Evolutionary theory and its impact on psychology
1.	Introduction
	a.	See page 17-18 and 73-75 of your textbook (Wade & Tavris, 2003)
	b.	How was the School of Functionalism inspired by evolutionary theory?
2.	Natural History
	a.	Phylogenic scale (Linneaeus, 1760)
		1.	Classification or taxonomy
		2.	Believed that species are unambiguously separate
		3.	Darwin did not invent the idea of the phylogenic scale
		4.	Darwin contributed the process of change (evolution)
	b.	Paleontology
		1.	The study of fossil remains
		2.	Cuvier (1820)
		3.	Looking for order and pattern
		4.	This work was a challenge to the 4004 BC date of creation
	c.	Lamarck's (1820) theory of evolution
		1.	A theory of evolution based upon natural selection
		2.	Species had changed because of environmental press
		3.	Acquired characteristics were transmitted
	d.	Stone age, bronze age (Thompson, 1840)
	e.	Pre-historic human artifacts were being found before 1859
	f.	Phenomenology (Hutton)
		1.	Amateur geologist
		2.	"Gradualism"
	g.	Aggassiz (1830, 1840)
		1.	Geologist working on glaciers and the ice age
	h.	Lyell (1840)
		1.	Archeologist
		2.	The lower the strata the older it is
			a.	He thought at that time that the older fossils were more primitive
		3.	Began the geological time scales
3.	Charles Darwin
	a.	Introduction
		1.	Cambridge
	b.	Oceanographic voyage (1830)
		1.	Job as a naturalist
		2.	The Beagle
		3.	South American fossil remains
		4.	The Galapagos Islands
		5.	Darwin's finches
	c.	Species much different from Europe
		1.	Why different?
			a.	Isolated
		2.	He was familiar with the ideas of Lamarck
	d.	Strongly documented
	e.	Finally published in 1859
4.	Two principal characteristics of the theory of evolution
	a.	Thoroughly documented
	b.	Mechanistic
5.	Darwin's theory of evolution
	a.	Nature is profligate. Natalie Angier, a science writer for the New York Times--in her Pulitzer Prize winning book Woman: An Intimate Geography, calls this a "basic principle of living organisms." ". . . Life is a spendthrift; life can persist only by living beyond its means. You make things in extravagant abundance, and then you shave back, throw away, kill off the excess. " (p. 3). Several examples were read from Angier's book and related to Chapter 15 Development over the Life Span in our textbook. "During the baby's first 15 months, there is an explosion of new synapses, the connections among neurons in the brain (see Chapter 4). In fact, too many synapses are produced. As the brain integrates and consolidates early experience, unnecessary synapses are pruned away, leaving behind a more efficient neural network" (p. 511).
		1.	Influenced by Malthus
	b.	Overproduction of offspring leads to competition for resources
	c.	Variation within species
	d.	Leads to selection of more adaptive offspring
6.	The term "survival of the fittest" is often misunderstood and misused in popular culture. It is important that, as citizens and leaders, we understand theory that affects our lives and decisions about our lives. (Hyde, 2004).
	a.	Evolution, as modern biologists understand it, is a product of natural selection. According to Darwin, natural selection is the process by which the fittest animals survive, reproduce, and pass their genes on to the next generation. Animals that are less fit do not reproduce and therefore do not pass on their genes.
	b.	Darwin's basic observation was that living things produce far more young than would be needed simply to replace themselves. Yet population sizes remain relatively constant. Therefore, many individuals must not survive. There must be differential survival, with the fittest organisms surviving and others not.
	c.	In the popular conceptions the "fittest" animal is the most aggressive, but evolutionary theory defines fitness differently. Fitness is defined as the relative number of genes an animal contributes to the next generation.
	d.	The bottom line is producing lots of offspring, specifically healthy, viable offspring. Thus a man who jogs 10 miles a day, lifts weights, and has a 50-inch chest but whose sperm count is zero would be considered to have zero fitness.
7.	Implications
	a.	Darwin asserted transmission of hereditary variations without knowing how. He did not know about genes. To accurately predict a process without knowing the mechanism which is later demonstrated strengthens scientists confidence in the theory.
	b.	Its the notion that this applies to humans which generated the controversy
8.	Affect of Darwin on psychology
	a.	Comparative psychology
		1.	Continuity of consciousness
	b.	Functionalism (page 16)
	c.	Applied psychology
9.	Evolution takes other forms: A historical note
	a.	Gould, S. J. (1989). Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History. New York: W. W. Norton.
		1.	In the early 1900s, Charles Walcott came to an area which is now Yoho National Park near Banff and Lake Louise in western Canada to study trilobites. Trilobites are invertebrate fossils, extinct for 225 million years, but common in Paleozoic rocks. In 1909, while searching for other fossil sites, Walcott discovered well-preserved soft-bodied fossils in the Burgess Shale. This was the very first evidence from soft part animals.
		2.	The on-going task of paleontologists is to describe fossils and classify them based on physical similarities with other known species. Walcott went at this task with a passion, naming and describing over 100 species.Walcott's classifications forced the species into existing classifications of his day.
		3.	Walcott's classifications did not receive a thorough re-examination until Harry Whittington and his graduate students Simon Conway Morris and Derek Briggs arrived on the scene in 1973. Through meticulous work, Whittington realized that many of the animals of the Burgess Shale lay outside the four known groupings.
		4.	The Burgess revision (Precambrian time 570 million years ago).
			a.	Much greater diversity in prior geologic eras and much less diversity today.
			b.	Catastrophes of punctuated life forms in between some of the geologic eras. Many fewer life forms today than in the Precambrian.
			c.	Life forms are dramatically pruned during catastrophes
			d.	Likely that it was a lottery, not the result of adaptive superiority.
			e.	The diversity of life is not adequately described as a tree of life. More appropriately it is a bush. Humans are not more advanced in developmental lineage. Humans are not at the top of the tree. Humans are a branch from the bush that has survived.
			f.	Darwinian processes are work between catastrophes