Match the words in A to their definitions in B.

A		B
	origin	a	the thick outer surface of the Earth
	crust	b	to combine together to form a whole
	similar	c	to show, to stress smth
	to breed	d	the place or moment where smth begins to exist
	to point out	e	not exactly the same
	to wipe out	f	to destroy smth completely
	to make up	g	to produce a new sort of animal or plant

 

 

Choose the correct word to complete the sentences.

liquid blend evolutionist scientific theory belief appeals heredity ancestors

 

The belief that ....................... was transmitted from the parents to offspring by “blood, ” was accepted by most 19th-century biologists, the .......................... Charles Darwin being included among these.

The blood ...................... of heredity, if this notion can be dignified with such a name, is really a part of the folklore antedating .......................... biology. It is implicit in such popular phrases as “half blood, ” “new blood, ” “blue blood.” It does not mean that heredity is actually transmitted through the red ................... in blood vessels; the essential point is the ........................ that a parent transmits to each child all its characteristics and that the hereditary endowment of a child is an alloy, a .......................... of the endowments of its parents, grandparents, and more remote ........................... This idea ............................ to those who pride themselves on having a noble or remarkable “blood” line.

 

 

Working with word combinations and sentences

Give English equivalents of the following word combinations.

Обрести форму, различные источники, выдвинуть идею, возрастающая сложность, в соответствии с Библией, увеличиться в размере, различные требования, удовлетворять запросы, из-за воздействия окружающей среды, выраженные изменения, приобретенные характеристики, слои горных пород, катастрофа мирового масштаба, с другой стороны, земная кора, разводить голубей, схожая карьера, основной источник.

 

5.We know that scientific ideas could be:

put forward

proposed

accepted

classified

Continue the list.

Translate into English.

Первые эволюционные идеи выдвигались уже в античности, но только труды Чарлза Дарвина сделали эволюционизм фундаментальной концепцией биологии. Хотя единой и общепризнанной теории биологической эволюции до сих пор не создано, сам факт эволюции сомнению ученых не подвергается, так как имеет огромное число прямых подтверждений.

В середине XX века на основе теории Дарвина сформировалась синтетическая теория эволюции (сокращённо СТЭ). СТЭ является в настоящее время наиболее разработанной системой представлений о процессах видообразования. Основой для эволюции по СТЭ является динамика генетической структуры популяций. Основным движущим фактором эволюции считается естественный отбор. Однако наука не стоит на месте и передовые теоретическими разработки отличаются от первоначальных постулатов синтетической теории эволюции. Существует также группа эволюционных представлений, согласно которым видообразование (ключевой момент биологической эволюции) происходит быстро — за несколько поколений. При этом влияние каких-либо длительно действующих эволюционных факторов исключается.

 

Working with texts

Read and translate the text.

Text 1

Ideas about evolution

Ideas – including scientific ones – occur in different places, with different people and at different times. And no new theory emerges from a vacuum of ideas, but rather takes shape from various sources. Many people in the past had put forward the idea of evolution. Aristotle (384-322BC) classified animals and arranged them in a series of increasing complexity. Bishop Ussher in 1650 had calculated that – according to Bible – the Earth was created in 4004 BC, which made it about 6000 years old. This time was far too shot for evolution to have occurred. Now the Earth is thought to be 4.6 billion years old.

The grandfather of Charles Darwin – Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802)– put forward his own theory of evolution. He believed that God had created the first simple organisms. These organisms evolved into new species. By this time a study of the Earth`s surface was beginning to show that it had its origin hundreds of millions of years ago.

Lamarck (1744-1829) proposed an interesting theory of " Transformism". He suggested that animals have an innate tendency to increase in size and complexity. He also pointed out that different environments made different demands on the individuals which then evolved to meet these needs. Lamarck`s theory suggested that due to environmental pressures certain organs would be used more (or less) than others. For example a mole`s eyes were diminished in size and function through disuse in the underground habitat. For this kind of evolution to work it is essential for each modification to be passed on to the offspring. And with each new generation the modification becomes more pronounced. This belief in the inheritance of acquired characteristics persisted until the 1900s.

There were two schools of thought about evolution in general. Geological studies showed that the Earth`s crust was made up of distinct layers of rock, with different fossils in each layer. Believers in catastrophism thought that this represented a series of world wide disasters in which living organisms were wiped out and new forms created.

Uniformitarians, on the other hand, thought that the forces which shaped the Earth`s crust in the past were no different from those in action today, e.g. mountain building, erosion, volcanic activity, and that they formed a continuous process.

Charles Darwin (1809-1882) combined his own experience as a breeder (he bred pigeons), his observations as a naturalist and ideas of other scientists and philosophers into a new theory. He assumed that the better adapted varieties would be " selected" by pressure of the environment. Darwin also was sure that these " selected variations" should be heritable. But he didn`t know how these variations were passed on to the offspring.

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) made a career of a naturalist which was very similar to Darwin`s. He made a voyage to the Amazon basin, Malaysia and the East Indies. Wallace, like Darwin, had read Thomas Malthus and formulated a theory of natural selection.

Darwin`s book was widely read but his theory of natural selection was opposed by many members of the scientific world and is not accepted by some religious groups even today. The theory was clinched only in the 1900s, when Mendel`s papers were re-discovered. It was then realized that mutations were the principal source of Darwin`s " variations" and genetics could explain how they were inherited.

 

Pair work. Ask and answer 6 questions to Text 1.

Summarize the information from the text about one of the concepts and add some additional data.

Transformism.

Evolutionism.

Blood theory.

Natural selection.

Creationism.

 

Read the texts using your dictionary.

Retell one of the texts.

Text 2

Erasmus Darwin

Erasmus Darwin was aprominent English physician, grandfather of the naturalist Charles Darwin and the biologist Francis Galton.

Educated at the universities of Cambridge (1750–54) and Edinburgh (1754–56), Darwin opened a successful medical practice in Lichfield. He soon built a reputation as a practitioner of such talent that George III offered him a position as his personal physician in London. Darwin declined to make the move, however.

A freethinker and radical, Darwin often wrote his opinions and scientific thoughts in verse. In Zoonomia or the Laws of Organic Life (1794–96) he advanced his own concepts of evolution, which were similar to those of J.-B. Lamarck. He believed that species modified themselves by adapting to their environment in a purposive way. It is as a transitional figure that Erasmus Darwin is primarily important. He embodied the attitudes and values of 18th-century materialism, but his conclusions concerning evolution were drawn from simple observation and were rejected by the more sophisticated of the 19th-century scientists, his grandson Charles foremost among them. Here is his rendering of the idea as versified in the Temple of Nature:

" Organic life beneath the shoreless waves

Was born, and nursed in Ocean's pearly caves;

First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,

Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;

These, as successive generations bloom,

New powers acquire and larger limbs assume;

Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,

And breathing realms of fin, and feet, and wing.

" Thus the tall Oak, the giant of the wood,

Which bears Britannia's thunders on the flood;

The Whale, unmeasured monster of the main;

The lordly lion, monarch of the plain;

The eagle, soaring in the realms of air,

Whose eye, undazzled, drinks the solar glare;

Imperious man, who rules the bestial crowd,

Of language, reason, and reflection proud,

With brow erect, who scorns this earthy sod,

And styles himself the image of his God --

Arose from rudiments of form and sense,

An embryon point or microscopic lens! "

 

Text 3

Alfred Russel Wallace

Alfred Russel Wallace was the eighth of nine children. His formal education was limited to six years at the one-room Hertford Grammar School. Although his education was curtailed by the family's worsening financial situation, his home was a rich source of books, maps, and gardening activities, which Wallace remembered as enduring sources of learning and pleasure.

Living in London he was keen on self-education, read books and attended lectures by prominent philosophers that formed the basis of his religious skepticism and his reformist and socialist political philosophy.

He also read works and attended lectures on phrenology and mesmerism, forming an interest in nonmaterial mental phenomena that grew increasingly prominent later in his life.

Unemployed, and ardent in his love of nature, Wallace traveled to Brazil in 1848 as self-employed specimen collector. Wallace spent a total of four years traveling, collecting, mapping, drawing, and writing in unexplored regions of the Amazon River basin. Unfortunately except for one shipment of specimens sent to his agent in London, however, most of Wallace's collections were lost on his voyage home when his ship went up in flames and sank. Nevertheless, he managed to save some of his notes before his rescue and return journey. From these he published several scientific articles, two books. These won him acclaim from the Royal Geographical Society, which helped to fund his next collecting venture, in the Malay Archipelago.

Wallace spent eight years in the Malay Archipelago, from 1854 to1862, traveling among the islands, collecting biological specimens for his own research and for sale, and writing scores of scientific articles on mostly zoological subjects. Among these were two extraordinary articles dealing with the origin of new species. Wallace proposed that new species arise by the progression and continued divergence of varieties that outlive the parent species in the struggle for existence. In early 1858 he sent a paper outlining these ideas to Darwin, who saw such a striking coincidence to his own theory that he decided to present two extracts of his previous writings, along with Wallace's paper, to the Linnean Society. The resulting set of papers, with both Darwin's and Wallace's names, was published as a single article in 1858.

Wallace returned to England in 1862 an established natural scientist and geographer, as well as a collector of more than 125, 000 animal specimens. He married and raised three children. Wallace published a highly successful narrative of his journey. In several articles from this period on human evolution and spiritualism, Wallace parted from the scientific naturalism of many of his friends and colleagues in claiming that natural selection could not account for the higher faculties of human beings.

He also lectured in the British Isles and in the United States and traveled on the European continent. In addition to his major scientific works, Wallace actively pursued a variety of social and political interests. In writings and public appearances he opposed vaccination, eugenics, and vivisection while strongly supporting women's rights and land nationalization. Foremost among these commitments was an increasing engagement with spiritualism in his personal and public capacities.

His engagement with progressive politics and spiritualism likely contributed to his lack of employment and to his somewhat peripheral status in the historical record.

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