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University of Maryland - Spring 2004 Questions numbered in multiples of 5 are essay questions (equivalent to 20% on final exam); the others are short-answer, one or two paragraphs (5%). No question can be answered just "yes" or "no" or with one or two words. "Identify" means, (a) for a person, give nationality, most important contribution to the history of science, and its approximate date (which century? 1st or 2nd half?), or (b) for a concept, give a brief definition or description, state its significance in the history of science, and name of person who wrote the book or introduced the concept. |
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1. Identify: Neptunism 2. Identify: Plutonism 3. In what way were Playfair's views similar to those of Laplace? 4. What were two reasons why Lyell's importance in the history of geology has been exaggerated? 5. Discuss Darwin's usage of the word "evolution" and compare it with other usages. 6. What was "Uniformitarianism"? How did it help Darwin's theory of evolution in the 19th century? 7. How did it happen that the results of Fourier's heat conduction theory were at first favorable to Darwinian evolution but later unfavorable? 8. Explain the difference between the biological theories of Linnaeus and Buffon. 9. What is the short definition of "Lamarckism" as usually used in biology? State one other "law" that Lamarck's theory included in addition to "Lamarckism." 10. Discuss the influence on Darwin's theory of the writings of Lamarck, Malthus, and Lyell. Do these influences have any effect on the validity of the theory today? 11. Identify: Thomas Robert Malthus. How did he influence Darwin? 12. Who introduced the phrases "struggle for existence" and "survival of the fittest" in connection with evolution? How were these concepts applied to social policy? 13. Identify: cultural relativism. 14. What did Darwin mean by "natural selection"? Why is it a misleading phrase? 15. Discuss the validity of a hierarchy or "pecking order" of the sciences, in which physics is at the top -- its methods are supposed to be more rigorous and its conclusions more reliable than those of biology or sociology. 16. How is Darwins's concept of "randomness" different from the modern concept? 17. Identify: Alfred Russel Wallace. 18. Identify: Huxley-Wilberforce debate. 19. How did Lord Kelvin's estimate of the age of the Earth undermine Darwin's theory of evolution? What discovery later showed that Kelvin's estimate was wrong? 20. Discuss the applicability of Kuhn's theory of Scientific Revolutions to the Darwinian Revolution which replaced Creation by Evolution. 21. Identify: Othniel Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope. 22. Identify: Neanderthal Man. 23. What was Darwin's prediction about where the earliest human would be found? Who confirmed it, and when? 24. Why is there a contradiction between fundamentalist Christian doctrine and the view that blacks are a different (inferior) species from whites? 25. Discuss the monogenist and polygenist theories of race differences, and how they were related to Darwin's theory. 26. Identify the Piltdown Fraud and explain its relevance to theory of evolution. 27. Identify: Zinjanthropus. 28. How did the theory of degeneration affect race relations in the U.S.? 29. How did Social Darwinism change in the late 19th century and how did this change affect the politics of Social Darwinists? 30. Discuss the rise and fall of eugenics. Aside from its abuse by Hitler and some Americans, is it a plausible theory? 31. Summarize Morel's theory of degeneration and explain how it differs from Lamarckism. 32. What "scientific" evidence did John Calhoun use to justify the annexation of Texas as a slave state in the 1845? 33. If an American (in the mid-19th century) accepts evolution, what effect is that likely to have on his/her opinions about race? 34. Who was the leading American advocate of Darwinism in the late 19th century? How did his views on evolution differ from those of Darwin? 35. Discuss the reception of Darwinism and its interaction with religious and racial views in 19th century America. 36. Identify: cephalic index. 37. How can we use the history of science to explain why Americans changed their views on alcoholic beverages from anti-Prohibition before 1915 to pro-Prohibition between 1915-25 and back to anti-Prohibition again after 1925? 38. Summarize the contributions of K. E. Von Baer, Oscar Hertwig and Herman Fol to our knowledge of the process of sexual reproduction. 39. How did the structure of their university systems contribute to the rise of science in Germany and the decline of science in France, in the 19th century? 40. Summarize the history of genetics from 1865 to 1965, including the 5 or 6 most important discoveries/theories/experiments, and the possible relation to oscillations between Romanticism/Holism and Realism/Mechanism/Atomism. 41. R. A. Fisher said Mendel's results are "too good to be true." What does this mean? Give an example of this idea using several flips of a coin. 42. Identify: Nettie M. Stevens. 43. Give two of Weismann's reasons why characters acquired by the parents are not inherited by their offspring. 44. What is "nondisjunction" in cytogenetics? How does it illustrate the Malfunction Principle in science? 45. Discuss the history of DNA and its role in genetics. (Include a precise definition of DNA and tell what the 3 letters stand for.) 46. Identify: Trofim Lysenko. 47. Explain the result of the experiment that persuaded Morgan to accept the Mendelian theory of genetics (along with the Stevens theory of sex determination): "If a white-eyed male was mated with females from the first generation [offspring of a white-eyed male and red-eyed female] one found that 50% of the males and 50% of the females had white eyes. Assume that eye color in the fruit fly can be red (dominant) or white (recessive), and that the gene for eye color is located on the X chromosome. Thus a white-eyed male can be represented by the symbol X(w)Y, a red-eyed male by X(r)Y, a white-eyed female by X(w)X(w), and a red-eyed female by X(w)X(r) or X(r)X(r). Breeding a white-eyed male with a homozygous red-eyed female X(r)X(r) produced the following results:
The entire first generation is red-eyed, as was actually found by experiment, consistent with the assumption that the "normal" red-eyed female is homozygous. Show that breeding a white-eyed male with a female from the first generation gives sons, 50% of whom are white-eyed, and daughters, 50% of whom are white-eyed. 48. Describe the Avery-MacLeod-McCarty experiment and its significance in the history of genetics. 49. How did Erwin Schroedinger influence the development of modern biology? 50. Discuss the Creation-Evolution controversy in 20th-century America, and briefly compare it with the corresponding controversy in 19th-century Britain. 51. Identify: Rosalind Franklin. 52. Explain the statement: "The role of Fisher, Wright, and Haldane in demolishing earlier objections to Darwin's theory, may be compared with the role of Galileo in refuting the major objection to the Copernican system." 53. What is the "synthetic theory of evolution"? Identify 3 of the leaders in establishing it. 54. Identify: The Scopes Trial. 56. How did Henry Morris defend his view that the universe was created less than 10,000 years ago against the criticism that we can see stars whose light took millions of years to reach us, so they must have existed millions of years ago? 57. What was Karl Popper's role in the Creation-Evolution controversy? |