noun
definition
A change of position.
definition
An unfolding.
definition
Process of development.
Examples of evolution in a Sentence
The doctrine of evolution in its finished and definite form is a modern product.
Darwin's theory of evolution is based upon the idea of natural selection.
He played a conspicuous part in the modern doctrine of evolution.
As such, moreover, it is a much more limited theory of evolution than the ancient.
The man who breaks the law is himself a product of social evolution and cannot be regarded as solely responsible for his disposition to transgress.
The next great chapter in the history of against Italian evolution is the war of the burghs against the nobles, nobles.
But fuller conceptions of evolution raise further difficulties for intuitionalism in its wonted forms. Knowledge cannot be divided into the two components - immediate certainties, precarious inferences.
Yet on the whole Aristotle leans to a teleological theory of evolution, which he interprets dualistually by means of certain metaphysical distinctions.
Aristotle's teleological conception of organic evolution often approaches modern mechanical conceptions.
But besides the innumerable characters which are visible and measurable, there are probably thousands which we cannot measure or which have not been discovered, since every part of the organism enjoys its gradual and independent evolution.
One great change and only one since Kant's day has affected the outlook upon theistic problems - the increasing belief in evolution.
Aristotle is much nearer a conception of evolution than his master Plato.
The Christian apologist indeed may himself seek, following John Fiske, to philosophize evolution as a restatement of natural theology - " one God, one law, one element and one far-off divine event " - and as at least pointing towards personal immortality.
All this evolution is the necessary consequence of the determination of the ego by the non-ego.
Potassium and sodium readily dissolve in the anhydrous acid with evolution of hydrogen and formation of x.
Beginning in 1793 he boldly advocated evolution, and further elaborated five great principles--namely, the method of comparison of extinct and existing forms, the broad sequence of formations and succession of epochs, the correlation of geological horizons by means of fossils, the climatic or environmental changes as influencing the development of species, the inheritance of the bodily modifications caused by change of habit and habitat.
A few Isopoda are known from Secondary rocks, but their systematic position is doubtful and they throw no light on the evolution of the group. The Amphipoda are not definitely known to occur till Tertiary times.
Henceforth the evolution followed different lines.
In the study of the classics, as in other spheres, it was revolution rather than evolution that was loudly demanded.
Non-committal as regards evolution, he vastly broadened the field of vertebrate palaeontology by his descriptions of the extinct fauna of England, of South America (including especially the great edentates revealed by the voyage of the " Beagle "), of Australia (the ancient and modern marsupials) and of New Zealand (the great struthious birds).
This law of recapitulation, subsequently termed the " biogenetic law " by Ernest Haeckel, was the greatest philosophic contribution of this period, and proved to be not only one of the bulwarks of the evolution theory but one of the most important principles in the method of palaeontology.
A close study of the exact modes of evolution and of the philosophy of evolution is the distinguishing feature of this period.
This law, that in the stages of growth of individual development (ontogeny), an animal repeats the stages of its ancestral evolution (phylogeny) was, as we have stated, anticipated by d'Orbigny.
D'Orbigny, being a special creationist, failed to recognize the bearing of these individual stages on evolution.
This definitely directed evolution, or development in a few determinable directions, has since been termed " orthogenetic evolution," and is recognized by all workers in invertebrate palaeontology and phylogeny as fundamental because the facts of invertebrate palaeontology admit of no other interpretation.
New and unheard-of orders of amphibians, reptiles and mammals came to the surface of knowledge, revolutionizing thought, demonstrating the evolution theory, and solving some of the most important problems of descent.
In the face of the continuous series of characters and types revealed by palaeontology, the Linnaean terminology, the individual order of development and the ancestral order of evolution.
In tracing the phylogeny, or ancestral history of organs, palaeontology affords the only absolute criterion on the successive evolution of organs in time as well as of (progressive) evolution in form.
During the past century it was and even now is the very " will-o'-the-wisp " of evolution, always tending to lead the phylogenist astray.
It is one of the most striking cases known of the law of analagous evolution.
The ingenuity of nature, however, in adapting animals is not infinite, because the same devices are repeatedly employed by her to accomplish the same adaptive ends whether in fishes, reptiles, birds or mammals; thus she has repeated herself at least twenty-four times in the evolution of long-snouted rapacious swimming types of animals.
Step by step there have been established in palaeontology a number of laws relating to the evolution of the parts of animals which closely coincide with similar laws discovered by zoologists.
Independent evolution of parts is well shown among invertebrates, where the shell of an ammonite, for example, may change markedly in form without a corresponding change in suture, or vice versa.
Similarly, there is no correlation in the rate of evolution either of adjoining or of separated parts; the middle digit of the foot of the three-toed horse is accelerated in development, while the lateral digits on either side are retarded.
The first exponent of the theory of sudden appearance of new parts and new types, to our knowledge, was Geoffroy St Hilaire, who suggested saltatory evolution through the direct action of the environment on development, as explaining the abrupt transitions in the Mesozoic Crocodilia and the origin of the birds from the reptiles.
The essence of Waagen's law is orthogenesis, or evolution in a definite direction, and, if there does exist an internal hereditary principle controlling such orthogenetic evolution, there does not appear to be any essential contradiction between its gradual operation in the " mutations of Waagen " and its occasional hurried operation in the " mutations of de Vries," which are by their definition discontinuous or saltatory (Osborn, 1907).
A very important evolutionary principle is that in such secondary returns to primary phases lost organs are never recovered, but new organs are acquired; hence the force of Dollo's dictum that evolution is irreversible from the point of view of structure, while frequently reversible, or recurrent, in point of view of the conditions of environment and adaptation.
The polyphyletic law was early demonstrated among invertebrates by Neumayr (1889) when he showed that the ammonite genus Phylloceras follows not one but five distinct lines of evolution of unequal duration.
The brachiopods, generally classed collectively as Spirifer mucronatus, follow at least five distinct lines of evolution in the Middle Devonian of North America, while more than twenty divergent lines have been observed by Grabau among the species of the gastropod genus Fusus in Tertiary and recent times.
The requirements of an elongate body moving through the resistant medium of water are met by the evolution of similar entrant and exit curves, and the bodies of most swiftly moving aquatic animals evolve into forms resembling the hulls of modern sailing yachts (Bashford Dean).
Internal causes of extinction are to be found in exaggeration of body size, in the hypertrophy or over-specialization of certain organs, in the irreversibility of evolution, and possibly, although this has not been demonstrated, in a progressive reduction of variability.
The evolution of insect life in driving animals from feeding ranges and in the spread of disease probably has been a prime cause of extinction.
Great waves of extinction have followed the long periods of the slow evolution of relatively inadaptive types of tooth and foot structure, as first demonstrated by Waldemar Kowalevsky; thus mammals are repeatedly observed in a cul-de-sac of structure from which there is no escape in an adaptive direction.
Little proof is afforded among the mammals of extinction through arrested evolution or through the limiting of variation, although such laws undoubtedly exist.
We have shown that the direct observation of the origin of new characters in palaeontology brings them within that domain of natural law and order to which the evolution of the physical universe conforms. The nature of this law, which, upon the whole, appears to be purposive or teleological in its operations, is altogether a mystery which may or may not be illumined by future research.
In other words, the origin, or first appearance of new characters, which is the essence of evolution, is an orderly process so far as the vertebrate and invertebrate palaeontologist observes it.
In other words, a balance appears to be always sustained between the internal (hereditary and ontogenetic) and the external (environmental and selectional) factors of evolution.
Among American contributions to vertebrate palaeontology, 'the development of Cope's theories is to be found in the volumes of his collected essays, The Origin of the Fittest (New York, 1887), and The Primary Factors of Organic Evolution (Chicago, 1896).
In North Borneo we seem to see the evolution of a god in the three stages of the cult of the hawk among the Kenyahs, the Kayans and the sea Dyaks.
Bouillier (1813-1899), which makes life, or life and mind, the directive principle in evolution and growth, holding that all cannot be traced back to chemical and mechanical processes, but that there is a directive force which guides energy without altering its amount.