Chapter 3 (Jalen Jones)

Chapter 3 is all about the differences between ideas. President of Geological Society of London, William Whewell, believed that extinction was a process that was quick and caused by a unforseen deadly event. This theory is known as "catastrophism" and its followers, "catastrophists." Whewell believed that overall scientists (with the exception of George Lyell) agreed with this idea. Lyell was a uniformitarian. This meant that he believed that extinction "occurred at a very slow pace-so slow that...it would not be surprising were it to go unnoticed." Though this is technically correct, Charles Darwin argued that evolution could only occur if there was a dominant species to take over the original species resources. With this said, it connects to point 5 of the APES themes. During that time, it was pretty hard to come up with a solution to the cause of evolution. But, one thing that these scientists understood was the fact that there were connections between the cultural and social context of an environment. They just needed to see what those connections were.