Topical Blog Week #6 (Due Wednesday)

Courtney Wiese
History and Systems of Psychology
Chapter 5
Topical Blog
Darwin and Psychology
Charles Darwin greatly impacted science and the theory of origin from the 19th century to today. Most know him for his theory of evolution, and his book On the Origin of Species. However, Darwin was much more than just an evolutionist. He was also a naturalist, a geologist, and a psychologist, to a degree. In fact, Darwin was so influential in psychology that some believe that when discussion psychology one should say whether the topic is “pre” or “post-Darwin”.
One of the ways he influenced psychology was through his idea that animals and humans actually have a lot in common, and a new area of psychology emerged. This is called comparative psychology, in which one studies animals in order to understand more about human behavior. By comparing differences and similarities between species, one can understand the evolutionary relationships, such as humans and primates. Psychologists began studying animals to learn more about different human actions and traits, including learning and emotions to name a few. Darwin believed that the traits that set humans apart from animals, such as having a higher intellect, could be explained in evolutionary terms. So, basically through evolution, and survival of the fittest, the human race has been separated from animals. The study of animals have helped psychologists more about human nature. Many experiments have been conducted on animals, and the outcome has been applied to human psychology. An example of this can be seen in Ivan Pavlov’s research on classical conditioning, in which his subject was a dog, but his findings can be applied to humans.
Another way Darwin influenced psychology was his research into individual differences. Instead of looking at large groups and examining averages, psychologists began studying individual differences more. This topic in psychology looks at how people are similar and how people are different, including how they think and feel, and the actions they take. An example of what psychologists looked at was what made some people more successful than other people. In general, psychologists have assumed a few things about their approach to individual differences. They assume that “people vary on a range of psychological attributes.” (Individual Difference) They also say that this differences can be measured and studied. Finally, these differences can be used to explain and predict behavior.
Darwin believed that nature chooses what traits to continue; survival of the fittest. Darwin believed that biology was the ultimate fate, and that the unfit would eventually disappear due to natural selection. Later psychologist would build on Darwin’s ideas of individual differences, such as Sir Francis Galton. Galton believed through Darwin’s theory that people could actually perfect the human race by eliminating the undesirables. In order for this time happen only the superior should procreate, while the unfit should not. This idea would be popularized in the 20th century in the United States and in Europe. The most well-known example is the mass genocide of Jews, homosexuals, and mentally and physically challenged individuals during World War II.

http://www.brainybehavior.com/blog/2008/02/darwins-role-in-psychology/ - This gave basic information on how Darwin influenced the field of psychology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_psychology – I chose this because I wanted additional information on comparative psychology.
http://wilderdom.com/personality/L1-1Introduction.html - I chose this website because it discussed in more detail about individual differences and psychology.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/darwin/nameof/page02.html – This website had additional information about Darwin’s influence on eugenics.

I decided to research more into Douglas Spalding and his experiments in imprinting and critical periods. This interested me because of a psychology class I took last year that talked about the critical period for humans to learn language, as discovered in trying to teach language to a few isolated adolescents, such as the famous "Genie" after being isolated from human contact and language. This relates to the chapter because Spalding's discoveries help show that there are certain things that animals instinctively know how to do without any prior experience. This supports the idea that animals have some innate traits and knowledge.

Spalding is noted as the founder of modern ethology. His interest in animal research stemmed from the tide of evolutionary theories sweeping academia in the 1860's. His experiments showed that there were certain time periods that newly hatched chicks will respond to their environments without any previous experiences. One way to do this was to put a little hood over the chicks' eyes just as they were hatching. After removing the blindfolds, the chicks would quickly peck at insects accurately as if they had been doing so all along. Also, in regards to sight, chicks instinctively follow the first moving thing they see after hatching. Thus, Spalding was able to make them follow him and other moving objects. When chicks were reared in isolation, they developed a certain fondness for the visual aspects of their environment, called imprinting. When they see a moving object with a similar pattern as the environment they are reared in, they respond socially to it.

Spalding also tested the instinctive hearing capacities of chicks by plugging their ears for the first few days. When he unplugged their ears within the first 7 or so days, they would respond to the call of the mother. If not removed within this period, the chicks would not recognize the call of the mother. The same happened if Spalding left the hoods on for too long; the chicks would not follow the first moving object they saw.

Another discovery was that the imprinting period can be extended by leaving the animal in isolation, delaying the and enlarging the amount of time the animal is sensitive to imprinting. Thus, an animal raised in a normal environment may have this period last from days 2-5, while an isolated animal may experience imprinting days 3-8. This is evident in dogs from research of J.P. Scott. Dogs have a heightened period of social imprinting between weeks 5-7, with a 2-14 week window that is less likely, but possible to form attachment. Dogs not exposed to humans during this time show very little attachment to humans. If the dog is isolated from other dogs, the same happens.

Understanding these phenomena led to the understanding of these critical periods, where animals and humans alike learn social and linguistic patterns from their environment. However, these studies also show that their are certain instinctive abilities animals and humans. Thus, the mental capacity of certain behaviors is innate, but requires nourishment and social interaction before the critical period window closes. Spalding's discoveries pioneered further research into how animals and humans respond to their environments socially.

http://core.ecu.edu/psyc/wuenschk/docs00/HTM-Lectures/CriticalPeriods.htm
This site gave further examples of imprinting and critical periods within different species, such as the dogs mentioned above.

http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Imprinting
This source talked about how animals respond to patterns in the environments they have become familiar with, such as within isolation.

http://www.brainybehavior.com/blog/2008/02/douglas-spaulding-and-ethology/
This talks about Spalding's experiments with chicks and how differently they responded when the independent variable changed, such as the amount of time elapsed.

When Charles Darwin set sail on the Beagle, he was very interested in geology. Charles Lyell had just written a new book about geology, and in it he addressed the issue of catastrophism, which was similar to creationism in saying that they both try to account for changes in nature and new scientific discoveries, while still holding God as the supreme designer. On the other hand, Lyell proposed a new thought, called uniformitarianism; this view says that change happens over a long period of time. As the textbook puts it, “The Swiss Alps were not thrust up overnight in some cataclysmic upheaval; they arose only gradually, over vast amounts of time…”

The catastrophic view was created to try and make sense of what the Bible says about the creation of the world, and also the increasing scientific we have of the world. Catastrophism says that a few brief, immense, and worldwide upheavals caused the earth to change and create mountains, valleys, and other features. By its definition, one cannot believe in catastrophism if one also believes in the account of creation in Genesis, where God created the earth in 6 days. (We do not know how God counts days, since he is not constricted to our humanly measure of time, but we are lead to assume that is was a short period of time.) When Charles Lyell was studying under William Buckland, Buckland stated that the most recent catastrophe that shaped the earth was Noah’s flood. Lyell did not agree with this, and started looking into another school of thought—uniformitarianism.

The uniformitarianism idea says that the earth changed very gradually, imperceptibly, over time. Little changes that built up over an extended period of time eventually led to mountains and other great structures of the earth; it was not one catastrophic (or a few) event that caused this change. A major event that catastrophists believe caused the greatest change was Noah’s Flood. Fossils are found, and it is debated whether the Flood caused that plant or animal to die, or if it was of natural causes and then was covered by layers of sediment over time. This also leads to the old earth vs. new earth argument. Is the earth only a few thousand years old? Or is it closer to being millions of years old? Does looking at fossils really give us a good estimate of the time that has passed?

Answers to these questions have yet to be found. We do know, however, that uniformitarianism and catastrophism are not polar opposites; it is indeed possible to believe in both simultaneously. I can believe that the earth evolves very gradually over time, but I can also believe that few catastrophic events also cause earthly change. However, as Lyell believed, things “evolve” over time that we cannot see before our eyes, because it takes so long to change.

http://www.indiana.edu/~geol105b/1425chap6.htm -- this site gave a very nice overview of the definitions (and therefore differences) of these two schools of thought.

http://www.oldearth.org/catastrophism.htm -- this site was very helpful in comparing and contrasting the two thoughts, and arguing for and against either one of them.

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/history_12 -- this site gave more of a historic view of how these two thoughts came into the mainstream.

Topical Blog: Charles Darwin

I found a lot of interesting information about Charles Darwin that did not include anything about his theory, but I still found it interesting. I actually think I found this information more interesting then what I read in the textbook. I found information that was more about Darwin's personal life than about his scientific discoveries. I found this and did not want to stop reading. Here is what I found:

Charles Darwin was born on February 12, in 1809, and he was named after his uncle Charles who had died a few years prior to his birth. He was also named after his father, Robert Darwin, by taking the name Robert as his middle name and something interesting, his family referred to him as “Bobby” growing up. He grew up in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, in England. His mother died when he was only eight years old. When he was young he played with his brother Erasmus. During 1822 he and his brother set up a Chemistry lab in their tool shed. During this time he learned the basic principles of scientific experimentation.

In June of 1825, Darwin’s father took him out of school due to his poor grades and “his having no direction in life.” Darwin was told that if he carried on this way he would end up being a “disgrace to himself and his family.” So during the summer he worked as an assistant in his father’s medical practice. This is where his father pushed him to pursue a medical career as he and his grandfather did before him; so hi was sent off to the University of Edinburgh, which is known for being one of the best medical schools in all of Europe. He joined his brother at should and lived together across from the university. Darwin did not like his medical studies, mainly because he found it boring, but also he feared the sight of blood. He did, however, take an interest in his chemistry lectures.

In August of 1831, Darwin was invited to be a naturalist about the H.M.S. eagle on its two year journey of South America. He immediately accepted the offer, even though his family was against the idea for fear of Darwin indulging in idle pursuits. It was not until his uncle Josiah wrote his father, that Darwin was even allowed to receiving his father’s blessing on the voyage. When Darwin arrived at the Beagle he was shocked at how small the ship was. It was 90feet by 24 feet at its widest point. He had to slouch in order to fit into the cabin he had to share with another. But he was a gentleman and signed on to the voyage so he did not dare back out now.

http://www.biography.com/people/charles-darwin-9266433
I chose this site because not only did it have a video but it had more information written underneath explaining more in depth about his life

http://www.aboutdarwin.com/
I chose this site because it looked fun and after reading through it a little found that it had good information.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/151902/Charles-Darwin
This site was chosen because it was a very intellectual site. It is the online encyclopedia and I felt like I would gather a lot of great information on Darwin this way.

1a) State what your topic is.
George Romanes

1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
The majority of this chapter discusses Darwin and his theory of evolution. George Romanes is later introduced to the chapter because he becomes interested in Darwin’s theory. Romanes wanted to explore the mental abilities that could be found in other species.

1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I found George Romanes interesting after reading about his arguments toward anthropomorphism. Anthropomorphism is defined “as the attribution of human faculties to nonhuman entities”. For example, Romanes argued that spiders have a “fondness” for music? I am interested in learning more about Romanes background as well.

George Romanes is an evolutionary biologist and physiologist. He is also known as the founder of comparative psychology. He believed there was a cognitive similarity between humans and animals. George Romanes is also known as creating the term Neo-Darwinism.

George Romanes was born on May 23, 1848 in Kingston, Canada. Romanes had four siblings, three brothers and one sister. When George was young, his father received a huge inheritance which allowed him to support his family. His parents decided it would be a good idea to move after the inheritance. The family moved across the Atlantic to London and didn’t return to Canada. George and his siblings were raised in a “care-free” environment. There was no pusher of high expectations in the Romanes household. However, they were extremely religious. Romanes attended school in London, but had to be home schooled after an attack of the muscles. Around George’s seventeen birthday, his mother realized George was “nearly” grown up and wasn’t ready for college. Romanes had little education and his parents sent him get tutored to prepare for college.

Romanes had thoughts on following his father’s footsteps into ministry. In 1867 Romanes entered Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Romanes quickly decided ministry wasn’t what he wanted to do. Romanes decided to study medicine and physiology instead. Even though Romanes was sent to be tutored before entering college, he was still known as being “half-educated”. However in 1871, Romanes still graduated with his BA.

While attending college at Cambridge, Romanes was introduced to Charles Darwin. Romanes quickly became interested in Darwin’s theory. Darwin and Romanes become great friends. Romanes decided to dedicate himself to science. He started collecting his own data and also used Darwin’s data on his theory as well. Romanes becomes interested in mental skills that could be found in species. During this time Romanes also started to question religion. He begins to argue natural theology. Romanes views on religion later changes and he quotes, “Do our hearts require a God”?

After Charles Darwin passed away, Romanes published his book “Animal Intelligence”. Romanes was the first scientist in the field of animal psychology. Animal psychology was based on their extreme actions, motivations, and feelings. This was the first time animals and humans were compared. Romanes wanted to proof animals were not “machines” and could show intelligence. Romanes used Anecdotal evidence to help support his theory. Anecdotal evidence is defined as “the use of observational reports about animal behavior”. Romanes also created a “mental ladder” which showed the animals degree of mental functioning. Later Romanes wanted to prove animals had humanlike qualities, which is defined as anthropomorphism. Romanes was mostly impressed with dogs. He believed they were skilled in recognizing certain information.

http://www.christendomreview.com/Volume002Issue002/signs_of_grace_001.html
I choose this website because it provided information on his childhood and religious views.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Romanes
I choose this website because it provided information on his college years and relationship with Charles Darwin.

http://faculty.frostburg.edu/mbradley/psyography/romanes.html
I choose this website because it provided information on Romanes accomplishments and theories.

1. A topic that I would like to know more about is Twin Studies and the effect environment has to anyone’s ability to do certain tasks. This relates to chapter five because of the section of Francis Galton and how he emphasized on genetics playing a major factor in everyone’s ability. I wanted to know more about this topic because he only stated that genes are what determines if someone is intelligent or will have the push to be successful in life, but I disagree with this. I am a twin that lived with my twin for 17 years and we were similar, after we moved away from each other our attitudes and views on everything became very different. In this scenario it proves to me that environment does have a factor in shaping one’s attitudes and their abilities. I am in no way stating that genetics play no factor in attitude, abilities or anything else, I think it is more a balance of nature and nurture but the environment should be allocated for.

2. In the first article that I read, it was not the debate of nature vs. nurture, but it was more that they both play into effect together. For example genetics that people are born with can have a factor how they react to certain surroundings. Some environments might make some people calm and might make some people obey than other environments. On the other hand, the same environment can make others angry and disobedient towards rules. It all is from the genetics, but genetics do not play 100% of a factor to determine what one’s attitude is going to be. The environment also has to take in effect and how the person is raised. This is a great example of how I viewed the topic when it was brought up by Galton. Genetics do have a factor in determining behavior, but it is not the only factor and just because two intelligent people produce an offspring does not mean that it is going to be a genius, it also needs to grow up in an environment that it suitable for the offspring to be a genius.
The second article I read was about twin studies. There was one article that stated that 100% was from genetics, but one experiment does not make the theory true. In the study that I read, it was about two girls. Even though these twins were living in the same area, they had different personalities. They had the exact same DNA but personalities were different do to the crowds of people they hang out with and the situations that they are in. Although they learn different attitudes the same with the same speed, they are different because of how they are nurtured, which states both nature and nurture plays a role into forming their different attitudes. This explained a lot because it states that the same home and all other controls can be the same, but one difference in the nurture of an offspring can set off attitudes and differences in them. This is a good example that there is going to be some factors that genetics are going to provide a lot of material in determining the attitudes of someone, but in other cases there is a relation where the environment also plays into effect.
The next article that I read was a study done with criminal behavior between two sets of twins. One set were identical and the other set was not, but they lived in the same environment. Twins that were identical showed more of the same behavior towards crime than compared to the non-identical twins, but they were not exactly the same. This states more evidence that genetics do play a factor in behavior, but at the same time it is not the only factor. If it were the only factor then the identical twins would show more similarities than 50%. I thought this study was efficient in comparing the genes also, by adding in the fraternal twins it allowed the experimenter to compare the amount of the behavior the genes of the twins allocated for. It is also shocking that it was only 25% more similar than the fraternal twins, so genes do play a factor but in this case not a huge factor. I think that the debate between nature and nurture still has a lot more information and experimenting, but overall both genetics and environment play a factor in determining the behavior in everyone. If Galton were to give some credit to environment playing a factor, or the fact that parents that are already well off give the children better environments to succeed in, then it would not have upset me as much as it did. I do believe genes help shape who we are, but environment also tweaks the genetics and combines with it to create the final behavior.

3. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323527004579079132234671374.html
I chose this article because it not only brought up the debate of nature vs. nurture, but it showed how they can tie in together and both have an effect on the offspring. The part that brought my main interest to the article was that it was not one sided and was stating that they both play into effect.
http://brainworldmagazine.com/who-are-we/
I chose this article because it was based off of Twin Studies. It showed that not all of the studies are going to have the same results, some have two twins that are separated and still act the same, some have two twins separated and act different, but this one showed two twins living together that act totally different. It showed that there is a correlation of both nature and nurture, but it also showed that not every experiment is going to have the same results because there are going to be factors that are going to throw results off.
http://www.udel.edu/chem/C465/senior/fall00/GeneticTesting/enviro.htm
I liked this article because it had to do with Twin Studies and Nature and Nurture, but it compared two sets of twins. I liked that because it allowed me to see how much of the information that we know actually comes from genetics and how much is allocated towards environment. People that live in the same environment might already have similarities, that is why they need to be put into observation along with the twins being studied which is what this experiment was intended to do.

1a) State what your topic is.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.

The topic that will be discussed is Francis Galton. Francis Galton relates to this chapter because he is discussed in the chapter regarding this idea of individual differences. As well as individual differences in twin studies. I am interested in Francis Galton because I find individual differences fascinating. Its interesting to me to know more about twins and how environment and biology effect individual differences. I also believe that biology isn’t the only variable that effects individual differences, and that our environment has a lot to do with our differences as well.

2) Next, we would like you to take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it, and then write about the topic in a knowledgeable manner. By integrating/synthesizing we mean taking what your read/experienced from the internet search organize the information into the main themes, issues, info, examples, etc. about your topic and then write about the topic in your own words using the information you have about the topic.
Francis Galton was the first person to actually study the idea of individual differences. After his cousin, Charles Darwin, proposed his ideas in his book Origins in Species Galton decided to explore into the world of individual differences among species. What sparked Galton’s interest in individual differences was his desires for mathematics and measurement. This led to his studies with geography and meteorology. Galton had several discovers in the field of geography and meteorology. Galton’s first ever weather map appeared in the Times in 1875.
Galton’s interests in individual differences were guided by his interest in mental abilities of people. He developed the idea for mental tests so he could study the individual differences of people. Because of Galton’s interests in the idea of individual differences he wrote a book, Hereditary Genius. This book concluded Galton’s theory that mental abilities are inherited.
Galton’s mental tests on individual differences lead to his ideas on statistical measurements of mental ability. He found that on average there is a normal curve of human differences. Meaning that the normal curve is a good demonstration of the mean and standard deviation, which can explain the differences in mental abilities.
Later on Galton became known for his ideas with Eugenics. Eugenics referred to the idea of hereditary improvement. He became interested in this idea after he got interested in nature versus nurture. Eugenics became profound in the way Galton started thinking in regards to his theories of differences in hereditability. This then led to Galton’s laboratory and several studies associated with hereditary differences.

3) At the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.

http://www.psych.utah.edu/gordon/Classes/Psy4905Docs/PsychHistory/Cards/Galton.html
This site gave me a lot of useful information that I could relate to Francis Galton.

http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/galton.htm
This website gave me good ideas about what to discuss when it came to Galton and his work. It gave a lot of good information and was easy to follow.

http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Galton/wozniak.htm
I chose this site because it touched on a lot of different information in regards to Galton and his work. It helped me understand Galton’s work and the different theories he had.

1a) 1b) 1c) My topic is Francis Galton. The textbook talks about his work in fingerprints as well as his work with intelligence in chapter 5. I am interested in this topic because I think the whole subject of eugenics is interesting and I have never heard of Francis Galton before reading this chapter.
2) Francis Galton was born into a wealthy and influential family in 1822 near Birmingham. Many people believe Galton was a child prodigy as he was able to read, write, and comprehend complex information from a very young age. He attended several prestigious schools including King Edward’s School and Birmingham General Hospital and graduated at age 16. He was a successful geographer and wrote several books about the subject as well as traveling extensively. He also made contributions to the fields of biology, criminology, meteorology, and statistics. By all accounts he was very successful.
When Galton’s cousin Charles Darwin published “The Origin of Species” Galton became entranced with the work. He based his work on eugenics off of Darwin’s work. He first published “Hereditary Genius” in 1869. This book described his work researching how many prominent and intelligent relatives someone who was prominent and intelligent had. He believed that a man who was smart would have more smart relatives than a man who was not smart. Next he started work with twins to prove that environment of a person had less to do with his or her intelligence than their genetics.
In 1883, Galton invented the term “eugenics.” He described two types of eugenics, positive eugenics and negative eugenics. Positive eugenics is the belief that selective breeding between two people from affluential and intelligent families would produce talented and intelligent offspring. Negative eugenics is the belief that people who are unintelligent or not as intelligent would produce “undesirables” instead of healthy and intelligent children. The belief in negative eugenics was much more popular and caught on more quickly than the belief in positive eugenics.
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/galton.htm I chose this website because it has an .edu ending meaning that it was from an educational website. It provided information about Galton’s work professionally.
http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/spring02/holland/Galton.htm This website focused on Eugenics, so it only spoke briefly about Galton. It talked about positive eugenics and negative eugenics.
http://campus.udayton.edu/~hume/Eugenics/eugenics.htm This website spoke in depth about Galton’s background and his discoveries in Eugenics as well as his educational background.

1a) State what your topic is.
Douglas Spalding
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
Spalding and some of his theories of ethology were briefly discussed in the chapter.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I was originally interested in Spalding because he was briefly talked about in the chapter but he was important enough to at least mention. His studies on instinct and imprinting were also what interested me.
2) Douglas Spalding was an English biologist, he also carried out some amazing experiments on instinctive animal behavior, also known as ethology, and discovered the phenomenon now known as imprinting. He was far ahead of many others in the field in his acknowledgment of the importance of interaction between learning and instinct in determining behavior. Another area of animal behavior Spalding studied was imprinting. Imprinting is a kind of phase-sensitive learning or learning happening at a particular age or a particular life stage that is fast and apparently independent of the consequences of behavior. I found this and the critical phase interesting when I learned more about how Spalding was able to get baby chicks to follow him around soon after they were born. In his later travels to Avignon, Spalding met John Stuart Mill and through Mill he came to know Lord and Lady Amberley. The Amberleys eventually hired Spalding as a tutor to their oldest child, and he remained with the family until 1876 when Lord Amberley died. While Spalding was an a very interesting man he died when he was still a young man, he died of tuberculosis.

3)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Spalding
This site was helpful in getting a sold background on Spalding and some of his work. It gave a little more than the book.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprinting_(psychology)
This elaborated more on his research with animals and different methods of imprinting.
http://www.brynmawr.edu/psychology/rwozniak/roots.html
This site told me more about Spalding’s relationship with the Amberleys and their sons who would later be contributors in the field of animal behaviors as well.

I decided to look more into what occurred during the voyage of the Beagle, as well as the impact his findings had that resulted from it. This relates to the chapter as we looked primarily at the life of Charles Darwin and his contributions to various fields but were limited to a single chapter. We briefly touched on the voyage of the Beagle and I wanted to know more.

Charles Darwin is one of the most important people in history. His contributions to the academic field are wide spread, but he is most accredited for his theory of evolution. He claimed the voyage of the Beadle to be the most important event in his life by far, as it was where he initially found patterns in his research, which made him eventually come to the conclusion of natural selection and evolution. The journey met problem after problem, the first of which being Darwin’s ever present nausea aboard the ship. Darwin initially planned on meeting with Henslow (Darwin’s mentor of sorts) but could not do so because of a cholera outbreak in England. At a point they also ran out of fresh water, almost sank the ship, and unsuccessfully tried to bring religion to the natives of Tierra del Fuego. Despite these hardships, Darwin still viewed it as an amazing journey. On the Galapagos Islands, he found that there were a variety of finches, very similar to one another, native to islands near one another. I don’t need to go in depth on what he found, as it is a story known to everyone by this point. His findings weren’t exclusive to finches, nor were they even exclusive to animals. He provided the accepted theory on the formation of coral reefs during that voyage. He was conducting his studies on the Galapagos Islands, which were formed by volcanoes, which he contributed in the explanation of, and also laid the groundwork for the theory of plate tectonics. On top of these geological findings, the fossils he discovered proved as a sizeable contribution to paleontology and his theory of evolution he formulated because of the voyage is obviously his greatest contribution to science and everything. One part of his journey that I feel must be touched on is Harriet. Harriet was a juvenile Galapagos tortoise that Darwin took as a pet. He took many other turtles as well, but they were to feed the crew of the ship. He took Harriet, originally named Harry as she was thought to be a boy, back to England with him aboard the Beagle. He found caring for her to be too much and she was taken to a zoo in Australia. She lived a simple life and was said to be very good-natured. She greatly outlived her owner and passed away 7 short years ago on June 23, 2006.

http://www.sparknotes.com/biography/darwin/section7.rhtml
I used this link to summarize the book ‘Voyage of the Beagle’, to see what the details were about the voyage in general.
http://darwin200.christs.cam.ac.uk/pages/index.php?page_id=c3
I used this link to get a feel for the contributions that Darwin made that came from the voyage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_(tortoise)
I used this link to read all about Darwin’s tortoise.

1a) My topic is natural selection by Darwin.
1b)This topic is discussed in this chapter because of Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution.
1c) I am interested in natural selection because Darwin is interesting and I want to find out more thorough information about natural selection.
Darwin’s process of natural selection has four components to it. These four components include variation, inheritance, high rate of population growth, and differential survival and reproduction. In order for natural selection to happen on a trait, the trait must possess heritable variation and must confer an advantage in the competition for resources. An example that Darwin used was finches. These finches live in a hard environment to live in. The finches that are able to eat cactus get more food which means they are in a better condition to mate. In a lot of examples of natural selection we will see that nature selects the best adapted varieties to survive and reproduce in a specific environment. With the finch example Darwin believed that the environment wasn’t producing variation but that the variation already existed and nature selected the best beak shape for the finch to be able to survive in that specific environment. Natural selection was around before Charles Darwin brought it up, he just wanted to add something new to it. The one thing that I remember from learning about natural selection now and in the past is that it is to enable a species to compete better in the wild than another species.

http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/selection/selection.html
This website was helpful to see that Darwin wasn’t the first one to come up with natural selection and that it has been around a lot longer than what I thought it has. It also had a lot of information in detail especially about the four components of natural selection.
http://anthro.palomar.edu/evolve/evolve_2.htm
This website gave some background information about Darwin and it also touched on natural selection it mostly discussed the Galapagos finches and he explained natural selection using them.
http://www.darwins-theory-of-evolution.com/
This website only had a short paragraph about natural selection but it had helpful information.

1a) My topic is taking a closer look at Darwin’s theory of natural selection.

1b) The topic relates to the chapter for this week on basically all levels. The whole chapter had ties to Darwin and his theory.

1c) I wanted to look more closely at this topic because like I said for Mondays post, I was raised in a conservative home where the information discussed on Darwin usually compared his theory to creation as a way to explain how we got here etc. I would really like to find information that simply states what he found, why he looked for it, and what applications it has to modern psychology and science.

2) I was interested to find out that the theory of evolution was actually developed long before Darwin had anything to do with research or making the discoveries he did on the Galapagos Island. It is interesting also, that the reason the theory hadn’t gained popularity was because the government during this time saw it as a threat to the leadership. Basically the ideas were radically different than what conservative Europe had been accustomed to previously. I’m sure it was difficult at times for him to continue researching and pushing forward with his ideas on natural selection and the theory of evolution despite resistance from the generally accepted view of the origin of humans.

In his journey on the Beagle, Darwin had to survive, a five-year voyage. This guy had a creative personality and a sense of adventure to be okay with taking on such an event as this. Not too many people would give up five plus years to record information on a topic that was as unpopular as evolution was during his day. His determination gained him high regards as a researcher throughout the scientific community. Fast-forward to the 21st century and his theory of natural selection finds itself in every science textbook from early education to the colligate level. This is a testament to the drive that this man had to making his discoveries know to the world. Whether you agree with the theory of evolution of not, everyone can agree on the determination that Darwin embraced as he logged thousands of miles on land, and sea as well as the countless hours conducting his research and collecting samples.

This theory of natural selection is the process by which species evolve over time, the thought that Darwin had on the idea was that the strongest species and those that were able to adapt best to their environments, were the ones that were the most likely to survive and thus the most likely to have offspring that shared similar genetics to their ancestors. This idea makes sense considering that we have observed in this in multiple studies covering many different types of animals. The fact that certain characteristics make specific members within a species more likely to survive natural changes in the environment such as draught, famine, a shift in the eco system etc. seem to back Darwin’s idea of natural selection. However, after researching this topic for myself without bias input from anyone, I just don’t see how it explains molecular change on a major scale such as completely changing from one type of species to another. While I think Darwin had good thoughts that may contribute the changes we observe in species on a micro level, I think it is hard to write off history with the idea of natural selection on a macro level. It was still an interesting topic to study and I don’t regret find information on Darwin and his ideas on my own. I also don’t see how so many conservative groups get offended at even the idea of researching what he had to say. He was an intelligent individual and definitely made important contributions to the scientific community regardless of individual beliefs.

3)

http://anthro.palomar.edu/evolve/evolve_2.htm

I used this website because of its outlook on why Darwin was the one to push evolution to the popular standing that it has today. They just had some interesting ideas of why it took so long to have the theory gain popularity.

http://bioweb.cs.earlham.edu/9-12/evolution/HTML/theory.html

This website provide a detailed report of the journey he made during the time that he collected most of his data that he used in forming the theory of natural selection. It provide a unique way of looking at the difficulty of the journey Darwin made, and the motivation it would have taken to complete such an adventure.

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evo_25

This article explained the process of natural selection in very methodical way that made a lot of sense. It took you step by step through the whole concept in a very clear fashion that made it easy to talk about within this blog post.

1a) I am doing my topical blog on eugenics and what can be considered modern eugenics by way of the human genome project and it’s implications

1b) Francis Galton is the father of eugenics and all the subsequent movements western nations like France, Great Britain, the US, and most notably Germany.

1c) I briefly stated in my reading assignment that I used to work with the general public. I actually worked at a pool where 90% of our clientele were children. This was in a community of less than 3,000 people so everyone knew just about everything about everyone. I was blessed with the opportunity to observe children’s behaviors and interactions for 8 hours a day. Since this was such a small community not only did I get to know the children fairly well, but typically I knew their parents too. I made the connection that the less intelligent the parent was the less intelligence their offspring were as well. I also saw some very poor parenting skills, often coming from less intelligent parents. My boss and I would joke and implementing a license to breed to prevent some of the subpar parenting styles or even the procreation of their idiocy. I also read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World about a year ago and absolutely loved it.

2) Eugenics is the theory of replacing undesirable genes with desirable ones, originally through artificial selection. Humans already do this with domesticated animals. We breed cattle to yield more meat, chickens to lay more eggs, or dogs to be certain sizes, colors, or shapes. The initial eugenics movements would involve doing this to humans, primarily focusing on breeding for intelligence. Even before Francis Galton coined the term eugenics it was already being performed in southern United States. There are cases where plantation owners would breed his strongest males with the strongest females so their offspring would be strong and capable of more work. This type of breeding was more like female victimized rape. Eugenics caught fire throughout Western Europe and the US after Galton. Many universities created eugenics classes and fields of study. Nations including the US, France, Great Britain, and Germany adopted eugenic political policies. The policies varied but would include the identifying of individuals and their families for sensory ailments (genetic related blindness or deafness), mental illness, or others traits (race, sexual orientation). This was most notably done by Germany when Adolph Hitler set out to exterminate the Jewish population as the beginning of the “Aryan” race. Eugenics was starting to lose popularity prior to the Holocaust and Hitler put the last nail in its coffin. But prior to the Holocaust those with undesirable traits were segregated or institutionalized. Those that were institutionalized were frequently sterilized or euthanized, and women impregnated by with these undesirable traits would be required by law to have abortions. Preceding Hitler and the Jewish genocide of Germany and Poland most nations repealed their eugenic policies deeming them inhumane. Though many consider modern eugenics is dead, this blond haired, blue-eyed writer says it just has a new face.
The Human Genome Project (HGP) started in 1990 and was completed in 2003. The HGP was the first and successful attempt to map a small number of human’s genetic code. Some uses for mapping out the humane genome is to determine how genetically similar we are to other organisms and possibly trace links back through evolutionary history. The most applicable use for genetic mapping is to predict, treat, and potentially cure genetically related diseases. Starting to sound a bit like eugenics right? Currently we are honing in on the ability to predict and screen for certain genetic related diseases like Alzheimer’s, cystic fibrosis, and some cancers. As genetic mapping becomes more common and affordable we could screen for genes as frivolous as male-pattern baldness. The true goal is not only to discover and screen these genes but to manipulate them. Being able to alter our genetic predisposition could be the best form of future preventative medical care. This is somewhat already happening with procedures like preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). Couples concerned with early genetic disorders like Downs Syndrome can turn to PGD to produce a nearly flawless embryo. PGD clinics create the embryo with the couple’s genetic material and alter it to ensure a perfect embryo. It is then implanted in the female for the remainder of gestation. Maybe in the future we will be able to manipulate the genes of humans of at all stages of life, but how far car it go? We will start with ridding ourselves of health hindering genes, but again as genetic mapping, and presumably genetic altering, becomes more affordable we could cross unethical lines. We could alter our genetics to look or not look certain ways. The higher classes could separate themselves from lower classes by being able to afford genetic alterations, thus making them healthier, smarter, and stronger. This could lead to a greater disparity between social classes. These are just a few ideas on how genetic mapping could positively and adversely affect our society and species.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics
I combined this source, the book, and other facts I have recalled from past sources to come up with the paragraph on traditional eugenics. It contained a lot of fun facts like the eugenic policies, countries involved, and how eugenics fizzled out. It also had some of the ethical concerns of traditional eugenics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preimplantation_genetic_diagnosis
This source was about PGD. It went into great detail, most of which was sifted through to find the important stuff. However, it was a great example of how genetics are already being altered at one stage of human development.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Genome_Project#Findings
The Human Genome Project is the leader in genetic mapping and this source was more comprehensive and less biased than others. Other sources just discussed how genetic mapping can be used to identify and possibly alter undesirable genes, but this source addressed some of the ethical concerns.

Anthropomorphism
I choose to research more on this topic because I think that this topic is relevant in society today. Between dressing your dog up for Halloween or some people I know have even taken their pet to get their nails done this topic has interested me greatly, and sadly I know I will be that person when I own a dog one day, I will be spoiling it like crazy. This subject was brought up in the section about George Romanes and the Anecdotal Method of the chapter. Darwin apparently considered Romane to be his protégé and gave some of his notes on animals to Romane. This topic is significant in the chapter because Romane’s book Animal Intelligence included stories by others and tended toward anthropomorphism (the attribution of human faculties to nonhuman identities). He had argued various things such as spiders have a fondness for music and that birds show sympathy and conjugal fidelity. A lot of what Romane researched was eventually given a second look by C.Llyod Morgan, who did not quite agree with his ideals.

Anthropormorphism dates way back to Paleolithic art from 40,000 years ago when they included characteristically human features on their drawings of animals. However, Greek philosopher Xenophanes described the similarity between religious believers and their gods coined this term anthropormorphism. People today, are in the midst of anthropomorphism whether it be naming their car or praying to an invisible God.

There has been a good deal of research that is currently still going on to this day about anthropormorphism. Specifically, cognitive and social psychologists have researched and discovered some findings. We tend to be anthropomorphize more with things that are familiar to us- such as seeing a face. Also, natural human tendency is thought to be the result of a perceptual system designed to find order in this complex world.

Psychologists have found that there are different things that motivate us to anthropomorphize with objects when one is lacking social interaction with others may cause people to seek connections with nonhumans. Neuroscience has even shown that similar brain regions are involved when we think about the behavior of both humans and nonhuman entities. This may be suggesting that anthropomorphism may be using similar processes as those used for thinking about other people. However do we have anthropomorphism with every object? It has been mentioned that only with things we are familiar with.

All three of the readings I read, brought up the opposite of anthropomorphism which is dehumanization-when humans are represented as nonhuman objects or animals. This has unfortunately brought a lot of terrible things to happen such as during WW2 people would be describing Jewish people as worms and the Hutus described the Tutsi as cockroaches. Social psychology suggests that people are more likely to dehumanize their out-group members. These examples also suggest that dehumanization is not usually caused by one person but by part of a cohesive group acting against outsiders and therefore individuals that feel socially connected increases their tendency for dehumanization. Social interaction has its benefits for people however it may bring unfortunate consequences for intergroup relations by enabling dehumanization.

Today there are laws that have been passed or considered due to anthropomorphism. In 2008, California passed a law for animals to be put in less restrictive confines. Environmental legislation in Ecuador, Switzerland, and Pennsylvania granted legal rights to natural entities such as plants and rivers because of anthropomorphism. Also, even in some states, women have to look at an ultrasound image of their fetus before having their abortion to cause them to have a bias against going through with the abortion. It is amazing how many different places and people have been affected by anthropormorphism and may not even know it. I think this will be a topic that is continually looked into more and more as time goes on.

http://psychcentral.com/news/2010/03/01/why-do-we-anthropomorphize/11766.html
I choose this website because it gave me a good concept of what anthropomorphism is and how it has been researched by neuroscientists and they bring up the reverse of anthropomorphism-dehumanization and talk about WW2.
http://crl.ucsd.edu/~ahorowit/Encyclopedia-anthrop.pdf
I enjoyed this site because it gave me a lot of information on the history of anthropomorphism and all of how research has proven and disproven it in certain ways.
http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/nicholas.epley/waytzepleycacioppocdips.pdf
I liked this site because it talked a lot about why anthropomorphism matters and how it is affecting people today and explains the motivation behind it.

Posted for A.H.

1) State what your topic is.
I chose to learn more about Darwin’s burial in Westminster Abbey. Darwin was criticized by the church for his various theories on evolution in animals/humans and emotions. I thought it was interesting that despite all the controversial theories we learned about in this chapter, he was still allowed to be buried among other popular scientists.

2) Despite being an agnostic and his controversial theories on evolution, Charles Darwin was buried in Westminster Abbey in London, England. Darwin passed away on April 19, 1882 at his home in Down. Darwin’s daughter, Henrietta, was by his side through his last moments alive. She would later deny rumors of her father’s “deathbed conversion.” The day after Darwin’s death, the newspapers spread the information throughout the world. Plans were made to bury Darwin in the family tomb in Down next to his brother, Erasmus. Word quickly spread of the family’s idea and many people stepped forward to take charge of a more suitable burial. One person who received a telegram of the news was George Granville Bradley, Dean of Westminster. The telegram stated, “…it would be acceptable to a very large number of our fellow-countrymen of all classes and opinions that our illustrious countryman, Mr. Darwin, should be buried in Westminster Abbey.” Bradley quickly responded, “…my assent would cheerfully be given.” Another person who quickly went to work on Darwin’s new burial plan was a childhood friend and neighbor, Sir John Lubbock. Being a member in Parliament, Lubbock quickly gained signatures on a petition in the House of Commons. He successfully acquired twenty-eight signatures of men whom believed Darwin should be buried in the Abbey. A week following Darwin’s death, he was laid to rest in the “Scientist’s Corner” of Westminster Abbey. Rev. Charles Pritchard believed Darwin should be laid to rest where “thousands could pay their respects.” Contrary to popular belief, Darwin was not buried next to Sir Isaac Newton, although he was only a few feet from him. Darwin was actually buried next to the famous astronomer, Sir John Herschel.

3) http://www.westminster-abbey.org/our-history/people/charles-darwin
This website was helpful in giving more in depth information about Darwin. I liked it because it came straight from the source: Westminster Abbey.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/static-legacy/ngm/0411/feature1/
I liked that this article was short and to the point of what I wanted to look for. It was helpful in giving me the important details of Darwin’s death.
http://www.creationmoments.com/content/demise-charles-darwin
This site was also helpful in finding more information on Darwin. There was some information included on this page that I didn’t see on the others.

1a) State what your topic is.
Francis Galton

1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
In this chapter, Charles Darwin suggested that all human development was the result of adaptation to the environment. Darwin suggested this, but had many false starts in the beginning. Darwin finally collected evidence that led to important contributions to both geology and zoology. He collected the data that would prove the theory of evolution. The theory proposed that individual members of every species vary from each other and that some variations are more favorable in the struggle for existence than others, enabling the organism to adapt to the environment. This was natural selection for those that survive. Francis Galton comes into play when he studies human intelligence and he believed that personality is composed of nature and nurture, not either or.

1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
Galton interests me because of the combination of both nature and nurture. But he did believe that traits were passed down just as Darwin did and the irony of that was that he was one of his distant relatives. I am always intrigued for the ideas of all of the psychologists or scientist I have read about because I want to get inside their brain, but it seems impossible. I want to know what made them think how they were thinking and how groundbreaking these theories and research have met for my generation.

2) Take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it
Galton was born in Birmingham, England into a wealthy family. He was a child prodigy that was able to read at the age of two. He studied medicine and then math at Cambridge. His father dying stop his studies for a span and Galton had a mental break down.

Galton was the first person to identify nature and nurture as two separate influences whose effects could be measure and compared. He believed that these two elements were responsible for determining personality. HE used his own family tree in 1869, as well as those of judges, statesmen, commanders, and etc. As he predicted, he found that more talented individuals in certain families than among the general population. Galton is the reason why there are surveys since he was the first to send them out for his research on nature and nurture. In 1875 he did a study on twins and e found that they did not follow the normal distribution of similarity between siblings. They were very similar, but at times were extremely dissimilar. Galton's nature vs nurture is still relevant 100-plus years late and everyone agrees that nature and nurture are both crucially important in human development.

http://www.biography.com/people/francis-galton-9305647#synopsis
This website gave me information on Galton's early life and some of family tree (Darwin). It also explained his accomplishments and final years.

http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/galton.htm
This website gave me information about some of his theories and how he researched his theories with questionnaires. It also discussed some of his other theories like human intelligence.

http://experimental-origins.weebly.com/nature-vs-nurture.html
This website was about Galton's nature vs nurture theory explaining that he found that it was necessary to have both and that there is no concrete evidence on the topic.

Twin studies:
This topic relates to the chapter with how people evolve. This chapter was a lot about how people are changing and how people different. And a way to study this is through twin studies and through twin studies we can find out more about how people are similar and different. I found this topic to be interesting because I really wanted to find out how twin studies have changed and what is going on today with twin studies.
When going through research one of the things that stuck out to me was the Francis Galton did not realize that there was a difference between identical and fraternal twins. In 1905, Edward Thorndike also conducted a twin study using 50 pairs of twins. He also did not know that twins are different like Galton. After conducting his study he came to the conclusion that there is one type of twin, not two, and this same study was copied by Ronald Fisher and he too made the same mistake.
Researchers have used twins for many different kinds of studies through the years, and some of the studies that twins have been used for are traits, intelligences, alcohol and drug abuse, and psychological conditions like schizophrenia. The original study of twins is the “classical twin study”. This is studying twins that grew up in the same family environment. This study is used with both identical and fraternal twins. The question that comes up is what is more of an influence genes or the environment the children grow up in? This type of study is also to see how similar a certain trait is. Twin studies are ever changing and are not the same as early twin studies. Twin studies have been as some would say improved. Now twin studies include others besides the focus being solely on the twin. They also study the family, and other people the twins might have a relationship with.
One of the things I found interesting through my research was under the topic of equal environments. It is assumed with twins both fraternal and identical that they experience the same environment. From some research it is seen sometimes that identical twins are treated differently than fraternal twins from other peers and leaders.
Twins studies are being conducted right now and research is still being done. At Florida State University a twin registry was set up in 2002 by Dr. Taylor. Twins over the age of 18 were being enrolled to the university. This study that was being conducted wanted to look at environmental factors as well as genetics. Through Dr. Taylors work he has received grants that have expanded his research. He was able to shit his research to twins of elementary age. Currently at the University of Minnesota, they have the Minnesota Center for Twin and Family Research. This center is one of the largest research centers in the whole U.S. and its focus is on twin research. What I found interesting about this is that they focus on twins that are from the state of Minnesota. The question that comes to mind is this on purpose? Is there a reason that they only accept twins from within the state? That is something I would like the answers to and did not find in my research.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_study
I found this site to be useful when looking at the beginning of Twin Studies.
http://www.apa.org/monitor/apr04/second.aspx
I found this site to be great for what is being done in current research and how it is conducted.
http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~taylorlab/TwinRsch.htm
I found this site to be helpful in finding out what is actually going on today.
https://mctfr.psych.umn.edu/aboutus/index.html
I found this site to be useful in that it gave a more in-depth look at the current study in Minnesota.

1a) This week I’m doing a bit more research on Charles Darwin and his life. 

1b) This entire chapter was dedicated to Darwin and evolutionary thinking.

1c) We always hear about Darwin in classes but never go too far in depth. After reading this chapter it opened my eyes to all of the things he accomplished throughout his life. I’m especially interested in the nature versus nurture debate which some of his theories get into.

2)
Charles Darwin was born in the year 1809 in England. He came from a very wealthy family with five other siblings. His father was a doctor and he was also the grandson of two very prominent abolitionists. Unfortunately, Darwin’s mother died when he was just eight. Most of us know him best today for his evolutionary theory contributions. It was he who introduced natural selection as well as selective breeding, publishing the Origin of Species in the year 1859 and gaining much success.
During the year 1825, Darwin spent a large chunk of time as an apprentice doctor. He aided his father in treating the poor. However, he did not enjoy the field. He found lecture boring and surgery very distressing so he often put off his studies. This angered his father as Darwin preferred to ride and shoot rather than study. Shortly after, he became fond of beetle collecting which was popular at the time. It was his interest in nature which steered him away from the field of medicine. It was his experience at the University of Cambridge which guided his deep passional for the natural sciences.
Sometime later Darwin joined the journey on the HMS Beagle which charted South America’s coastline. The voyage lasted about five years with Darwin spending most of that time investigating geology on land and taking careful notes. He as well suffered great seasickness during this journey. He witnessed much slavery while there which he detested. He was able to learn much about taxidermy from a freed black slave, John Edmonstone who he would often sit and talk with. Darwin also experienced an Earthquake in Chile. His journal was eventually written as a third volume set on natural history. It was this journal that made him famous as an author. His work established an evolutionary descent and went on to explain diversity within nature. Most people were accepting of Darwin’s theory but many people also enjoyed competing with his ideas. He was gaining an immense amount of recognition all over the globe and to this day is seen as one of the most influential figures in all of human history. During the year 1871 Darwin was looking into human evolution and sexual selection, publishing The Descent of Man, Selection in Relation to Sex, and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. A lot of his research on plants were published within a large series of books.
Darwin went on to marry his cousin Emma, but this wasn’t until after writing out a list of pros and cons. He was a devoted father to ten children, two, however, died in infancy. Over time his health began to deteriorate, especially under such pressure. He began to collect information for his research from relatives, children, the butler, neighbors and even shipmates. This all took a toll on him and he was often laid up for several days with stomach and heart problems as well as headaches. The remainder of his life was spent repeatedly incapacitated with many episodes of issues such as stomach pains, vomiting and trembling. These symptoms were made worse during meetings and social visits when he was put under pressure and stress. Treatment attempts had minimal success.
Darwinism had become a movement but by 1878 he was going on years with suffering an illness. By the year 1882 Darwin was officially diagnosed with coronary thrombosis and disease of the heart. His last words to his wife were, “I am not the least afraid of death - Remember what a good wife you have been to me - Tell all my children to remember how good they have been to me.” Today he is buried close to Isaac Newton. Many geographical figures are given his name as well as 120 species. His work is still heavily celebrated to this day.

3)

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin

Even being Wikipedia, this site had a ton of great, in-depth information. It included a lot of information on Darwin’s personal life, adventures, theories and contributions. It included a lot of his publications and pictures as well which was nice!

2. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/151902/Charles-Darwin

This website as well included a lot of great information. It was very organized, beginning with Darwin’s early life and education up until his final years and all of his contributions. It went into detail as far as his theories go and provided me with a lot!

3. http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Biographies/Science/Darwin.htm

This website didn’t have the most information but it was all good and to the point. It as well included his publications, early life and went in chronological order following his life’s journey.

My topic is Eugenics.
This topic is related to the chapter, Francis Galton first thought of Eugenics when he was studying Evolution after his cousin founded Natural Selection. I am interested in it because there was a lot of ideas I was thinking about, like whether it influenced Hitler to make an utopian society he was fighting for.

Eugenics is the belief of improving the genetic quality of a human population. Francis first of this term when he was studying Hereditary Genetics. He thought that qualities such as intelligence was mostly genetic and that growing up in a poor class in society had no significant factor in intelligence. Francis Galton came to think of eugenics as a new religion. The Nazis did in fact took this idea to make a utopia view for Hitler and everyone Hitler convinced. Eugenics was one of the main reasons he wanted to exterminate the Jews and other races so that Aryan race was left. Although to Galton treated eugenics like a religion, I doubt he meant to influence Hitler or would do the same about it. Even after World War 2 scientist still continued to believe in the core of eugenics, but they did not focus on the negative applications of eugenics, by sterilizing and using genocide within the population. They instead were using it for positive eugenics, where if a baby were to be born with a disease the parent can decide whether they should keep the baby. Back then there were some questionable positive eugenics like down syndrome or other less severe diseases or disorders, but now there is a chance to find out whether your baby is going to be a hydrocephalus or encephalic which are babies with either almost no brain other than the ability to do reflexive things and only have the hindbrain, possibly the midbrain as well but not the forebrain which is around 90 percent of our brain and babies with overly amount of cerebral spinal fluid that floods ones ventricle in their brains and basically damages the brain close to the extent of an encephalic baby. If eugenics was not thought of procedures that let you see the health of your baby would probably not be invented so eugenics did not only resort into bad outcomes. Now days psychologist do not belief in such an idea can arrive in society, because they believe that nature and nature both go hand in hand. A good way of looking at it is how can genetics matter at all if you were born into a place without an environment, sort of like a black hole or a void, you would not be able to feel or express anything, you may still have phenotypes such as how your body is configured but nothing much else.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dh23eu.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/opinion/sunday/douthat-eugenics-past-and-future.html?_r=0

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/eugenic-legacy-nobel-ivf/

1. My topic is the Darwin’s voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle.
1b. This topic relates to the chapter because the chapter focused on how Darwin contributed not only to psychology but to science as whole and I wanted to explore what in Darwin’s life impacted him to make these discoveries about evolution and that was of course the voyage he took on the H.M.S. Beagle.
1c. I chose this topic because this voyage was the ultimate experience in Darwin’s life that led him discover what he did. Without going on this voyage Darwin would not be the famous figure he is today.
2. The H.M.S Beagle set sail from Britain with the young 22-year old Darwin in 1831. What was supposed to be a 2 year voyage around the coasts of South America, turned into an almost 5 year expedition that would change the scope of geology, botany, biology, anthropology and eventually psychology for years to come. Before I talk about the voyage itself it is important to discuss what led up to the voyage. The H.M.S. Beagle was a naval warship spouting 10 cannons that had sailed to South America previously in 1826 under a different captain. The captain on the first voyage had committed suicide because of the depression he suffered caused by the length of his isolation at sea. A new captain was anointed upon the ships return, Robert FitzRoy, and when it was decided that ship would set sail for South America again FitzRoy thought it a good idea to draft a companion to keep him company as to save him from the fate of the last captain. The captain thought the companion should not only keep him company but also be versed in the sciences since there would be down time to discover the foreign lands they were travelling to. Fitzroy put the word out at different University’s and Darwin’s mentor Henslow offered him up to go on this journey. Darwin had previously thought of returning to school to study Theology but this offer changed everything. Despite his father’s hesitation in wanting him to go, Darwin did leave on the Beagle in 1831. The Beagle left from Plymouth England and the first thing Darwin discovered was his extreme susceptibility to seasickness. Their first stop was the Cape Verde Islands where Darwin made many interesting observations of the geology. It was at this point that Darwin knew he wanted to make a book of his observations. After crossing the equator the ship then landed in Salvador Brazil. Darwin found the rain forests and nature of Brazil to be astounding. He marveled at the exquisite nature of the plants and animals. His next stop was Punta Alta Argentina. It was here that he discovered many fossils. A lot of the fossils he discovered were very large and he considered many of them to be relatively new. The ship then traveled to Tierra del Fuego, Argentina where they tried to start a mission to convert the natives. This did not go so well for the captain and his crew and they ultimately failed. The next place they visited was the Falkland Islands. Apparently Darwin thought these islands horrid and did not enjoy being there. However, upon breaking open some ancient looking rocks he discovered many fossils of Brachiopods. He mused that these Brachiopods must have been very abundant in nature in the past. The Ship set sail and reached Rio Negro, Argentina. Darwin spent some time with the native Gaucho in the lowlands and relished at the Gaucho’s highly independent lifestyle. The next big thing happened when Darwin Chiloe Island, Chile and sees Mount Osmo erupt in person. Seeing the aftermath of the Volcano Darwin then knew without a doubt the tremendous changes that a volcanic eruption could bring to any landscape in very little time. The most monumental of his discoveries came when they landed in the Galapagos Islands. These islands were full of large reptile creatures and colorful birds. He noted that many of the creatures he saw were very similar to mainland creatures but with subtle differences. He noticed a species of Iguana that, unlike any other species discovered before, survived specifically on seaweed. He discovered a huge tortoise so big that he could ride on its’ back. Most notably Darwin noticed that between the islands there were what he thought was different species of birds that had very subtle differences. This made him think the birds all shared a common ancestor at some point in time in their history but that divulged from this path to adapt to the changes in the environment. He later found out that these birds were all finches and today they are referred to as Darwin’s finches. After the Galapagos the Beagle sailed on to Sydney, Australia where Darwin swelled with pride at how well the young city was coming along. From Australia they went to the Cocos Islands where Darwin some important observations on the coral reefs there. From there The Beagle made a few more stops but at his point in his journey Darwin was very worn down by homesickness and more intensely by his seasickness which affected him all throughout his voyage. On October 2nd 1836 The Beagle made it back to London after almost 5 long, but very fruitful, years.
3.
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/science-of-natural-history/expeditions-collecting/beagle-voyage/
This site was very helpful in that it was interactive and easy to explore site that takes you step by step through the voyage Darwin went on.
http://www.cnrs.fr/cw/dossiers/dosdarwinE/darwin.html
This site helped by backing the information found in the first site and it elaborated into more detail the events that happened on the voyage.
http://history1800s.about.com/od/innovators/a/hmsbeagle.htm
This site helped by not only affirming the information found in the first two sites but giving a background of events that happened before Darwin set off on the voyage and why he was chosen to go.

I am choosing to report on the “ever curious” Francis Galton. He was one of the psychologists mentioned in the chapter. Also, he was Charles Darwin’s cousin, which begs to question the incredible impact that The Origin of Species had on Galton. The reason Sir. Galton peaks my interest, was his mathematic specialty and his emphasis on standardization. A personalist would say that his contributions to science had profound effects on the course of psychology and even civilization.
Galton was an English aristocrat born halfway through the 19th century in England. Following the trend set by the other 19th century contributors to psychology, he began his education in physiology. He quickly directed his focus to mathematics. He received a degree from Cambridge, and with a timely death of his father, went on an expedition throughout Africa. It was on this voyage he first showed his brilliance. He made advances in geology, including creating the first weather maps using air pressure measurements. Upon arriving back in England Galton read his cousin’s work, The Origin of Species. From this point on, he devoted his mind to improving humanity through advancing the gene pool. He coined this method “eugenics.” He realized the importance of defining differences in human faculties. In this pursuit, he began to develop the feature intelligence tests and created statistical tests to aid his findings. Some of these statistical test are still used in contemporary psychological research.
While Galton gets a lot of credit for intelligence testing and eugenics, the zeitgeist cannot be ignored. Just as Darwin was not only one on evolution’s trail, Galton was not the only one looking to advance humanities gene pool. His name, sadly, is the one attached to all the negative associations eugenics has acquired throughout history. I feel Galton deserves to be recognized as clean of all the negatives done in the name of eugenics. Unlike the Nazis and Klan members who killed first and tested theories later, Galton was rigorous in the testing of unbiased, quantitative data. He was known for the pursuit of defining mental faculties, so that humanity may make an informed decision on how to move forward. His graphs and equations never suggested forced sterilization and genocide was beneficial for anyone. Even something as pure as an IQ test has been used to exploit human difference and ignorance. The efforts of Alfred Binet, Theodore Simon, Lewis Terman and many more disgraced at Ellis Island, when thousands were unfairly categorized for political ambitions and public fears. It should not take an ethics book to spot human indecency (awfully presentist of me). It leaves me to wonder where science could take us if we weren’t bogged down by the tainting of human greed and fear.

http://users.ipfw.edu/abbott/120/IntelligenceTests.html
I used this cite to get a better understanding of how Galton’s work in intelligence testing developed to current standards. This cite was efficient, well structured, and seemed to be reliable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics
This cite gave a lot of information about eugenics. I was specifically interested in the historical ramifications, and how it is relevant today.
http://www.biography.com/people/francis-galton-9305647
This cite was a good refresher of Galton’s biography. It was nice to see an alternative source than the text book. It was short and the cite seemed a little tabloidy, but when it comes to a little biographical information I’m not going to split hairs.

1a) State what your topic is.


George Romanes

1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.


Topic relates to the Chapter because the chapter focuses on Charles Darwin’s impact in comparative psychology and how he paved the way for others to follow in his footsteps. Romanes ended up being a close friend of Darwin, and Darwin ended up sharing some of his findings in his comparative research with Romanes.

1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.

I am interested in this topic because George Romanes was the researcher who tried turning the concept of anthropomorphism into a science. The concept interests because I have never heard of attributing human qualities to nonhuman things. The textbook described an example of George’s research about how spiders enjoy music. I wanted to find more information on the researcher and to see what other work he was interested in and researched.

George Romanes had a fairly ordinary childhood. He was born in May, in the year of 1848. He lived in Canada with his parents and four siblings. When he was two years old, his family picked up and moved to England. At this time, George attended a preparatory school in London, but got diagnosed with the measles and had to finish his school at home. At the age of 17, George had his schooling finished, and had a tutor to better prepare him for college.

Before attending a university, Romanes thought he wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a minister, but was quickly persuaded by a close friend, to attend Cambridge University. Cambridge was the place where Romanes found his destined field of study, natural sciences. The studied medicine and physiology at Cambridge. During George’s time as a young adult, a letter he wrote struck the attention of Charles Darwin who later replied to the letter. This relationship eventually developed into a close friendship. Darwin even shared a few of his findings regarding animals with Romanes.

Romanes started a family with his wife Ethel in childhood house in England. During the summer, he build a lab where he performed some of his research. The couple had two kids named George and Ethel. Ethel eventually became a nun, and died of lung cancer. Their son, got married and had two kids. George died of a brain tumor at the age of 44, and his wife, Ethel, died shortly after.

During George’s time, he helped generate the concept of anthropomorphism, which gives human attributes to nonhuman things. Romanes was also quite interested in animal intelligence, and had studies regarding the development of language. The term anthropomorphism is still used today. Even though Romanes’s research on establishing the concept as a science was biased, we use anthropomorphism by naming hurricanes to establish an easier method of communication.

http://psychcentral.com/news/2010/03/01/why-do-we-anthropomorphize/11766.html
This website gave me insight on how Romanes’s concept of anthropomorphism was established, and touched on the general concept of the theory.
http://faculty.frostburg.edu/mbradley/psyography/romanes.html
This website provided me with a general biography of George Romanes. It touched base on his childhood, and also the major events that happened in his lifetime.
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/romanes.htm
This last source connected the two previous sources together. It brought insight into Romanes’s research and his major works, but also incorporated life events and biographical information.

1a) What is topic? My topic is Darwin’s life story.
1b) How does it relate to the chapter? Since Charles Darwin was the main topic of the chapter his relation to the chapter is too obviously apparent to explain without sounding facetious. The topic of his personal life is related because it details events that could have possibly impacted his choices, and ultimately his theories, which in turn influenced psychology.
1c) Why interested? This chapter focused on Darwin and his influence on psychology so I thought it would be interesting to deviate on my current pattern of picking out abstract ideas from chapters and focus on the background of the main point instead. I also was interested to find out how influences from events in his life could have impacted his theories.
2) Synthesis
The story of Charles Darwin begins in the small English town of Shrewsbury in the February of 1809. He was born into wealth as his father Robert Darwin was a doctor and his mother Susannah was a member of the Wedgewood family of the Wedgewood pottery company. Charles was the second to last born of his five siblings and was a quiet child who would rather spend his time collecting or spending time in nature. He attended a Unitarian church under the influence of his mother and attended a Unitarian school for a short time until his mother passed away when he was eight. His father held him in a certain contempt and thought of Charles as unmotivated and only interested in pursuits that were insignificant. This could have been one reason that his father took the liberty of enrolling him in medical school at the age of 16 at Edinburgh along with his older brother. Charles quickly found that medical school was not for him however, due to his aversion to blood, and left before earning a degree.
Charles Darwin began his pursuit of biology while studying to become a clergyman at the University of Cambridge. His He was also inspired by his cousin William Darwin Fox whom he met there who he quickly became friends with. Charles and William shared their passion for the natural world, namely for collecting beetles. His mentor while at Cambridge was priest and botanist John Stevens Henslow, who recommended that Darwin go on a voyage on the HMS Beagle as a naturalist. This event changed Darwin’s life and allowed him to study various species of plants and animals in detail.
It was not until he was 50 years old until he published his famous “Origin of the Species” due to many factors including his own poor health and the death of an infant child. While he was a well-established and respected naturalist at the time he came under serious fire from the Anglican Church and other scholars for his writings. At the time of his death in 1882 however he was so revered that he we buried in Westminster Abbey and is thought of today as a national hero.

http://www.egs.edu/library/charles-darwin/biography/
I chose this source because it seemed to be very official and held a wealth of information about Darwin’s studies and influences.
http://darwinday.org/learn-more/about-darwins-life/
This source was extremely comprehensive and included many interesting caveats such as quotes from Darwin’s autobiography and various pictures of significant places in Darwin’s life.
http://www.biography.com/people/charles-darwin-9266433#death-and-legacy
This source held a brief description of Darwin’s life and included details about his death. It also had recommendations for videos to watch and a video on Darwin’s life that auto-played.

1a) State what your topic is.
Uniformitarianism

1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
This chapter is dedicated to theories about evolution, and this was one early theory. A lot of this chapter was also dedicated to Charles Darwin and Charles Lyell’s theory on uniformitarianism heavily influenced his ideas.

1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
Uniformitarianism is one of the most important concepts in geoscience. It started with Charles Lyell’s disbelief in Catastrophism. Originally, he studied with catastrophist William Buckland. The basis of Catastrophism is the belief that the current condition of the natural world was due to various major catastrophes. Once Buckland began linking Catastrophism to the Bible, such as the flood and Noah, Lyell wanted to separate himself and make geology a true science. Once he left Buckland, he began studying with geologist, James Hutton. Hutton believed that changes in the world took place slow and gradual. After studying with him, Lyell travelled Europe to find more evidence of this. He studied earthquakes, volcanoes, mountains, etc. and found evidence to support his theory. He published these findings in his multi-volume work, Principles of Geology. Upon reading this book, William Whewell coined the terms Catastrophism and Uniformitarianism.

There are four propositions of Uniformitarianism: Uniformity of law, uniformity of methodology, uniformity of kind and uniformity of degree. The uniformity of law states that the laws of the natural world are, “constant across time and space”. This means that in order to study geology, we have to assume that whatever natural laws apply now apply to the past as well. Uniformity of methodology states, “the appropriate hypotheses for explaining the geological past are those with analogy today”. Uniformity of kind states that, “past and present causes are all of the same kind, have the same energy, and produce the same effects.” And uniformity of degree states, “geological circumstances have remained the same over time”.

Uniformitarianism influenced the likes of Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace. In fact, this highly contributed to Darwin’s theory of evolution. Currently, it is believed that changes in the earth take place through gradual changes, but various catastrophes do contribute as well.

It is hard to believe that anyone would originally believe in catastrophism because to me, uniformitarianism seems to be the obvious choice. It is amazing that we can actually study this in science now, and we have proof of this through glaciers, continental drift, etc.

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/history_12 (charles lyell’s involvement with the theory)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniformitarianism (four propositions)
http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/10c.html (the influence on darwin and his theory of evolution)

1a) Charles Darwin
1b) This topic relates to this entire chapter as it overlooks Darwin and his theory of evolution.
1c) This topic interests me because Darwin followed his dream and studied something that interested him and not what his father hoped him to grow up to be. His voyage to Wales and all his findings with evolution are so fascinating. I find people like Darwin interesting because without them where would science be in today’s world? All the discoveries and theories in history create new findings today. This is why I chose this topic to learn more about.

2) Growing up Darwin’s father wanted him to take after him and study medicine and become a medical doctor. He was very young when he enrolled at Edinburgh University, only 16 years old. Darwin was never interested in medicine and didn’t handle deal with blood very well. His father then hoped Darwin would become a parson instead. Yet becoming a priest wasn’t in Darwin’s plan either. Growing up on a farm Darwin was always fascinated with nature and all of its natural history which is what his passion was. It’s interesting how young he was when trying to figure out what he wanted to do with his life. I have yet found calling and am twenty years-old. Back then it is also wild to think about following in the family footsteps and not really having a choice with your career, which why Darwin’s passion for natural history and following his dream is so neat.
It wasn’t until after Darwin graduated Chris’s College with a Bachelor of Arts degree when his career really launched with the Voyage of a lifetime. This 5 year voyage trip around the world took place on this ship called the HMS Beagle. While on this trip he discovered principles of botany, geology and zoology. He observed natural specimens, including birds, plants and fossils. This trip really started him to develop his evolutionary theory.
Darwin noticed similarities with species all over the globe dealing with certain locations which caused him to conclude that they evolved from common ancestors. His process called “natural selection” is why Darwin thought these species survived. This process is when species successfully adapt to meet the needs of their natural habitat, and those who failed to change died. Darwin then introduced his revolutionary theory of evolution and published, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, which explained his theory very detailed.

3)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin - good overview of his life and accomplishments

http://www.biography.com/people/charles-darwin-9266433#synopsis - very helpful and clear overview

http://www.aboutdarwin.com/ - easy to follow because the lay out was very well done

1a) State what your topic is.
Sexual Selection
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
Chapter 5 had a lot to do with Darwin and his discoveries and how they impacted psychology. Sexual selection is part of his theory of evolution and natural selection and was talked about in the chapter, and sexual selection also happens in humans as well, although to a much lesser degree.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I have been do some research on sexual health and what makes people attracted to one another, and why some male animals (such as birds) are more visually appealing than their female counterparts. I am interested in this topic because I want to know why this is, and what the use is for, and if there are any drawbacks to being more visually appealing for animals, such as cardinals or peacocks. After learning more about the topic, I am even more amazed an intrigued, and feel like I will look even more into it when I have a chance, since there is so much that goes into it.

Sexual selection can be defined as an organism’s ability to have or to have sexual relations with a mate. Some of these organisms will display bright colors, fight to the death, dance, give gifts, or even be willing to die to reproduce. Some of these things make it more dangerous for the one with the need to attract a mate, because things such as bright colored feathers are more likely to attract predators. Sexual selection is important because no offspring means that that particular animal does not pass on its genes. Sexual selection works both ways, as males compete and females choose, and according to Darwin, this only occurs in this way, and is either against the same sex in an effort to scare or kill them, or against the same sex in an effort to excite the female more. These are defined as intersexual selection and intrasexual selection. Intersexual selection is the female choice, where males compete against one another to be selected. Intrasexual selection is when they compete in an aggressive manner for access to the female, who remains fairly passive. Sometimes, these ‘bonus’ features can cause a species extinction because of their absurdity, while other times, sexual selection may help create a new species as well. Males max out the potential they have with sexual selection by trying to mate with as many partners as possible, while females max out their return by being as selective as possible to ensure their offspring are healthy and reach maturity. Because females get to be so picky in their mating preferences, they can change the way species look or evolve to be less susceptible to disease or some other beneficial feature, and this is known as the good genes hypothesis. Sexual selection can occur both pre-copulation as well as post-copulation, as some females can use chemicals or other adaptations to insure that a particular male will fertilize her eggs, or how much she will invest in the offspring of a particular mate, and this is called cryptic choice. Some species even get into a conflict between the sexes and will develop traits and evolve to sort of fight for the betterment of the species.

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/IIIE3Sexualselection.shtml
General overview and examples
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_selection
Intrasexual and Intersexual selction, good gene hypothesis, conflict between the sexes
http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/sexual-selection-13255240
More overview and examples, cryptic choice, intra and intersexual selection, good gene hypothesis

1a) Eugenics

1b) Darwin’s theory of evolution sparked the Social Darwinism movement, and by extension, practices in Eugenics.

Eugenics in the practice in which one can manipulate the genetic quality of human beings. This was proposed by Darwin in his literatures, and later taken seriously by his readers. The Nazi’s are famous in their works in the field, and the idea of it being used in modern society has been played around with. While the idea of allowing those with more favorable traits power over the weaker sounds ethically unsound, it’s actually happening today in a way that isn’t commonly thought of, that being: Abortions.

In regards to how Eugenics and Abortions relate, many people today consider abortions in cases of their unborn child having some sort of deficiency—such a mental illness of physical disability. This can also be seen in cases of ethnic diseases, such as Tay-Sachs in some Jewish communities—a disease that could prevent people from having children as it is a hereditary disease.

While this is obviously the darker side of eugenics, there are scientists who are moving closer to the possibility of freely manipulating human genetics. Genetic diseases could be wiped and mental disabilities could be cured. To move to a cosmetic side, physical structures could be changed such as height or baldness. Eugenics has a good and a bad side. Hopefully science can move fast enough to outweigh the bad with the good.

http://healthimpactnews.com/2013/eugenics-still-present-in-the-u-s-today/ (abortions)

http://knowgenetics.org/is-eugenics-happening-today/ (genetic diseases)

http://helix.northwestern.edu/article/modern-eugenics-building-better-person (positives of genetic testing)

1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
My topic is catastrophism and uniformitarianism. This fits into the chapter we covered this week because when Darwin started studying geology he came across these two theories in a book called Principles of Geology written by Sir Charles Lyell. i am interested in this because I have never heard of either one of these terms and what I read in the book left me with further questions, so i figured this would be a good way to learn more.

2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
For this assignment I am going to talk about what catastrophism is and the proof behind it, what uniformitarianism is and the proof behind it, and lastly I will talk about Sir Charles Lyell.

3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
Catastrophism is a theory that states that the earth’s geological features were form abruptly by catastrophes in the past. Charles Darwin and his mentor Sedgwick were both catastrophists. One of the most famous events from the past that has helped to validate the theory of catastrophism is the eruption of Mt. St. Helen’s in 1980. Evidence of the great flood from the bible, also know as the Noachian Flood, has been found on nearly every continent in the world. This flood caused several layers of rock to form. But because it was such a violent event on the earth, many animals were also caught in the flood and later fossilized. It has also been reported that clams fossils have been found at the top of Mt. Everest. For a clam fossil to make it that point on earth there would need to be a drastic change in the environment. This theory was the original accepted doctrine of geology. It stayed like this until the introduction of uniformitarianism.
Uniformitarianism is the exact opposite of catastrophism. This theory states that there were no catastrophic events that helped to form the natural features in the world today. Those who support this theory believe that our geology today was created gradually over the past years. They say the the geology of earth is always slowly changing and evolving.
Sir Charles Lyell is know as the father of geology. He has always been a supporter of the uniformitarian theory. He was also heavily influenced by James Hutton. Sir Charles had a large effect on the life of Charles Darwin and how he viewed evolution. He began to see evolution as a biological type of uniformitarianism.

4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.

">http://www.catastrophism.net/--> I used this website because it had good information about the evidence about catastrophism

">http://www.uniformitarianism.net/--> I used this website because it gave me a lot of information about evidence for uniforitarianism

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/history_12 --> I used this website because it gave me information about Sir Charles Lyell

Terms: Sir Charles Lyell, Charles Darwin, uniformitarianism, catastrophism, James Hutton, geology. evolution, Sedgwick

The topic I chose was comparative psychology. This topic fits into chapter 5 which is about Charles Darwin and Evolutionary Thinking. The beginning of this chapter explained Darwin’s early life, his education, his interesting, his explorations, and his contributions to psychology. Though Darwin was greatly interested in biology, comparing different species, he still had contributions to psychology. In his book The Descent of Man, Darwin explained the continuity of mental processes that exist between humans and other species. He compared human thinking and the thinking processes of other species. This type of comparing led to comparative psychology and the study of individual differences. I am interested in comparative psychology because I like to learn about humans. To understand humans, we must know where we came from and where we are planning to go. For this blog, I researched the general topic of comparative psychology, Conwy Lloyd Morgan, and Morgan’s “Canon.”
The origin of comparative psychology is debated; however, I believe that comparative psychology can be attributed to George John Romanes. Romanes had a very important mentor and contributor of comparative psychology (in a biological way): Charles Darwin. Romanes was a student of Darwin, but after spending many years in the lab with Darwin, they became friends. Romanes built off of what he learned from Darwin’s biological comparative studies to propose a science that would compare animal and human behavior. Romanes had this idea that human existence, thinking, and behavior came about from a gradient of mental processes and intelligence from the simplest animals to man. Romanes got his ideas from a vast collection of anecdotal accounts of behavior in dozens of animal species. Romanes believed behavior allowed organisms to adapt to their environments (an idea learned from Darwin). Behavior itself was not an evolved phenomenon, though the organism was. However, as an organisms changed through evolution, new or different behavioral potentials arose. As comparative psychology evolved itself, it took an epigenetic approach, stressing the importance of development, experience, and other psychological processes. And that is how we know and understand comparative psychology today.
Conwy Lloyd Morgan had become interested in philosophy at a young age and trained in the sciences. Morgan strongly emphasized biological and Darwinism in his early studies. Morgan got his love of biology and Darwinism from admiring Romanes’ works. Morgan’s most important works reveals both biology and evolution have influences in the understanding of humans. Morgan traced the growth of intelligence on the evolutionary scale. His works with precise observation and experiments on animals established comparative psychology within the field of experimental psychology.
Morgan wrote several books, but his most important book was called Introduction to Comparative Psychology. Morgan is known almost exclusively for famous words written within this book. Introduction to Comparative Psychology discusses problems in the interpretation of animal behavior. The famous words that Morgan wrote are this: "In no case may we interpret an action as the outcome of the exercise of a higher psychical faculty, if it can be interpreted as the outcome of one which stands lower in the psychological scale." He wrote this in response to Romanes approach to comparative psychology. Romanes used anecdotal evidence to “prove” his ideas, and within these anecdotal accounts, Romanes used anthropomorphism. Anthropomorphism gives human characteristics to animals. For example, he would say that say that a dog was sad when its human companion left home. But how can we be sure that a dog is sad? The dog cannot explain to a human that he is “sad.” Morgan wanted to be sure that if a person uses anthropomorphism, he/she must be absolutely correct when giving human behaviors to animals. This principle became widely known as Morgan's Canon.
http://www.apadivisions.org/division-6/publications/newsletters/neuroscientist/2010/11/historian-column.aspx - I chose this website because it was from the American Psychological Association. I did not take a whole lot of information from this website, but rather built on what I learned in the chapter about George Romanes and comparative psychology’s origin.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/C._Lloyd_Morgan - I chose this website because is much like Wikipedia, where there a subcategories about Conwy Lloyd Morgan. This makes it much easier to find the information I want about him. I used this website to help build off of what I learned in the chapter. I used a moderate amount of information.
http://www.brynmawr.edu/psychology/rwozniak/morgan.html - I chose this website because it had actual works of Conwy Lloyd Morgan. It also described the Introduction to Comparative Psychology in depth. I used this website’s information the most because the book did not have a ton of information about the “Morgan’s Canon.”
Terms and Terminology: comparative psychology, Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, individual differences, Conwy Lloyd Morgan, George John Romanes, anecdotal accounts, Darwinism, Introduction to Comparative Psychology, anthropomorphism, Morgan's Canon.

1) My topic is Darwin’s theory of evolution. Darwin was a main person talked about in the chapter and his reasoning for coming up with the evolution theory interests me. I like how it was published and made public in a time where it wasn’t accepted, and even now some people get upset over it.

2) Three aspects of the theory of evolution I would like to discuss in this assignment are what the theory of evolution is, the response to the theory when it was published back in 1859, and what we think about the evolution theory in the present.

3) The theory of evolution was published in a book called Origin of Species by Charles Darwin back in 1859 and since has been popularly known. Darwin said that we as humans were made and developed not by God out of thin air, but by developing from other species. He said that humans, and any other species, survive by natural selection. The natural selection process is very slow and happens throughout many years but it helps the strong and healthy individuals pass on their own traits to be able to survive in the future. In other words, those best suited to survive will. For example, frogs didn’t always have webbed feet but those who live in or near water have evolved to have webbed feet to be able to survive better in the water.

When the Origin of Species was published for the public to see back in 1859, there was quite a debate about the thought of evolution. The times back in the 19th century were run by the ideas of the church and evolution wasn’t a view the church had. There was an uproar between the church and the state because of the idea. There were many debates on how evolution was possible versus how the church was right. Even scientists dismissed the idea and tried to resist the notion of evolution, but eventually people started believing more and more.

Even now the world has some problems accepting the idea of evolution because of the views of the church, but it is not as extreme. The amount of support relating to evolution now has definitely increased, especially within the scientific and academic communities. There are still people who disagree with the topic and it is still a major conflict dealing with religious, cultural, and political views. However, science has proved in a way that this does in fact occur within species.

4) http://www.darwins-theory-of-evolution.com/ - I chose this URL because it simples it down about what the theory of evolution is
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactions_to_On_the_Origin_of_Species - I chose this URL because it gave me a better understanding about the reaction the people had to The Origin of Species by Darwin about the theory of evolution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation%E2%80%93evolution_controversy - I chose this URL because it helped me learn about the view most people have on evolution in the present

Terms: Darwin, theory of evolution, natural selection, Origin of Species, evolution

1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
The topic that I wanted to do further research on was anthropomorphism. It is briefly mentioned in chapter 5, that George Romanes had studied the concept of anthropomorphism. Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human characteristics or behavior to a god, animal, or object. I wanted to know more about his research and exactly what he had found. He took what Darwin had applied evolution to the body but he applied it further to the mind. So far we have moved along towards different theories, moving from evolutionary to behaviorism.

2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?

Three aspects that I would like to discuss are, what publications did George Romanes publish, did anyone else further his research and finally what is it thought to be today. How else did his ideas and findings helped psychology today.

3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.

George Romanes went to publish Animal Intelligence in 1881, the book was one of the first use comparative psychology, by comparing animals and humans. His finding were based on anecdotal method, of untrained and uncritical observers, he studied all sorts of animals from reptiles, mammals, fish and insects. This book mainly focused on insects, he wanted to show that animals had similar thoughts and process as humans, He came up with the mental ladder. He broke down this list according to species and levels of intellectual development. For example he found that Apes and Dogs had indefinite morality or that Monkeys and Elephant could use of tools . He also found that if you were to poke a jellyfish in a certain area that its body tighten and contract, that eventually this would be relatable to the synapse. That it would send messages to different parts of the body. George also used the Introspection by Analogy technique. This technique was used for studying animal behavior by assuming that the same mental process that occurs in the observer’s mind, can also occurs in the animals mind. He went on to publish more books, his next book that he published was Mental Evolution in Animals in 1883 , going on further in 1886 he published Physiological Selection: An Additional Suggestion on the Origin of Species. He further went on to discover that one of the most significant barriers between closely related species is the sterility barrier. He used the example of height and eye color and how on one knew what caused the different or same variations. He further went to explain that a variation could happen and would make some organisms more sterile with other members of the species, but may not affect the somatic characteristics. This showed that from generation to generation the cross of generations would result in a less fertile relationship. In order to have a good healthy species they need to find sterile mates. This lead to the new type of evolution called polytypic. Polytypic is refered to as two or sub species. That one word would not be able to describe that species. When t came to studying animal behavior George Romanes was not the only one, the most known one would be Ian Palvov, and his study he did with this dogs. He found out that he could make his dogs salivate after hearing bell. This later became known as classic conditioning. He was able to see how the dogs were to react to the sound of the bell. This all would seem like a small push towards behaviorism.

4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.

This website that I found gave a lot of background history on George Romanes himself, it also gave a great insight on his publications. http://faculty.frostburg.edu/mbradley/psyography/romanes.html
The next website that I found was more of a update version on how this concept of anthropomorphism has evolved. http://courses.washington.edu/anmind/AM%20intro%201.pdf It also gave good example of other scientist trying out his theories, it shows the push towards behaviorism with palov.
The next link helped clear up the definition of polytypic. http://www.britannica.com/science/polytypic-species

Next make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
George Romanes, Darwin, Anecdotal method, Introspection by analogy technique, Evolutionary theory, Comparative psychology, polytypic and Anthropomorphism.

The topic that I chose from chapter 5 is eugenics. The reason that this fits into this chapter, is because it is one of the ideas that was from Francis Galton. Galton mainly is in this chapter, because he is the cousin of Charles Darwin, who is a huge name in science, and Galton got some of his ideas from him. The only difference is, where Darwin researched on the natural selection of animals, Galton researched on humans. One of Galton's main focuses was on eugenics, and that will be the focus of this essay. The reason I am interested in eugenics is because, it is a very interesting concept. One that seemed like it could have been legit at the time, and the way I looked at it was, if it was still around I wonder if I would be here today?
The three topics that I would like to talk about for this topic is how Galton came up with the idea of eugenics, what eugenics is, and why eugenics isn't being used today still.
Like I stated in the opening paragraph, Galton started all his research in human genetics after he read his cousins book, The origin of Species. Charles Darwin wrote this book on many things he observed through animals at the Galapagos Islands. The first chapter of the book was called, Variation under Domestication. This chapter was all about animal breeding. One of the things that Darwin discovered, is that many of the traits of animals that were breeding, were traits that were in their offspring. This chapter pretty much kick started Galton's career, but in a different way. Darwin had hinted at maybe some of these characteristics taking place in human beings, and this made Galton really look into, do research, and create experiments to see if the same thing was happening in humans. Galton's main focus was to find out whether ability was hereditary. After several experiments, twin studies, and adoption studies, he found out that ability was to an extent hereditary, but ability dropped off a little bit every generation. Even so, Galton came up with the term eugenics, and began creating ways to try to implement this into society.
By definition, eugenics is a set of beliefs and practices that aims at improving the genetic quality of the human population. Galton wanted the people of the world that were of great talent to get together with one another, and reproduce. If both the male and female parent are of high status, have great talent, and can contribute to society, the offspring should be able to do the same thing. If this act were to occur, this would be considered positive eugenics. On the contrary, there is also negative eugenics. This would be the exact opposite, two people that weren't seen as having great talent, or being able to contribute greatly to society, reproducing. The offspring of these parents would be said to not have as good of genes, therefore probably wouldn't be able to contribute to society as much. So, for Galton's purpose he was looking for positive eugenics only, so that in the future the offspring would have the genes of all the great people in the past, thus making for a better society, full of people who could contribute great ideas and inventions.
As you could probably guess, eugenics isn't something that is still being used today. The main reason for this is because everyone has the right to reproduction. No one can predict what kind of contribution the offspring of a set of parents, is going to make to society. A couple who is very intelligent, and has great status in the community, could have kids that only want to watch TV and play video games. On the other hand, a couple who maybe didn't go to college, and is poor, may have kids that are extremely knowledgeable, and make a big name for themselves. The genes from generation to generation can only predict so much. Another reason that eugenics isn't being used is because it would be hard to determine a cutpoint for who gets to have kids and who doesn't. What makes one couple great enough to have kids, and another couple not? It was a human being with a biased opinion picking who should mate, and who shouldn't. So, it is just an idea that shouldn't be used, and I believe that if it was used some of us wouldn't be here today, and more importantly some of the big names that have made huge contributions to society, may not even be here either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics
I used this website to help explain why eugenics isn't something that is being used today, and also to help explain what eugenics is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton
I used this website to help explain where Galton got his ideas from, and how he came up with the idea of eugenics.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/eugenics
I used this website to give a dictionary definition of eugenics.
Terms: eugenics, Francis Galton, Charles Darwin, Origin of Species, twin studies, adoption studies, genes.

1) This chapter covered a lot on the topic of evolution. It was the first time I was ever able to learn about the different element that were evolved in the development of the theory. In other times, I only learned about evolution with the involvement of just Darwin and not the other factors of it. Due to that reason, I am most interested on Lyell’s theory and his contributions to the theory of evolution as well.
2) Three aspects of this topic that I want to research further include Lyell’s background, more information on Lyell’s involvement to the theory of evolution, and the relationship between Darwin and Lyell.
3) Before this chapter, I was unaware that Charles Lyell even existed or contributed anything to evolution. I wanted to understand Lyell in order to know where he is coming from and how he developed his theories. I learned that he studied law and geology and was interested in the formation and development of the world from a young age. Lyell was a lawyer and writer for many years and did not start pursing geology until the early 1800s. He traveled all around the world and began to notice all of the different types of rocks, Earth formations, and geological structures. With these observation his interest in the theory began and he would soon become one of the most influential theorist in the matter of evolution.
After noticing the observations on his travels, Lyell began to become more emphasized on the natural law rather than catastrophism. He developed the theory that evolution occurred slowly over a long period of time, which is known as uniformitarianism. Lyell also talked about how that theory was a reasonable assumption that the way things evolved in the past were continuing to evolve in that same manner as it was presently. Lyell talked about how earlier geologist had the tendency to explain everything evolutionary in biblical terms. He focused on integrating the two theories and said that the combination of the two is more likely than one being the sole proprietor for evolution.
Lyell’s and Darwin’s relationship was more interconnected than I originally thought. Lyell was older and befriended Darwin in the early stages of his theory on evolution. Mainly, Darwin was very much influenced by Lyell’s unprecedented thoughts on the topic of evolution that he talked about in his book Principles of Geologyprompted. The book described evolution as a slow process that have small changes gradually accumulate over very long periods of time. Darwin shied away more from the view of religious involvement than Lyell did. One of the more interesting things I learned about the connection between the two men was when Lyell helped Darwin publish his work on natural selection. In 1858, Alfred Wallace told Darwin that he was going to publish a full account of natural selection before Darwin had a chance. Lyell arranged for Darwin to publish an extract from his manuscript alongside of Wallace’s formal paper.
4) URLs:
http://www.macroevolution.net/charles-lyell.html
This website gave me the most information on the connection between Darwin and Lyell and the extent of their involvement with one another. It also gave me a greater insight into Lyell’s involvement in the theory of evolution.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Sir_Charles_Lyell.aspx
My second website gave me great details about the early life and work of Lyell. It talked about how he came to compose his theories and his travels around the world that inspired the theory of uniformitarianism.
http://catalyst.rice.edu/discoveries/2011/11/03/
The final website I used gave me great information on Lyell’s theory on evolution and how it became known for uniformitarianism rather than catastrophism.
5) Terminology Used: Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, evaluation, natural selection, Alfred Wallace, uniformitarianism, catastrophism

the topic that I am going to cover for my blog this week is Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution. this ties into this chapter because there is a whole section about it and it relates to getting the other fields of study in the chapter started. I am interested in this topic because it has been covered in so many classes and I didn't see the big point but when reading more about it it is very interesting to me how Darwin got to his theory and all of the things that he did in his life. by looking this topic up I learned many new facts such as Darwin thinking all speicies came from the same ancestors. before I already knew about natural selection or at least parts of it and was familiar with it but that's all the more I knew
Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury England in 1809.Darwin originally studied at Edinburgh University. his father had hoped that he would become a doctor like him but he could not handle the sight of blood. Darwin then began schooling at Christ college in Cambridge. at Cambridge botanist John Stevens Henslow became his mentor. after Darwin graduated henslow recommended a spot for Darwin on a voyage as a naturalist on the Beagle. so in 1831 he left for a five year survey around the world on the HMS Beagle. on this trip he studied many species and specimens around the world. on the trip Darwin got to up close see principles of botony geology and zoology as well as collect multiple specimens of many kinds. all of these observations led to Darwin coming up with his theory of evolution.

darwins theory of evolution got its start from this voyage as I stated earlier. this theory states that all things are related and have come from a common ancestor. the theory generally states that "complex creatures evolve from more simplistic ancestors naturally over time." (http://www.darwins-theory-of-evolution.com/) he says that this happens by genetic mutations in the animals code and the code stays because it aids in survival of the species. this is a process known as natural selection. over time these mutations add up and the behavior of the species changes and the result is an entirely different organism. essentially the function of natural selection is to keep and improve the good in an organism or species and make the bad better so that the species can evolve and survive. its the survival of the fittest or the best essentially.

due to the theory of evolution and Darwin noticing all of the similarities between different humans and animals a new form of psychology became to be. this new field was called comparative psychology. comparative psychology is concerned with the study of animal behavior. by studying the animals behavior it is possible to better understand humans and their behaviors along with how the different species are common. one of the classic examples of this is ivan Pavlov and his dogs. with the work of Pavlov we learned about and understood classical conditioning.due to this field we have learned much about the behavior of humans through the use of animals. it is crazy to think that if the theory of evolution had not come out then comparative psychology may have never been thought of and we may be missing out on some of the major discoveries that are common knowledge in todays world such as the study of pavlovs dogs or Harry Harlow's work with rhesus monkeys.

http://www.biography.com/people/charles-darwin-9266433#voyage-on-the-hms-beagle
got info on Darwin's early life and the voyage on the beagle from this site.

http://www.darwins-theory-of-evolution.com/
this is the site that I got all of my information about the theory of evolution on

http://psychology.about.com/od/comparativepsychology/f/comparative.htm
this is where I found the info on comparative psychology.

I chose to look further into the life and research of Konrad Lorenz this week. Although he was only briefly mentioned in this chapter’s close-up, I felt that his research regarding imprinting was rather intriguing. Thus, I wanted to learn more about the man behind the theory. First, I would like to briefly discuss the life of Lorenz as knowing one’s background can help to better understand what led them to the contributions we know today. Then, I would like to talk about two of Lorenz’s most important theories regarding instinct and imprinting.

Oftentimes, it is good to know how a person grew up and began to work in the field of psychology to better understand their contributions to society. Lorenz himself is a good example. He was born in Vienna in the early 20th century. Although he completed medical training first in New York and then at the University of Vienna, Lorenz’s passion was always for animals. In fact, it was his careful observations of his pet bird which first brought him some fame as his diary was later published. Not surprisingly then, Lorenz eventually went on to get his Ph.D. in zoology. For many years he worked as a professor, but he always found time to study animal behavior. This work behind the scenes led Lorenz to publish two books: King Solomon’s Ring and On Aggression. The first of these explained animal behavior in common terms and the second began a discussion on human behavior. The work done by Lorenz eventually led him to a Nobel Prize in behavioral research along with a couple of his colleagues. Therefore, by knowing his background, it is easier to see what led Lorenz to such discoveries on instinct and imprinting as we will discuss next.

Konrad Lorenz is well-known for his contributions to the study of instinct. In his opinion, instinct was an innate ability to perform some action before any learning occurred. For example, dogs and cats have an instinct to mark their territory. They do not have to learn this, they naturally mark various spots with their urine or rub up against their humans to let other dogs or cats know that they claim that area. These instincts, according to Lorenz, are simply an act of survival. Thus, through natural selection, the instinct has allowed a species to live longer and, therefore, it has become hereditary. It requires no learning. In terms of marking, dogs and cats are simply protecting their resources and/or young by deterring other animals from the area to ensure survival of their genes. Lorenz coined a term as it relates to instinct which he called fixed action patterns, a specific, ordered series of actions performed by every individual in the species in the same manner. He ascertained that these patterns were initiated by a certain stimuli known as the “releaser” and that the part of the brain that responds to this stimulus is the innate releasing mechanism. It was this idea among others which would eventually gain Lorenz a Nobel Prize.

One of the best examples of instinct is imprinting which was one of the biggest topics studied by Konrad Lorenz. He did most of his research on birds, in particular graylag geese, which he found would instinctively follow the first thing that they saw after hatching. Whereas in nature this would normally be the mother, Lorenz was able to remove the goslings from their mother before hatching and make himself the first thing that they saw. Thus, the geese imprinted on Lorenz. They learned his voice and scent and began to follow him around. But Lorenz also found that the geese would imprint on inanimate objects as well including boots and a ball. Lorenz is also responsible for discovering that this imprinting must occur during a specific time frame known as the critical period. If the geese were not exposed to a “mother” during that time, then they would not imprint. The type of imprinting just discussed is termed filial imprinting; however, Lorenz also made a quick note of sexual imprinting as well. In this case, it seems that the one in which an animal imprints on has a great influence over the animal’s future mate selection. Mates selected tend to have characteristics similar to that individual which the animal imprinted on upon first entering the world. As far as imprinting and evolution go, Lorenz argued that imprinting would be favored in natural selection. It would give the animal something to follow for protection and food immediately after birth as a predator could creep up soon after this event. Sexual imprinting is relevant as the characteristics exhibited by the “mother” clearly led to a furthering of their genes in terms of offspring, so choosing a similar mate may make it more likely that that individual’s genes be passed on. Although Lorenz did much of his work on geese, imprinting has also been observed in other birds as well as some mammals although it is not as common in mammals as in birds. Overall, imprinting is a great example of an instinct that continues to be investigated today.

http://www.faqs.org/health/bios/39/Konrad-Lorenz.html
I used this website to gain information about Lorenz’s background as well as his main contributions.

http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/2002/6/02.06.01.x.html#f
This website provided valuable information about instinct and examples of instinct in animal populations.

http://www.rutherfordjournal.org/article010104.html
From this website, I was able to gain information about Lorenz’s contributions on instinct as well as imprinting.

http://www.cerebromente.org.br/n14/experimento/lorenz/index-lorenz.html
This website gave me information about imprinting and the role that Konrad Lorenz played in developing this theory.

Terminology: natural selection, instinct, imprinting, critical period

1) My topic is Francis Galton and his work with hereditary and eugenics. This topic fits into what we learned in the chapter because the chapter covered this topic. I think this is interesting because I have always been interested in the topic of nature vs nurture and which one plays a bigger role in an individual’s development.
2) Three things I am going to discuss in relation to Galton are; his idea on hereditary traits, idea on eugenics, and opposing ideas to his idea of hereditary traits.
3) Galton began his career more as an explorer than a psychologist. Galton began exploring Africa and contributed to a number of different fields. He gathered weather information and created the first systematic weather maps. He also discovered that people had different finger prints by studying the different swirls that people’s fingers had. Galton then began to collect data in relation to intelligence traits in people. Galton noticed that physically weaker humans were still able to survive and thrive and that made him think that the more intelligence someone had the higher they would rise in society. To study this idea of intelligence, Galton began to study individuals and their family trees. He looked at people who were noteworthy in society and looked through their family tree. What he found was that noteworthy individuals tended to have more noteworthy people in their family tree.
This led him to believe that intelligence was hereditary rather than environmentally effected. Although Galton had data to support this idea, there were some who opposed this idea. Alphonse de Candolle argued that environment had more to play in intelligence that Galton believed. Candolle gave supported his idea with data gathered from 300 European scientists. He found that scientific success was more abundant in democratic counties than totalitarian ones due to scientific freedom. He also noted that scientific excellence was found more often in countries with a higher standard of living. This, for Candolle, showed that environment played a larger role in intelligence than Galton was giving. Galton took heredity a step further and introduced his idea known as eugenics. He believed that since traits are dominantly inherited, the human race could breed a better society much in a way that we breed traits into dogs or horses. This idea led to Galton creating a ranking system of races based on measurable traits. A controversial estimation that this led to was Galton’s estimations between Anglo-Saxons and Africans. Throughout his travels and field observations, Galton estimated that Africans were what he called “two grades” below Anglo Saxons in mental capability.
4) http://www.intelltheory.com/galton.shtml
This site helped me in that it gave me information about his work with eugenics and how he applied it to actual races and twin studies.

http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/galton.htm
This site was helpful by talking about how he conducted his first study about heredity by taking surveys of noteworthy individuals and looking through their family tree

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton#Heredity_and_eugenics
This site helped me by giving me a general layout of Galton’s work and a quick synapse of how it was meaningful. It helped me wrap my mind around the work that he did.

Terms: Francis Galton, Alphonse de Cadolle, eugenics, heredity, surveys, traits, nature vs nurture, development,

1) This week, topic I was interested in was imprinting. I thought imprinting was interesting because for it to occur, specific conditions must be met. Most of these instances are natural and occur often. Then there are the rare cases that don’t happen very often because they don’t always happen naturally. I thought that even the naturally occurring imprints that happen often were interesting. Imprinting is something we hear about, but it didn’t make much sense to me, so I decided to research it. This topic fits into the chapter because this chapter covered Douglas Spalding and his experiments.
2) In this assignment I want to define imprinting and determine some ideal times for imprinting. I would like to share Spalding’s and Konrad Lorenz’s experiments on imprinting. Their research was very similar in nature, but Lorenz continued his research where Spalding did not. I would also like to share how imprinting influences our everyday lives, and how humans use imprinting. This refers back to Lorenz’s research and builds on this topic.
3) Imprinting is what happens when a young animal fixes its attention on the first object it has an experience with. This experience could be a sound, a touch, or a sight. Imprinting is best done at a young age or under stress. This tells us that imprinting is a survival instrument. The critical period, or sensitive period is the time just after birth during which imprinting is strongest. For geese it can last up to 48 hours, dogs and cats up to 10 weeks, and primates having the longest sensitive period of up to a year.
In 1873, Douglas Spalding discovered small chicks following the first moving object they saw. He concluded that the chicks’ tendency to imitate the first object it saw was due to innate processes and not experience. To test this Spalding covered chicks’ heads with hoods as soon as they were born. After he took off the hoods, the chicks still followed the first moving object that they saw. This confirmed his hypothesis, that imprinting was not driven by experience. Spalding did not give this experience a name, however. In 1937, Konrad Lorenz published a paper talking about the same topic as Spalding. Lorenz gave this experience a name, imprinting. He also watched newly hatched ducklings and goslings, and found them following the first moving object they saw. In Lornez’s experiments, he played with the ducklings and goslings after they hatched. He found that these hatchlings bonded with him and followed him around. Lorenz also found that these birds, after they had matured, continued to behave as the object they had imitated as a hatchling. He saw this when he observed mature birds attempting to court and mate with humans. Lorenz was intrigued by the fact that these birds did not immediately recognize the adults of its own species, but instead needed taught how to behave around them. After researching imprinting Lorenz went on to research innate behavior and other concepts that became the foundation for the study of animal behavior.
We talk about imprinting in ducks and geese, but we cannot understand what this imprinting truly is. Instead it seems like something that happens to animals, but we humans have risen above it. Instead, it has been proven that imprinting is essential for life and survival, not just in animals, but humans also. However, humans imprint over a longer period of time, possibly taking many years. The first type of imprinting we go through is called filial imprinting. This type of imprinting is what happens when an infant begins to recognize its parents voice, which can happen before the baby is even born. Another form of imprinting comes in sexual preferences. Like Lorenz found, it’s been shown that an animal develops sexual preference based on the species they’ve imprinted with. Even further it has been shown that people may look for the same characteristics in their partners that their parents have. This is an imprinting concept that affects who we mate with and what we look for in our mates. This concept can also be used as a tool that repels us from mates.
4) http://www.edublox.com/imprinting.htm I chose this website because it talked about both Spalding and Lorenz’s experiments. I used this website to discuss Spalding’s experiments and the definition of imprinting.
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/lorenz.htm I chose this website because it gave a background on Konrad Lorenz and his studies. I used this website to discuss Lorenz’s research.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sideways-view/201504/the-psychology-imprinting I chose this website because it talked about imprinting in humans, and discussed Lornez’s work. I used this website for defining imprinting and for using imprinting in our everyday lives.
5) Imprinting, Douglas Spalding, Konrad Lorenz, critical period, sensitive period, innate behavior, filial imprinting.

1) My topic is individual differences, given credit for this concept is Francis Galton, who is actually Darwin's cousin. This topic fits into this class and chapter because it is the cornerstone topic of psychology. It is what people usually refer to as normal psychology. I think it is interesting because individual differences is what makes us us.

2) The aspects I will talk about is how individual differences came to be, a few major types of individual differences, and what exactly is individual differences.

3) It all started with phrenology which we have discussed in previous chapters which is the study of the little bumps on the brain. Next was Darwin's idea of certain traits people have becoming non existent because of survival of the fittest. Then was Galton, he thought if he studied the traits of people and found out which ones were the most superior he could breed superior people. He thought everything about people were inherited.

Major types of individual differences include but are not limited to the following- average intelligence, special abilities (they deal with with mental, artistic, personality and motor ability), differences in background (like our cultures and belief systems that come from them), alacrity of learning (the difference in quickness or grasping topics which can be seen in children of the same and different ages), mental age, motor ability, sex differences, nationality, economic situation, and personality.

Individual differences is seen as the variations from one person to another. They have been most studied in the area of personality development, for example self-esteem, rate of cognitive development and degree of agreeableness. In the past psychologists have over looked what makes people different and generally look at the average of people. It helps us not only see what makes people different but what makes us the same.

4) http://www.wilderdom.com/personality/L1-1Introduction.html
This give good information about the early study of IDs

http://www.publishyourarticles.net/knowledge-hub/education/what-are-the-different-types-of-individual-differences/5307/
This has a lot of good information about major IDs

http://tweenparenting.about.com/od/physicalemotionalgrowth/a/Individual-Differences.htm
meaning of ID

Terms:
Individual differences
Francis Galton
Darwin
survival of the fittest

1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
Charles Darwin. This chapter was mostly about him and it seemed to be something that I should know more about.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
• Darwin biography
• Evolution of emotion
• Impact on psychology
3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
Charles Darwin lived what seems to be a normal childhood. He went to a typical school and his father was a doctor. He had 5 siblings. He continued onto school at University of Edinburgh Medical School. When he graduated, he graduated with a distinction. From here, he got inspired by book and how he became interested in natural history. He started doing experiments on birds and specified it down to the Galapagos birds. He spent time on psychology by asking different questions about a trait that had to do with behavior. By doing this he could understand how a trait affects successes and failures as well as how it is projected onto face. Darwin argued that all organisms show emotion in the similar way. Many psychologists today still agree that this statement holds true regardless of culture
4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
http://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/charles-robert-darwin-1000.php
This site gave me insight to Darwin’s entire life. It shared his past before psychology therefore allowing me to see more how it led to his accomplishments.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-evolution-of-emotion-charles-darwins-little-known-psychology-experiment/
It showed how the evolution of emotion worked and how Darwin came to develop this theory. It talked about how he came to start this experiment and what it entailed. It gave more details about the evolution than the book provided.
http://darwin200.christs.cam.ac.uk/pages/index.php?page_id=e2
This article talked about how Darwin made an impact on psychology. It summed it up more quickly than the book did making it easier to learn about the main points rather than all the details.
Next make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
• Darwin biography
• Evolution of emotion
• Impact on psychology

1) My topic of choice is twin studies. I chose this topic because I have covered in another class very recently and I would like to do more research on it.
2) I would like to know what exactly a twin study is and what are some current ones being done and what are some of the early twin studies conducted.
3)A twin study is a research method that is comparing traits in identical and fraternal twins to determine what traits are due to genetics and which are due to environment. If the trait is found more often in identical twins (such as eye color) and not nearly as often in the fraternal twins (also known as a concordance rate) then it can be assumed that the trait of eye color is due to genetics rather than environment. One of the earliest twin studies was preformed in the early 1920s and looked at several identical and fraternal twins eye colors to determine whether or not it was a genetic trait. Even today twin studies are going on and are a major contributor to our knowledge on genetics. More often than not twin studies are done on twins who grow up in the same household, but on the rare occasions twins who were separated at birth and are able to be looked at to find similarities that are completely due to genetics rather than a shared environment growing up, such as posture, which is found to be more similar in identical twins than fraternal twins.
4)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTYCv1ObZrI
Provides a definition of twin studies while providing visual aids to keep the information straight, always a plus for myself when learning.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15989747
Provides an example of one of the first twin studies and what researchers were interested in learning.
http://www.livescience.com/47288-twin-study-importance-of-genetics.html
Provided several cases of twin studies in recent years.

Terminology: Twin Study

This chapter was mainly about Darwin and evolution. It also talked about a few other evolutionary psychologists. I decided to do my research on Francis Galton because the chapter didn’t talk about him as much as it did about Darwin. I also found Galton to be interesting because he was the only one in the chapter who studied individual differences instead of differences between species. I would like to talk about Galton’s research on human evolution, his research involving twin studies, and eugenics.
Galton was impressive at a very young age. Before he even started attending school, he could read and sign his name. His teachers were impressed with how smart he was. He ended up following a path similar to Charles Darwin’s (his cousin). He went to college, but decided to travel before deciding to settle down and do scientific work. He did his first scientific work in geology. He did some mapping and made weather predictions. Galton then decided that he wanted to study heredity, much like Darwin. This was where his work in psychology began. The emergence of Darwin’s book, The Origin of Species, was what sparked his interest in heredity. He began working on his book, Hereditary Genius. He wanted to prove that intelligence is based more on genetics than environment. To do this, he looked at people’s obituaries in the newspaper to see if he could find any “great” people. If he found a person that he would consider great, he would find their family members to see if they were also great people. He concluded that intelligence or talent is very hereditary. Many other scientists have built on his work since then.
Galton was the first psychologist to use twin studies to research the effects of nature and nurture. He published an article about it called “The History of Twins.” To study nature and nurture through twins, Galton found names of families with twins using an actuary. He then sent all of these families, about 600 of them, questionnaires. The questionnaires included many questions about physical and mental traits. He also sent questionnaires to the superintendents of asylums to see if he could find out anything about the occurrences of insanity in twins. He only received about 100 of his questionnaires back, however. We have made a lot of progress in the area of twin studies since Galton’s time. We have now figured out that there are two types of twins; monozygotic and dizygotic. It seems from his research that Galton thought that all children had the same genes from each parent, which we know today is not actually how it works. He argued that children from the same family have the same genes but they look different from each other because some genes are used to make up their body while other genes remain latent but are still passed on to the next generation. He also had an idea for why some twins are more similar than others. He thought that if the egg separated early in development, then the genes in the egg have not differentiated much so the eggs will be very similar (making monozygotic twins, in today’s terms). If the egg splits later in development, then the genes would be more differentiated, causing the two eggs to be less alike (dizygotic twins). Twin studies have definitely come a long way since then. We now know much more about genetics and how they work, which has helped us come a long way in the nature vs nurture dilemma. Although there were many problems with his research, he still got us started on the right track when it comes to this dilemma.
Galton is credited for coining the term eugenics. Eugenics is a term describing a variety of methods for enhancing the quality of a species, especially humans. As a result of his research on the heritability of intelligence, he wanted people to focus on positive eugenics. This meant that he wanted healthy, financially stable, intelligent people to reproduce more so that the next generation would have a higher average intelligence. He wanted to improve the human race overall. This also meant that he didn’t think that less desirable individuals (poor, unintelligent, unattractive) should reproduce, so he highly discouraged people like this to not reproduce. This was called negative eugenics. His goal was to make a superior generation of humans.
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/galton.htm
This site had a lot of information about Galton and his intelligence studies.
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/41/4/913.full
This site had most of the information that I used for Galton’s twin studies.
http://exhibits.hsl.virginia.edu/eugenics/2-origins/
This website had some information about eugenics.
http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/spring02/holland/Galton.htm
This website had more eugenics information.
Darwin, evolution, evolutionary psychology, Francis Galton, individual differences, species, human evolution, twin studies, eugenics, geology, heredity, Hereditary Genius, intelligence, genetics, environment, twin studies, nature, nurture, The Origin of Species, “The History of Twins,” insanity, monozygotic, dizygotic, eugenics, positive eugenics, negative eugenics,

1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.

My topic of interest for this week is eugenics. Chapter five briefly mentions eugenics in its discussion of Francis Galton. I find eugenics interesting because it is something I in which have limited background knowledge.

2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?

Three aspects of eugenics I would like to discuss include reasons why people supported eugenics, why people do not support eugenics, and whether or not eugenics continues today.

3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.

Eugenics is idea of improving genetics of humans. The word originated from Francis Galton in Great Britain in 1883, who thought humans with preferred traits, such as intelligence, should be selected to breed. If this selective breeding was completed on a large scale, the next generation would have better genetics, be more intelligent, and improve the future of the human race. This idea of eugenics spread to other parts of the world and was turned into an inhumane practice. Eugenics in America in the 19th and 20th centuries was not based on selective breeding, but instead American eugenicists prevented people with undesirable traits from breeding at all. The poor, minorities, and people with disabilities were sterilized without consent by governmental agencies. “Lethal chambers” were commonly used, which were public gas chambers. The American use of eugenics was inspiration for Adolf Hitler in Germany. Hitler took the already inhumane, American eugenics to an extreme, using scientific data to commit mass murders. After the Holocaust and World War II, no one wanted to be associated with the word eugenics because eugenics was associated with the evil-doings of Hitler and the Nazis. The biggest and most obvious reason to disapprove of eugenics is inclination towards cruelty and the lack of human rights.

One source in support of eugenics pointed out that not everyone is equal. The world we live in, post-World War II, thrives on the belief that everyone is born equal. It is argued that no one is born equal, that science proves that our genes make everyone different. Some people are naturally more intelligent. Some people are naturally more beautiful. Some people are naturally more musical. If this is true, it is suggested that eugenics would be able to create generations with more intelligent, beautiful, talented people and less unintelligent, ugly, untalented people. This would help the evolution of the human race to take strides in a positive directions, rather than a negative, less intelligent one. As of now, studies show that each generation has a lower average IQ than the last. It is suggested that this is because unintelligent people have more kids than intelligent people. Supporters of eugenics believe that the media and society portray eugenics in a negative way, associated with the Nazis, and believe that if the benefits of eugenics were explained to the public, more people would support it.

Does eugenics exist today? Yes and no. No, people are not being murdered by the masses based on undesirable traits. No, people are not being sterilized against their will. However, supporters of eugenics exist. Plus, research in genetics combined with modern technology have allowed disabilities and genetic mutations to be identified in pre-parents’ genes and in embryos prior to fertilization. Parents-to-be can choose to do genetic tests and choose embryos free of disease or possible mutations. The biggest difference between this eugenic-based idea and past eugenics is the freedom of choice to have the tests done and the choice to respond at their own will. The problem with this modern-eugenic idea lies within the needs of people who already have these diseases, disabilities, and mutations that people are now choosing to avoid, as well as people who will continue to be born with diseases, disabilities, and mutations, if their parents did not have genetic testing done. Will needs of these people be met? Will they be treated justly or will the idea of treating people equally vanish?

4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.

http://knowgenetics.org/history-of-eugenics/
This site is very helpful in explaining the basics of eugenics’ history. It also has a link at the bottom of the page to another article about whether or not eugenics exists today. Both of these articles’ information contributed to my post.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dh23eu.html
This site was useful to my blog in the sense of showing how inhumane eugenics really was and why it ceased to be supported after World War II.

http://www.eugenics.net/papers/caseforeugenics.html
This site was incredibly intriguing because it made an argument in support of eugenics. Typically, eugenics is related to Hitler, so people assume it is terrible. This site presented ideas for why eugenics is good for society, which was beneficial to the portion of my post that discussed support of eugenics.

http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1796
This article focused on the negative aspects of eugenics and America’s involvement, which was beneficial to my post in some ways.

Next make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.

Eugenics
Francis Galton

1. My topic is anthromorohism, which was studied by multiple psychologists mentioned in this chapter; this topic was also mentioned in this chapter too. I'm interested in this topic because I think it's interesting to hear about what it'd be like if we actually understood what our pets and animals thought and knew.
2. C. Llyod Morgan's dog studies
Greek meaning
Personification
3. C. Lloyd Morgan studied many animals but the animal that stuck out to me was the dog. He studied how they learn by trial and error. The dog tries to get out of the fence by jumping and what not, however, his jumping and bumping leads him to unlock the fence and him getting out. At that point, he learns that he can get out by hitting the lock on the fence, not any other way.
Anthromorohism comes from anthropos, human and morphe, form. Greek meanings always interest me because they usually seem to be so different from the name, unlike Spanish seeming so similar to English words. Anyway, anthromorphism means human form in Greek, and it is exactly the word is trying to explain in the ways of animals.
Personification is something that's usually compared with anthromorphism because they are similar in the ways that they relate human characteristics with "non human" things. The example that the website profits is that "Hilter is the personification of evil", which doesn't exactly match the idea of a dog having the knowledge of how to escape the yard, but it does deal with the idea that non human things can be characterized with human things, like evil being a non human thing and intelligence being a characteristic of humans.

4. http://www.britannica.com/topic/anthropomorphism
http://www.dailywritingtips.com/personification-vs-anthropomorphism/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropomorphism

1.Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.

For my Topical blog this week I chose to do Charles Darwin and his research in the Galapagos Islands. I chose to research this because I think it is very interesting and we talked about it in chapter. This topic interests me because it is very important when trying to understand evolution and how evolution came about. I think studying evolution and evolutionary psychology is vary important because it leads to the fields we have today without knowing the evolution we don’t know why things are the way they are. Without knowing why things are the way they are how can we learn how to modify it such as behavior. If we don’t understand it we can’t change it. That is why this topic is so interesting to me.

2.What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?

I will be discussing the topics of Darwin, Galapagos Island research and why that relates to psychology.

3.Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.

Charles Darwin was born on February 12, 1809. He was an English naturalist. He developed scientific theory of evolution using natural selection. Darwin originally started studying medicine at Edinburgh University in 1825. He than transferred to Christ’s College, Cambridge in 1828 because he hated everything about medicine. He then got into naturalism; he went on the beagle voyage in Brazilian jungles and the Andes Mountains for five years. Darwin began his research not knowing the things about evolution that he finds later. Throughout his research in the islands he noted three different species of mockingbirds and he also noticed differences in tortoises. Because of this it changed the understanding of the world. For years he spent rigorous time on the islands and in the jungles taking notes and observing animal behavior and all the different species. He coined the term natural selection, which explains why things evolve. Natural selection helps species survive. Darwin wrote a book called Origin of Species that was published in 1859. Darwin said psychology would be based on a new foundation. Evolutionary psychology was created by the work of Darwin’s theory of evolution. This theory provides the outline of thinking about human behavior. Darwin did work with human evolution and expression of emotion. With this he showed that you could use testing comparing data to learn how behavior evolves. “An evolutionary approach to studying behavior and psychology allows scientists to ask different questions about a trait.” (Darwin200) Evolutionary Psychology has opened many eyes to understanding human behavior. Using this we can compare behavior of humans to that of other animal behaviors. Using this method you can study sexual factors as well such as mate choice, desire, and orientation. This can also show parenting and caregiving developments. This finding of evolution has completely changed the field of psychology. One more final thing that Darwin did for psychology was creating the comparative method. This shows how our own behavior is viewed, mental abilities and other animals as well. Darwin has made a GINORMOUS influence on psychology and behavior modification.

4.Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.

http://www.galapagos.org/about_galapagos/charles-darwin/
This link was a very good link. I enjoyed reading the webpage I thought they did a good job with the information. This page really helped me with the information about the Galapagos Island and the research Darwin has done.

http://darwin200.christs.cam.ac.uk/pages/index.php?page_id=e2
I chose this website because the information was very good and it helped me a lot with the topic of how it relates to psychology. I thought the link was very interesting to read and I liked that the page was posted by the school that he went to so you know the information is reliable.

http://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-Darwin
I chose this website because it was really well detailed and had a lot of good information about Darwin and his research and his life. This article contributed a lot to my blog because it helped me with my topics of Darwin and the Galapagos Islands.

Next make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.

Darwin, Natural selection, evolution, evolutionary psychology, behavior,