David Sepkoski
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780226348612
- eISBN:
- 9780226354613
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226354613.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This chapter begins the story by exploring how the idea of extinction emerged as a biological concept in the nineteenth century. Despite the current ubiquity of the term, extinction challenged ...
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This chapter begins the story by exploring how the idea of extinction emerged as a biological concept in the nineteenth century. Despite the current ubiquity of the term, extinction challenged earlier notions of the stability of nature and the benevolence of a creator god. When naturalists first determined that the geological record revealed that a great many species which had formerly existed have become extinct, new ideas about the "balance of nature" had to be developed that could account for extinction as a process contributing to overall natural stability. Two of the central characters in this chapter are Georges Cuvier, who was responsible for confirming the empirical fact of extinction and who developed a "catastrophic" model of geo-historical change, and Charles Lyell, whose view that extinction is an ordinary feature of natural history had an enormous influence on later understandings of the relationship between extinction and biological diversity.Less
This chapter begins the story by exploring how the idea of extinction emerged as a biological concept in the nineteenth century. Despite the current ubiquity of the term, extinction challenged earlier notions of the stability of nature and the benevolence of a creator god. When naturalists first determined that the geological record revealed that a great many species which had formerly existed have become extinct, new ideas about the "balance of nature" had to be developed that could account for extinction as a process contributing to overall natural stability. Two of the central characters in this chapter are Georges Cuvier, who was responsible for confirming the empirical fact of extinction and who developed a "catastrophic" model of geo-historical change, and Charles Lyell, whose view that extinction is an ordinary feature of natural history had an enormous influence on later understandings of the relationship between extinction and biological diversity.
