scholarly journals Joseph Leidy entre dois paradigmas da Paleontologia

2012 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 547-561 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felipe Faria
Keyword(s):  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Thomas Kuhn ◽  
Georges Cuvier

Com a aceitação dos métodos e programas de pesquisa desenvolvidos por Georges Cuvier para o estudo dos fósseis, a Paleontologia teve seu primeiro paradigma kuhniano instalado. Joseph Leidy iniciou seus trabalhos sob esta orientação teórica e metodológica e praticou, no âmbito da Paleontologia, o que Thomas Kuhn denominou de ciência normal. Entretanto, com o acúmulo de dados provenientes de seus trabalhos taxonômicos, Leidy identificou algumas questões que não podiam ser respondidas sob a luz do paradigma cuvieriano. Somente o novo paradigma, o evolutivo, podia respondê-las e, desta forma, Leidy aderiu às teorias evolucionistas de Charles Darwin. Este processo de transição de um naturalista treinado sob uma orientação, e que passa a trabalhar sob uma nova, é analisado neste trabalho, levando-se em consideração as peculiaridades da aplicação da estrutura prevista por Kuhn em uma disciplina como a Paleontologia. Diferentemente do rompimento epistemológico previsto por Kuhn, na mudança de paradigma na Paleontologia, diversos paleontólogos continuaram a trabalhar orientados pelo velho paradigma, mas produzindo dados utilizáveis pelos evolucionistas. Leidy foi um deles, porém sua transição foi mais adiante, pois, a partir de 1859, gradualmente, ele começou a utilizar relações de ancestralidade e a seleção natural como explicações para as semelhanças morfológicas existentes entre as espécies que se sucederam ao longo da história da vida.

How general are genera? The genus in systematic zoology

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yves Cambefort
Keyword(s):  
Charles Darwin ◽  
The Other ◽  
Free System ◽  
Genus Level ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Georges Cuvier ◽  
Carl Linnaeus ◽  
Systematic Zoology ◽  
Higher Categories ◽  
The One

This article examines how the genus category was perceived and conceived in zoology (with occasional references to botany), in reference to species on the one hand and to higher categories on the other hand. In systematic zoology and botany, animals and plants are classified and named according to their species, genera, and higher categories (family, order, etc.). Linguistic relationships between the words ‘genus’ and ‘general, generality’ might have played a role in some intuitive meaning of the genus. This article traces the evolution of the concept of genus as used in systematic zoology from antiquity to the present time, focusing on the contributions of Plato, Aristotle, Carl Linnaeus, Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Georges Cuvier, and Charles Darwin. It also considers the introduction of a new, rank-free system called the PhyloCode to replace Linnaean ranking—and especially the genus level.

Historical background

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Hallam
Keyword(s):  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Western World ◽  
Earth History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Georges Cuvier ◽  
Fossil Bones ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
English Speaking World

Georges Cuvier has not been treated with much respect in the English-speaking world for his contributions to the study of Earth history. Charles Lyell is thought to have effectively demolished his claims of episodes of catastrophic change in the past, and it is only in the past few decades, with the rise of so-called ‘neocatastrophism’, that a renewed interest has emerged in his writings, which date from early in the nineteenth century. Cuvier was a man of considerable ability, who quickly rose to a dominant position in French science in the post-Napoleonic years. Though primarily a comparative anatomist, his pioneer research into fossil mammals led him into geology. He argued strongly for the extinction of fossil species, most notably mammoths, mastodons, and giant sloths, at a time when the very thought of extinctions was rather shocking to conventional Christian thought, and linked such extinctions with catastrophic changes in the environment. This view is expressed in what he called the ‘Preliminary Discourse’ to his great four-volume treatise entitled Recherches sur les Ossements Fossiles (Researches on fossil bones), published in 1812. This extended essay was immensely influential in intellectual circles of the western world, was reissued as a short book, and was repeatedly reprinted and translated into the main languages of the day. It became well known in the English-speaking world through the translation by the Edinburgh geologist Robert Jameson (1813), who so bored the young Charles Darwin with his lectures that he temporarily turned him off the subject of geology. According to Martin Rudwick, who has undertaken a new translation which is used here, Jameson’s translation is often misleading and in places downright bad. It was Jameson’s comments rather than Cuvier’s text that led to the widespread belief that Cuvier favoured a literalistic interpretation of Genesis and wished to bolster the historicity of the biblical story of the Flood. The English surveyor William Smith is rightly credited with his pioneering recognition of the value of fossils for correlating strata, which proved of immense importance when he produced one of the earliest reliable geological maps, of England and Wales, but the more learned and intellectually ambitious Cuvier was the first to appreciate fully the significance of fossils for unravelling Earth history.

scholarly journals AS RUPTURAS EPISTEMOLÓGICAS NAS CIÊNCIAS DA VIDA SEGUNDO A ARQUEOLOGIA DE MICHEL FOUCAULT

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (35) ◽  
pp. 298-315
Author(s):  
Ricardo Max Lima Cavalcante
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Georges Cuvier ◽  
Historia Natural

Este artigo busca expor a compreensão da ruptura ou descontinuidade epistemológica explanadas pelo filósofo francês Michel Foucault em sua obra As palavras e as coisas. A partir de seu método, denominado Arqueologia do saber, o autor tenta evidenciar que a distinção entre a História Natural dos séculos XVII e XVIII, ciência que visava classificar animais e plantas em espécies, gênero e outras categorias, a partir de características físicas externas dos organismos, e a biologia que surge no final do século XVIII caracterizada como o estudo da vida, tendo em conta as funções dos órgãos internos e a relação entre os organismos e os seus habitats, como eles se alimentam, como respiram etc. Como veremos ao longo do texto, a ruptura epistemológica causada pelo surgimento do microscópio e pelas primeiras dissecações do biólogo Georges Cuvier não apenas deu início à biologia, mas também forneceu a condição de possibilidade de emergir a compreensão evolutiva na segundo metade do século XIX. Ao dissecar organismos, Cuvier não apenas teria quebrado a barreira epistemológica intransponível da epiderme dos seres vivos, mas também pavimentado o caminho para Charles Darwin e Alfred Wallace conceberem a noção da evolução das espécies algum tempo depois.

scholarly journals Darwinowskie paradygmaty. Kultura popularna w poszukiwaniu teorii wszystkiego

2011 ◽  
Vol 55 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 229-243
Author(s):  
Dominika Oramus
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Popular Science ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Thomas Kuhn ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
Theory Of Everything ◽  
History Of

The article attempts to prove that Darwinism in popular culture plays a role of  a theory of everything. Bestselling authors of popular science such as Edward O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins and Bill Bryson have acquainted general public with the theory of evolution, and its newest facet — the Modern Synthesis. Darwinian paradigms, as defined by Thomas Kuhn, are also used in popular books on cosmology, sociobiology, psychology, and religious studies. Moreover, the Darwinian grand narrative of evolutional history shapes the way in which contemporary mass culture presents the history of our planet in numerous educational TV series. Last but not least, Charles Darwin himself has recently become a popular icon and the story of his life is remade in a growing number of fiction and non-fiction books and movies.

The katydid that was: the tananá, stridulation, Henry Walter Bates and Charles Darwin

2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudio J. Bidau
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Bush Cricket

The Amazonian bush-cricket or katydid, Thliboscelus hypericifolius (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae: Pseudophyllinae), called tananá by the natives was reported to have a song so beautiful that they were kept in cages for the pleasure of listening to the melodious sound. The interchange of letters between Henry Walter Bates and Charles Darwin regarding the tananá and the issue of stridulation in Orthoptera indicates how this mysterious insect, which seems to be very rare, contributed to the theory of sexual selection developed by Darwin.

Darwin's two competing phylogenetic trees: marsupials as ancestors or sister taxa?

2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. David Archibald
Keyword(s):  
Fossil Record ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Phylogenetic Trees ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
The Other ◽  
Charles Lyell ◽  
Single Origin ◽  
Molecular Studies ◽  
Richard Owen ◽  
First Time

Studies of the origin and diversification of major groups of plants and animals are contentious topics in current evolutionary biology. This includes the study of the timing and relationships of the two major clades of extant mammals – marsupials and placentals. Molecular studies concerned with marsupial and placental origin and diversification can be at odds with the fossil record. Such studies are, however, not a recent phenomenon. Over 150 years ago Charles Darwin weighed two alternative views on the origin of marsupials and placentals. Less than a year after the publication of On the origin of species, Darwin outlined these in a letter to Charles Lyell dated 23 September 1860. The letter concluded with two competing phylogenetic diagrams. One showed marsupials as ancestral to both living marsupials and placentals, whereas the other showed a non-marsupial, non-placental as being ancestral to both living marsupials and placentals. These two diagrams are published here for the first time. These are the only such competing phylogenetic diagrams that Darwin is known to have produced. In addition to examining the question of mammalian origins in this letter and in other manuscript notes discussed here, Darwin confronted the broader issue as to whether major groups of animals had a single origin (monophyly) or were the result of “continuous creation” as advocated for some groups by Richard Owen. Charles Lyell had held similar views to those of Owen, but it is clear from correspondence with Darwin that he was beginning to accept the idea of monophyly of major groups.

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