Wyniki wyszukiwania dla: Olivier Rieppel
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Theory in Biosciences > 2019 > 138 > 1 > 147-157
Biological individuality was a hotly debated concept in nineteenth-century German biology, both in botany and in zoology. Much discussion centered on a comparison of higher plants with colonial organisms that are subject to polymorphism and exhibit division of labor among their parts. Building on the work of Matthias Jakob Schleiden, Johannes Müller, Rudolf Leuckart, and especially the botanist Alexander...
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Miller based his rejection of theories of species transformation on the fact that no such process of transformation is directly observable, neither in the Fossil Record, nor in living nature. But some of the most exciting explanatory theories of modern science invoke entities that are unobservable: nobody has ever seen an electromagnetic field, or a quark. Such entities reveal themselves through observable effects they have as they participate in causally determined processes or events. Descent, with modification, likewise requires inference from a host of observable traces evolutionary history left behind in fossils as well as in living organisms....
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Tooth replacement and implantation of Sauropterygia is described with special reference to the generaPlacodus andNothosaurus. Tooth replacement is horizontal, with the exception of the enlarged crushing tooth plates on the maxilla, palatine, and dentary ofPlacodus (placodonts), which are replaced vertically. Tooth implantation is thecodont, with variable ankylosis of the base of the root. Sauropterygia...
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Hugh Miller thought that his call for design, purpose, and goal-directedness in nature could be grounded in empirical science. He chastised Chambers for having drawn speculative conclusions that far transcended the empirical, i.e., observational basis. Chambers, in contrast, found regularity in nature expressed in the three-fold parallelism of the Great Chain of Being, embryonic development, and the Fossil Record, which he explained with his Law of Development. Darwin recognized the incompleteness of, and the consequent weakness of Chambers’ system, and set out to ‘connect the facts’, to weave together all possible lines of evidence in support of his Law of Natural Selection. The astronomer Herschel belittled Darwin’s theory as the “law of the higgledy-piggledy...
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The famous 19th century German embryologist Karl Ernst von Baer, a contemporary of Darwin and an opponent of Darwin’s theory of evolution, is reported to once have aptly characterized the scientific attitude as follows: “If in the course of scientific research I find myself using a balance, and God intervenes by pushing the lighter scale down so that it appears to be the heavier one, I’ll have to get up and say – ‘please, Sir, you complete the task at hand; under the present circumstances I cannot do it!’.”...
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The ‘Law of Superposition’ states that in an undisturbed sequence of layers of rocks, the younger layers lie on top of the older layers, such that fossils from deeper layers are geologically older than fossils from some more superficial layers of rocks. The ‘Law of Superposition’ is subsumed by the Law of Gravity, which is as universal a law of nature was one can wish for. But defending a staunchly empiricist position, Miller denied that the theory of species transformation can be read off from the sequential appearance of fossils in successive layers of sedimentary rocks. His reason was that the Fossil Record does not offer the opportunity to directly observe the process of species transformation. If anything, such a theory of species transformation has to be inferred from the Fossil Record. But for this to be possible, the species – fossil and extant – first have to be classified into a natural system that would reflect their evolutionary relationships. The question then becomes how to classify fossils, or organisms in general, and how to distinguish natural from artificial classifications....
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Opposing all theories of species transformation, including that of Chambers, Hugh Miller appealed to Aristotelian metaphysics: nature is pervaded by design and purpose. But design requires a designer, purpose requires a planning mind. Miller also appealed to the empiricist tradition in the philosophy of science: the proper foundation for science is unbiased observation, not idle speculation. Chambers had appealed to the continuity of nature: the unbroken Great Chain of Being was paralleled in the Fossil Record and in embryonic development. In contrast, Miller maintained that even if there were an unbroken succession of fossils through the Geological Record, there was still no process of species transformation to be observed, but rather only a certain ‘top upon bottom order of things’. And it was precisely this pattern which revealed design, purpose and goal-directedness in the Fossil Record through the occurrence of fossils of a ‘prophetic type’. The characteristics of such ‘prophetic’ fossils announced at an earlier epoch of earth history the later appearance of new forms of life....
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Science seeks to discover laws of nature. Historically, such laws of nature were understood as ‘secondary causes’, enacted by a ‘First Cause’. Such an understanding of natural laws resulted in the ‘metaphor of the two books’. The Creator revealed himself through the Book of Revelation as much as through the Book of Nature. Exhaustive knowledge of the laws of nature would lead all the way back to knowledge of the First Cause. On this account, the study of nature would provide insights into moral and ethical issues. The attempt to derive what ‘ought to be’ from what ‘just is’ constituted a major roadblock preventing the acceptance of a materialistic conception of nature in general, and of theories of species transformation based on nothing but natural causes in particular....
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Ancient atomistic philosophers explained apparent change in nature by the coming together of indestructible and indivisible, unchanging and eternal atoms in different combinations at different times. The discovery of the seemingly unlimited regenerative powers of the polyp, Hydra viridis, by Abraham Trembley in 1740 lent empirical support to the view that organisms, their formation and their growth, could be compared to crystals, both being composed of parts. With his theory of embryogenesis, Georges Buffon in 1749 introduced the distinction of organic and inorganic matter. He explained the mixed inheritance of parental characteristics by the offspring with the theory that the embryo forms by the coming together of organic molecules derived from both parent bodies. Maupertuis speculated in 1751 that if accidental ‘mistakes’ could occur in the coming together of parts during the formation of an embryo, and if these ‘mistakes’ were, or could become, heritable, a mechanism would be at hand to explain species transformation....
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An evolving world is a world of change. A created world does not change. It just is. Or if it seems to change, the change is only apparent, as it is preconceived and preordained by the blueprint of Creation. Change is paradoxical: how can something change and yet remain the same? How much remodeling can be done to a house before we no longer call it the same house, but a new and different one? Some Ancient Greek philosophers solved the ‘problem of change’ through the concept of dynamic permanence: planets are in constant motion, continuously changing their position relative to other heavenly bodies, but they travel in immutable, eternal orbits. These orbits can be described in terms of universal laws of nature, which in turn can be expressed in the timeless language of mathematics....
książka
Olivier Rieppel,
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Evolutionary theory addresses the phenomenon of the origin and diversity of plant and animal species that we observe. In recent times, however, it has become a predominant ideology which has gained currency far beyond its original confines. Attempts to understand the origin and historical development of human culture, civilization and language, of the powers of human cognition, and even the origin...
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Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society > 175 > 2 > 415 - 428
Placodonts are Triassic marine reptiles that inhabited the eastern and western margins of the Tethys Ocean (modern South China and Europe/Middle East). Although the crania of European taxa are relatively well understood, those of Chinese taxa have not been extensively studied, and most of them have not been incorporated into a comprehensive phylogeny. Here we present the first reconstructions of all...
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Cladistics > 30 > 3 > 322 - 329
Recent commentary by Costello and collaborators on the current state of the global taxonomic enterprise attempts to demonstrate that taxonomy is not in decline as feared by taxonomists, but rather is increasing by virtue of the rate at which new species are formally named. Having supported their views with data that clearly indicate as much, Costello et al. make recommendations to increase the rate...
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Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology > 2014 > 400 > Complete > 9-16
The relationship between cycles of sea-level change and marine diversity has long been the subject of debate. Large predators may be particularly sensitive to changes in habitat availability and marine productivity driven by changes in sea-level, especially those dependent on nearshore benthic food resources. To test this relationship, we compared the proportional diversity of differing marine reptile...
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Journal of Anatomy > 224 > 5 > 603 - 613
The placodonts of the Triassic period (~252–201 mya) represent one of the earliest and most extreme specialisations to a durophagous diet of any known reptile group. Exceptionally enlarged crushing tooth plates on the maxilla, dentary and palatine cooperated to form functional crushing areas in the buccal cavity. However, the extreme size of these teeth, combined with the unusual way they occluded,...
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Palaeontology > 56 > 4 > 849 - 866
Phalarodon atavus from the Germanic Muschelkalk Basin was previously represented only by cranial elements. Here we report a nearly complete and articulated specimen of P. atavus from the Middle Triassic Luoping Biota, Yunnan, South China. This is the first specimen of P. atavus from outside the Germanic Basin. This discovery demonstrates a peri‐Tethyan distribution of P. atavus. The new specimen is...
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Cladistics > 29 > 3 > 328 - 335
The reconstruction of the evolutionary history of animal phyla was an integral part of Othenio Abel’s paleobiology (paleozoology). Abel took issue with those phylogeneticists who, following the lead of Haeckel, would draw up phylogenetic trees on the basis of transformation series of singular characters considered to be of particular importance. Abel highlighted Louis Dollo’s principle of the chevauchement des spécialisations...
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Adolf Remane is widely considered to have been one of the most influential German zoologists of the 20th Century, yet Ernst Mayr persistently characterized him as an idealistic morphologist, that is, a typologist unable to understand population genetics or indeed Darwinian theory. This stands in sharp contrast to Mayr's praise for Bernhard Rensch as one of the most important German contributors to...
