, unfortunately. Try to stick with scientific sites for sources such as: Educational sites such as universities, scientific literature, scientific sites such as Discovery or National Geographic.
Yes, Lyell did help to disprove catastrophism. But he actually contributed to developing the alternative to catastrophism and you don't discuss this. It was this alternative, uniformitarianism, that contributed to Darwin's work, more so than the falsification of catastrophism.
To clarify: Lyell developed the theory of uniformitarianism, which demonstrated two things: First, that the earth was shaped through slow, gradual forces, a process that remarkably mirrors the process of natural selection, a parallel Darwin may well have noticed. Second, it demonstrated that these process occurred over a very long period of time, which was very significant to Darwin. Before Lyell, it was generally accepted that the earth was only a few thousand years old. Lyell demonstrated that the earth was at least millions of years old (we now know it is billions of years old). So how does that impact Darwin? Well, natural selection is a slow process. It would not have been possible for natural selection to produce not only the extant organisms in a few thousand years but also all of the extinct organisms. With Lyell's concept of "deep time", suddenly Darwin had the geological time he for his theory to work. Lyell, quite literally, gave Darwin the gift of time. Without that, Darwin's theory would not have worked.
Resources was not something Lyell discussed, and he didn't talk about natural organisms themselves at all. What Lyell did bring to the table was the acknowledgement that the environment can produce slow, gradual changes in the geology of the earth, and Darwin recognized the parallel action on organisms in his own work. Perhaps more importantly was the contribution of the concept of "deep time" as without that, Darwin's theory wouldn't have worked. This isn't on the bullet point list, but it is still important to understand.
I suggest you are underestimating the importance of Lyell to Darwin, but that may be due to an incomplete understanding of Lyell's work itself. I usually don't like to grant any one scientist so much credit as to be indispensable to the work of another, but in the case of Lyell, I'm willing to do so, primarily because without Lyell, Darwin literally wouldn't have had enough time for his mechanism to work. Without Lyell, Darwin was stuck.
Can you expand in the last section? Why would it have been a problem going against his "family's religious views"? Who in particular are you referring to here? Beyond that, how might the church have responded to Darwin's work? What repercussions might he have experienced? Scientists don't have to worry about this in our current times, but the Church during Darwin's time had a lot of social power. It is important to recognize that there were negative consequences for going against their teachings.