PHL 399H & BI 407H
Science & Religion
Questions on Evolution I. Beak of the Finch; Epilogue
1. According to the survey cited in Wiener, what was the attitude of U.S. adults toward creation in 1993?
2. How is research on evolution received if the word “evolution” is not used?
C3. How did Darwin express himself to Asa Gray on a Divine role in creation?
T4. What is the relationship between variation, selection & evolution?
5. How far had scientists progressed in “creating life” in the test tube in 1994?
T6. What is the significance of a particular niche, such as the niche of life or the thinking niche, being occupied?
Questions on Evolution II. The Origin of Species
T1. How does Darwin summarize his application of Malthus’ economic theory to the animal and plant kingdoms?
T2. List the organization of the “Origin of Species”.
3. How does Darwin summarize the effects on variation of nature on the one hand, and of man on the other?
C4. What is the importance of pedigrees to the development of Darwin’s theory?
5. What organism did Darwin use in the studies he summarizes in Chapter 1, and why did he use this organism?
6. What relationship between two “species” or “races” and their ancestor(s) does Darwin develop in Chapter 1?
T7. List the objections to his theory that Darwin addresses in Chapter XV.
T8. Paraphrase Darwin’s rebuttal of each of the objections you listed in question 6. Include references to the text passages that contain each of these rebuttals.
T9. How did Darwin see the existence of closely related species, or varieties within a species, impacting the theory of special creation?
10. Use passages from “Origin of Species” to defend or refute the statement that Darwin concluded that natural selection produces increasingly perfect forms of life.
C11. List the points in Ernst Mayr’s summary of Darwin’s theory.
Questions on Methods of Science I. Minkoff and Baker, Chapter
1
T1. How is science defined?
2. What is a hypothesis, and what kind of hypotheses does science usually examine?
3. How do scientists convince each other to believed in certain hypotheses.
C4. What is the relationship between a hypothesis and a theory?
C5. What are some attributes of a “good” theory?
6. How do experimental and naturalistic sciences differ?
T7. What is a paradigm, and how do paradigms impact what Kuhn refers to as normal science?
8. How are paradigms transmitted?
9. Is the use of science confined to particular cultures or to specific
sub-groups within a culture?
Questions on Methods of Science II. “Beak of the Finch”, Part 1
1. What is the objective of the Grant’s study of Darwin’s finches?
T2. What led the Grants to study these finches, and how long, in years and in finch generations, had they been doing so when this book was written?
T3. How many species of finch are on the Grant’s study site? How do the species differ in form and in niche?
C4. Following the pattern of his time, Darwin collected “type specimens” of Galapagos finches. What are type specimens and what do they imply about the nature of species?
T5. How did the diversity of species of finches on the Galapagos and the fossil record of South America lead Darwin to begin his notebook “On the Transmutation of Species”?
6. How did Darwin see the relationship between variations and natural selection?
C7. How did Darwin deal with the absence of smoothly graded variation from one species to the next?
8. What is unusual about the amount of variability displayed by Darwin’s finches?
T9. What relationship between variability and survival had not been observed, and had to be addressed by Darwin with hypothetical examples?
10. What feature of Darwin’s finches is most variable?
C11. Why is there variability among the beaks of birds, including Darwin’s finches?
T12. What did Lack notice about the beaks of species of finches on the same island that was consistent with Darwin’s theory?
T13. What feature of natural selection did Lack not observe?
C14. What did the Grants inventory on Daphne in addition to Darwin’s finches?
C15. What two critical observations were made by observing Darwin’s finches during the dry season?
T16. How much difference is there in energy gain and energy needs between fortis and magnirostris foraging on caltrop?
T17. How much variation is there in beak size of fortis that will and will not attempt to forage on caltrop?
18. What three prerequisites for evolution by natural selection are “heightened in Darwin’s finches to an almost unusual degree.”?
19. What effect did the drought year of 1977 have on the beak size and sex ratio of the finches?
T20. Were the effects of the 1977 drought an example of variation, natural selection or evolution? Explain your answer.
21. What specific feature of the finches that survived the 1977 drought was selected for in the survivors and their offspring?
C22. What selection mechanism operates on the finches during the dry season and what different mechanism operates during the wet season?
T23. Describe the relationship between natural selection and sexual selection on the color of the male finches and on the color of Endler’s guppies.
24. How did the El Nino flood of 1982-1983 affect the size of the finch population? What about the following two drier years?
25. What happened to the sizes of the birds and their beaks in these three years?
C26. What is a “darwin”? What rate of change, in darwins, is typical
of the fossil record?
What rate of change in darwins was observed in the case of the
Daphne finches?
T27. In what way does Schluter’s analysis of Smith’s sparrow data apply to and inform the data available in the fossil record?
T28. What is the significance of the “jittering”, wobbling, dynamic
state of populations?
Questions on Methods of Science III. “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”
T1. What is Kuhn’s definition of normal science?
2. What is the fundamental assumption upon which normal science is predicated?
T3. What sorts of changes does Kuhn propose as the defining characteristics of scientific revolutions?
C4. By what mechanism is normal science transmitted?
C5. What are the two essential characteristics of paradigms?
6. How does the triumph of a particular paradigm affect the range of interpretations of phenomena within a scientific field?
T7. What does a successful paradigm accomplish that is not accomplished by paradigms of lesser status?
T8. What are the three normal foci for factual scientific investigations? What are the three subdivisions of the third of these foci?
9. How does the range of results anticipated under a given paradigm relate to the range of all conceivable results? Upon what does the project with results outside the anticipated results reflect?
10. What significance do scientists place on the results gained in normal research?
T11. What impact does the acquisition of a paradigm have on the problems selected by a scientific community? How are all other problems treated?
12. With what must the scientist be concerned?
13. What is the principal source of the metaphor that relates normal science to puzzle-solving?
T14. What is the relationship between rules and paradigms, and how does this relationship affect science?
