Examples of hypotheses. Examples of Scientific Hypotheses
Planet Vulcan. The 19th-century French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier could not explain the strange orbit of Mercury in any way, and made the assumption that another planet is located next to the Sun - Vulcan. Even several reports were published about the observation of a mysterious planet, but they all contradicted each other. In the 20th century, the theory of relativity dispelled the mystery of the orbit of Mercury, and with it the theory of Vulcan.
Spontaneous generation is a hypothesis that has been believed for thousands of years. This refers to the emergence of living organisms not from other organisms, eggs or seeds, but from an inanimate environment. Even Aristotle believed that fly larvae spontaneously generated in animal corpses. And although the question of the origin of life on Earth remains open, basically this theory has been refuted.
The expanding Earth is a surprisingly popular idea that existed right up to the middle of the 20th century. It was believed that the movement of the continents was due to the fact that the Earth is gradually increasing in volume. This hypothesis was seriously considered by Charles Darwin. The study of tectonic plates in the 1960s and later proved that the Earth has not changed in size for at least 400 million years.
Phlogiston is a hypothetical element that fills all combustible substances. Chemists of the 17th century assumed that it was he who provided combustion, and was also responsible for various processes in metals, for example, for the formation of rust. The phlogiston theory was superseded by the oxygen theory in the 1770s.
Martian channels. In 1877, the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli announced that he could see mysterious straight lines on Mars and called them "channels". Later, a theory was formulated that the canals are of artificial origin and are used by the Martians to irrigate the planet. In the 20th century, the hypothesis was refuted - the lines turned out to be an optical illusion.
Ether is a mysterious medium that many great scientists believed in, such as Aristotle, René Descartes and Thomas Jung. True, they all understood the ether in different ways - as an analogue of vacuum, the original substance or "transport" for light. These theories were extremely popular, but after lengthy research they were refuted.
Tabula rasa is the theory that a person is born like a “clean slate”, without any mental and sensual content, receiving it only during growing up. It was formulated by Aristotle and widespread until the end of the 20th century. Even a deep study of genetic mechanisms and the transmission of hereditary traits could not finally convince the supporters of this hypothesis of its fallacy.
Phrenology is one of the first and most famous pseudosciences, determining the mental qualities of a person by the shape of the skull and the size of the brain. Phrenologists argued that the larger a person's brain, the more information he can store. Further development of neurophysiology refuted these theses.
Immovable Universe. Einstein was certainly one of the greatest scientists in the history of mankind, but he also made mistakes. He believed that the universe is motionless, its size remains unchanged, and it is held back by a powerful anti-gravitational field. After a long dispute with Einstein, this hypothesis was refuted by the Russian mathematician Alexander Friedman.
Cold fusion is the "holy grail" of chemists, the theory of the implementation of nuclear fusion without ultra-high temperatures. In 1989, Martin Fleischman and Stanley Pons claimed to have successfully performed CNS, but no one could replicate their experiment. At the moment, the hypothesis has not received convincing evidence.
Ancient misconceptions, such as the Sun orbiting the Earth, or more modern ones, such as that Venus is covered in greenery and habitable, have been debunked with the development of astronomy and astronautics. What other well-known scientific hypotheses turned out to be erroneous?
Statistics is a complex science of measuring and analyzing various data. As in many other disciplines, in this industry there is the concept of a hypothesis. So, a hypothesis in statistics is any position that needs to be accepted or rejected. Moreover, in this industry there are several types of such assumptions, which are similar in definition, but differ in practice. The null hypothesis is today's subject of study.
From general to particular: hypotheses in statistics
Another, no less important, departs from the main definition of assumptions - a statistical hypothesis is the study of the general set of objects important for science, regarding which scientists draw conclusions. It can be tested using a sample (part of the population). Here are some examples of statistical hypotheses:
1. The performance of the whole class may depend on the level of education of each student.
2. The elementary course of mathematics is equally assimilated by both children who came to school at 6 years old and by children who came at 7.
A simple hypothesis in statistics is an assumption that uniquely characterizes a certain parameter of a quantity taken by a scientist.
A complex one consists of several or an infinite number of simple ones. Some area is indicated or there is no exact answer.
It is useful to understand several definitions of hypotheses in statistics so as not to confuse them in practice.
Null hypothesis concept
The null hypothesis is the theory that there are two populations that are indistinguishable. However, at the scientific level, there is no concept of “do not differ”, but there is “their similarity is zero”. From this definition, the concept was formed. In statistics, the null hypothesis is referred to as H0. Moreover, the extreme value of the impossible (unlikely) is considered to be from 0.01 to 0.05 or less.
It is better to understand what a null hypothesis is, an example from life will help. The teacher at the university suggested that the different level of preparation of students in the two groups for test work is caused by insignificant parameters, random reasons that do not affect the overall level of education (the difference in the preparation of the two groups of students is zero).
However, it is worthwhile to give an example of an alternative hypothesis - an assumption that refutes the assertion of the null theory (H1). For example: the director of the university suggested that the different levels of preparation for test work among students of the two groups are caused by the use of different teaching methods by teachers (the difference in the preparation of the two groups is significant and there is an explanation for this).
Now you can immediately see the difference between the concepts of "null hypothesis" and "alternative hypothesis". Examples illustrate these concepts.
Null hypothesis testing
Making an assumption is half the trouble. The real challenge for beginners is testing the null hypothesis. This is where many of the difficulties await.
Using the alternative hypothesis method, which states something opposite to the null theory, you can compare both options and choose the correct one. That's how statistics work.
Let the null hypothesis be H0 and the alternative H1, then:
H0: c = c0;
H1: c ≠ c0.
Here c is some mean value of the population to be found, and c0 is the initially given value against which the hypothesis is being tested. There is also a certain number X - the average value of the sample, by which c0 is determined.
So, the test is to compare X and c0, if X=c0, then the null hypothesis is accepted. If Х≠c0, then by condition the alternative is considered correct.
"Trust" method of verification
There is a most powerful way in which the null hypothesis is easily tested in practice. It consists in constructing a range of values up to 95% accuracy.
First you need to know the formula for calculating the confidence interval:
X - t*Sx ≤ c ≤ X + t*Sx,
where X is the initially given number based on the alternative hypothesis;
t - tabular values (Student's coefficient);
Sx is the standard error, which is calculated as Sx = σ/√n, where the numerator is the standard deviation and the denominator is the sample size.
So let's assume a situation. Before the repair, the conveyor produced 32.1 kg of final products per day, and after the repair, according to the entrepreneur, the efficiency increased, and the conveyor, according to a weekly test, began to produce 39.6 kg on average.
The null hypothesis would state that the repair had no effect on the efficiency of the conveyor. An alternative hypothesis would say that the repair radically changed the efficiency of the conveyor, so its productivity increased.
According to the table we find n=7, t = 2.447, from where the formula will take the following form:
39.6 - 2.447*4.2 ≤ s ≤ 39.6 + 2.447*4.2;
29.3 ≤ c ≤ 49.9.
It turns out that the value 32.1 is in the range, and therefore the value proposed by the alternative - 39.6 - is not automatically accepted. Remember that the null hypothesis is tested first, and then the opposite one.
Varieties of denial
Before that, such a variant of constructing a hypothesis was considered, where H0 asserts something, and H1 refutes it. Where could such a system come from?
H0: c = c0;
H1: c ≠ c0.
But there are two more related methods of refutation. For example, the null hypothesis states that the average grade for a class is greater than 4.54, while the alternative would then say that the average grade for the same grade is less than 4.54. And it will look like this in the form of a system:
H0: s ⩾ 4.54;
H1: with< 4.54.
Note that the null hypothesis states that the value is greater than or equal to, while the statistical one states that it is strictly less. The severity of the inequality sign matters a lot!
Statistical verification
Statistical testing of null hypotheses consists in using a statistical test. Such criteria are subject to various distribution laws.
For example, there is an F-test, which is calculated using the Fisher distribution. There is a T-test, most often used in practice, depending on the Student's distribution. Pearson's squared goodness-of-fit, etc.
Acceptance area of the null hypothesis
In algebra there is a concept of "domain of admissible values". This is such a segment or point on the X-axis, on which there is a set of statistics values for which the null hypothesis is true. The extreme points of the segment are critical values. The rays on the right and left sides of the segment are critical regions. If the found value is included in them, then the null theory is refuted and the alternative one is accepted.
Refutation of the null hypothesis
The null hypothesis in statistics is at times a very quirky concept. During verification, two types of errors can be made:
1. Rejection of the correct null hypothesis. Let's denote the first type as a=1.
2. Acceptance of a false null hypothesis. The second type will be denoted as a=2.
It should be understood that these are not the same parameters, the outcomes of errors can differ significantly from each other and have different samples.
An example of two types of errors
Complex concepts are easier to understand with an example.
During the production of a certain drug, extreme caution is required from scientists, since exceeding the dose of one of the components provokes a high level of toxicity of the finished drug, from which patients taking it can die. However, at the chemical level, it is impossible to detect an overdose.
Because of this, before releasing the drug for sale, a small dose of it is tested on rats or rabbits by injecting them with the drug. If most of the subjects die, then the drug is not allowed to be sold; if the test subjects are alive, then the drug is allowed to be sold in pharmacies.
The first case: in fact, the drug was not toxic, but an oversight was made during the experiment and the drug was classified as toxic and was not allowed to be sold. A=1.
The second case: in the course of another experiment, when testing another batch of the drug, it was decided that the drug was not toxic, and it was allowed to be sold, although in fact the drug was poisonous. A=2.
The first option will entail large financial costs for the supplier-entrepreneur, since he will have to destroy the entire batch of medicine and start from scratch.
The second situation will provoke the death of patients who bought and used this medicine.
Probability theory
Not only zero, but all hypotheses in statistics and economics are divided according to the level of significance.
Significance level - the percentage of occurrence of errors of the first kind (rejection of the correct null hypothesis).
The first level is 5% or 0.05, i.e. the probability of making a mistake is 5 to 100 or 1 to 20.
the second level is 1% or 0.01, i.e. the probability is 1 in 100.
the third level is 0.1% or 0.001, the probability is 1 in 1000.
Hypothesis testing criteria
If the scientists have already concluded that the null hypothesis is correct, then it must be tested. This is necessary to rule out an error. There is a main criterion for testing the null hypothesis, which consists of several stages:
1. Admissible error probability P=0.05 is taken.
2. Statistics are selected for criterion 1.
3. Using a known method, the area of admissible values is found.
4. The value of the T statistic is now calculated.
5. If T (statistics) belongs to the area of acceptance of the null hypothesis (as in the "confidence" method), then the assumptions are considered true, which means that the null hypothesis itself remains true.
That's how statistics work. The null hypothesis, when properly tested, will be accepted or rejected.
It is worth noting that for ordinary entrepreneurs and users, the first three stages can be very difficult to perform accurately, so they are trusted by professional mathematicians. But stages 4 and 5 can be performed by anyone who is sufficiently familiar with statistical verification methods.
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HYPOTHESIS- (from the Greek. assumption) 1) a subsystem of theoretical knowledge; 2) the form of development of knowledge (scientific, philosophical, practical, etc.). G. is a judgment, the truth value of which is indefinite. T. are widely used in any field ... ... Modern Philosophical Dictionary
- (from the Greek týpos imprint, form and ... genesis (See ... genesis)) (biological), the emergence in the process of evolution of new systematic groups of high rank. The author of the term "T." German geologist and paleontologist O. Schindevolf (1936). New groups... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia
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If the connection between the hypothesis and the consequences arising from it is not in doubt, and if, further, the verification of one of the consequences reveals its falsity, then the falsity of the hypothesis is necessarily deduced from this.
As already mentioned, the logical mechanism of such a refutation of the hypothesis is based on the use of the negative mode of conditionally categorical reasoning (see examples on p. 74). The relation between logical reason and consequence is such that the falsity of the second is incompatible with the truth of the first. From the premises “If the patient has diabetes mellitus, then his blood must contain sugar” and “The blood of this patient does not contain sugar”, a conclusion follows, refuting the doctor’s assumption “This patient has diabetes mellitus”. According to Kant's cosmological theory (XVIII century), the solar system arose from a once-existing rotating mass of matter, from which clumps of matter separated, becoming planets and their satellites. It followed from the hypothesis that all the planets and their satellites rotate in the same direction, the reverse rotation of some satellites subsequently discovered is incompatible with the main idea of the hypothesis and, therefore, is sufficient to refute it.
At first glance, the refutation of the hypothesis is an indicator of failure, the wrong direction of research, erroneous methods, etc. Is it so? It has already been said that a hypothesis ideally contains the idea of self-negation: it must either turn into reliable knowledge (lose hypotheticality), or, having turned out to be untenable, give way to other hypotheses. If the hypothesis is proven (turned into reliable knowledge), its productivity is undeniable. But does the refutation of the hypothesis (establishing its falsity) have any cognitive value? It would seem not: after all, the efforts expended on its development did not lead to the discovery of the truth.
However, such an idea of the process of cognition does not correspond to its complexity. The development of knowledge is not a straight line connecting one absolute truth with another, it is inseparable from errors, from various kinds of delusions. From this point of view, the refutation of the hypothesis also has a certain cognitive value, it allows you to overcome delusion and thus contributes to the search for truth. The above is confirmed by the examples given above: having made sure that the preliminary diagnosis is false, the doctor continues to look for a real illness, etc. The history of science knows many hypotheses, the refutation of which freed the minds from false ideas and thereby served in the XVII-XVIII centuries the hypothesis of the existence of "imponderable substances" - caloric, phlogiston, magnetic fluids).
“Progress does not consist in replacing an incorrect theory with a correct one, but in replacing one incorrect theory with another incorrect, but refined one.”
Stephen Hawking
At a time when science was taking its first steps, hypotheses were often built on the basis of insufficient and unreliable information. The lack of initial data forced the researchers to strain their imaginations. The authors did not skimp on incredible, stunning assumptions, because there were no predecessors that would limit the flight of thought. Putting a clean sheet on the table, the scientist picked up a pen and described the structure of the universe as he pleases. Often it turned out amazing nonsense. But in a true genius, even mistakes led to brilliant conclusions.
HOLLOW EARTH
The hollow Earth hypothesis now has very few supporters, even among true connoisseurs of parascientific concepts. The idea of nested spheres also died in science fiction literature. Even in magic-riddled and dragon-infested worlds, the "hollow earth" fantasy is too much of an offense against the laws of physics. But about a century ago, the best authors who worked in the fantasy genre paid tribute to the underworld. Edgar Poe, Jules Verne, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Edgar Burroughs, Vladimir Obruchev touched on this topic. The hypothesis of a hollow Earth has never been generally accepted, but it has fallen into the category of frankly anti-scientific relatively recently. There was a period when it was very popular, largely due to its noble origin. In the middle of the 17th century, it was put forward by Rene Descartes, the great French philosopher and mathematician, who formulated the principles of rational knowledge of the world that underlie the scientific method.
Being the first scientist in the modern sense of the word, Descartes, of course, could not rely on the works of his predecessors. And in the absence of a better one, he built his hypotheses on the basis of "Aristotelian physics", traces of which we can still see in fantasy worlds. According to Aristotle, any substance consists of four elements mixed in various proportions - earth, water, air and fire. The elements, in turn, appeared as a result of the decomposition of the protomatter of the Universe - the ether.
Even in 2008, glowing phlogiston still fills the bowels of the planet. What can we say about the XVII-XIX centuries? (frame from the film "Journey to the Center of the Earth")
Trying to explain how the solar system arose, Descartes came to conclusions that were not far from the truth. The luminary and the planets, in his opinion, arose as a result of compression and twisting of the primary substance. Only not a gas-dust nebula, but a space-filling ether. It was the decay of compressed protomatter, accompanied by the release of phlogiston (fiery matter), that made the stars shine! Descartes considered sunspots as solidifying, then again melting stone islands. The earth, according to Descartes, was also a small luminary, and the ether in its bowels disintegrated thousands of years ago. The stone islands merged and turned into a crust, the water, freed from the light elements that had escaped into space - phlogiston and air - filled the oceans. But spots on the Sun prove that the cosmic bodies formed by the condensation of protomatter solidify starting from the surface. And by the time the bark appears, there should still be undecayed ether inside ... Being a mixture of all four elements, ether, even compressed, should have about a third less density than the heaviest element - earth (it is also a stone). Consequently, after the decay of the ether, the stone will occupy only a third of the internal volume of the planet. The Earth will be a "matryoshka" of several solid spheres separated by layers of air and water.
The hypothesis was criticized in the scientific community, but it also gained many supporters who managed, without getting up from their chairs, to thoroughly explore the underworld and make a lot of amazing discoveries. So, for example, it was assumed that the bowels of the planet are brightly lit, since the shining phlogiston accumulates under the arches, that the climate there is warm and humid due to the predominance of the elements of air and water, and that it is in the bowels of the Earth that the descendants of the ten lost tribes of Israel are found. Why not? The era of the Great Geographical Discoveries on the surface of the planet has almost ended, and the Jews taken into Assyrian captivity have not been found.
Anticipating that the writers of the future would need a lot of room to accommodate monsters, Edmund Halley prudently divided the underworld into upper, middle, and lower
In 1692, the hypothesis was supported by the great English astronomer Edmond Halley. Halley calculated that, in addition to a core the size of Mercury, the Earth has three concentric shells 800 kilometers thick. Calculations, according to the custom of that time, were made on the basis of considerations of a general philosophical nature, but Halley cited an argument in favor of the hypothesis, which remained relevant for two centuries. Earth's magnetic poles do not coincide with geographic ones! This means that there must be some massive body inside the planet, rotating independently of the crust. At the same time, Halley explained the auroras, blaming them on the same phlogiston leaving the "inner atmospheres" through holes at the poles.
Halley's hypothesis, which explains the strange behavior of the compass needle, was indeed confirmed. It is now known that the iron-nickel core of the planet rotates out of sync with the crust
Of course, with the accumulation of knowledge about the hypothesis of a hollow Earth, more and more questions arose. Phlogiston and ether were gradually eroded from physics. After the discovery of the tidal forces of the Sun and Moon, it was impossible to explain how the Earth's system of nested spheres remains stable. Nevertheless, even at the beginning of the 19th century, the main goal of the planned expeditions to the poles was considered to be the search for holes through which it would be possible to climb inside the globe. Only at the turn of the last century, the hollow Earth hypothesis finally became marginal. Instead of the lost tribes of Israel, the inner spheres are now inhabited by Hitler, who escaped from the surface through the polar hole in Antarctica, aliens flying on saucers and, it seems, giants from drowned Lemuria.
GLOBAL FLOOD
If the hypothesis of a hollow Earth, despite the support of such titans as Descartes and Halley, was accepted by the scientific community with great caution, then the reality of the Flood in the 17th-19th centuries was beyond doubt. To one degree or another, all natural scientists working at that time paid attention to the causes and circumstances of the global flood.
Real evidence of the flood was discovered only in the last century during the excavations of the Sumerian city of Ur. The flood, coinciding in time with the biblical one, flooded, of course, not the entire planet, but only a small part of Mesopotamia
Work in this area continues to this day by "creation scientists." And just science freaks who study mythical events with the same enthusiasm with which "British scientists" diagnose Gollum from a photograph. But there is a fundamental difference between the old and the latest flood studies. Unlike modern intelligent design, the scientists of the 18th century were sincere believers. Accordingly, they considered the Flood not as a hypothesis that needed confirmation, but as a fact. Science is supposed to explain facts rationally, and no one made an exception for the Flood. After all, scientists did not believe that we were talking about a miracle that violated the laws of physics. Miracles, as is clear even from the tale of the golden fish, happen instantly. The water, according to the Scriptures, arrived for a long time. This means that the Lord did not bring it down to Earth at once, but only launched a certain physical mechanism with limited productivity.
The study of the flood was of great importance for contemporary science. After all, the history of the Earth in those days was calculated only in thousands of years. Of course, there were eruptions, rivers overflowed, rain and wind undermined the stones, but from the chronicles it followed that the intensity of these processes in the past was not higher. So, for all the scars on the face of the planet, all the sedimentary formations, the appearance of which could not be explained by the ordinary and brief (by the standards of geology) exposure to the elements, only the flood was responsible!
The hypothesis of boiling underground oceans was generally confirmed. According to modern concepts, the planet's molten mantle contains ten times more water than the hydrosphere.
From the very beginning, flooding split into two competing currents. Some scientists, referring to the Scripture, which speaks only of a monstrous downpour, believed that the source of the water that flooded the Earth was the atmosphere. But they could not explain where the water came from in the clouds, or where it then went. Other researchers, citing geysers as an example, argued that the waters actually poured out from the bowels of the planet and, having cooled, went into them. "Opening skies" in the framework of this hypothesis turned out to be a secondary effect. Underground cavities spewed boiling water, which then evaporated and rained down. Both versions had weaknesses. If the water came from above, the grandiose streams rushing from the still unflooded hills to the seas should have left traces that are noticeable even thousands of years later. They were searched for and not found. The fountains that struck from the bottom of the oceans would certainly have driven colossal tidal waves to the shores. A tsunami would destroy Noah's Ark!
Studying the fossilized shells found high in the mountains, Mikhail Lomonosov was one of the first to come to the conclusion that such finds do not prove, but refute the flood hypothesis. Water would not have been able to lift the clams so high. The relief changed - rise from the bottom of the sea
The "atmospheric" hypothesis, however, quickly lost supporters. The question of the Ark, of course, remained unresolved, but geologists met arguments in favor of the second theory at every turn. Only mighty waves could throw the shells of sea mollusks high into the mountains and scatter huge boulders all over Europe ... And from the way they were scattered, it turned out that the water came from the north - somewhere there the underground oceans broke out. Probably, the researchers believed, mountain ranges saved Noah from the monstrous waves. It remained to work out the details - for example, to calculate the speed of the flow of water capable of carrying a boulder the size of a three-story house ... But the result turned out to be the same every time. The researcher was convinced that this could not be so. The advancing and then receding waters of the flood should have left a uniform, albeit varying depending on the relief, imprint on the entire surface of the Earth. Naturalists who studied the sediments of sea and river floods had an excellent idea of how exactly in one place or another the geological consequences of the flood should look like. And they did not find anything similar. The cautious murmur quickly grew into a full-fledged riot on the ship. At first, doubts arose about the accuracy of the biblical description of the catastrophe. And then the reality of this event. Finally, it turned out that no one needed the flood at all. as a subject of research. Trying to comprehend the mechanism of global flooding and discover its traces, scientists have made many discoveries that have radically changed ideas about the past of the planet. So, studying sedimentary rocks, geologists found that the age of the Earth is estimated at least millions of years (the methods of those times did not yet allow dating older deposits). And the boulders brought by the flood suddenly turned out to be traces of a glacier that once covered Europe.
LAMARKISM
While fierce battles were going on in geology between supporters of the atmospheric and tectonic hypotheses of the flood, on the other side of the front - in biology - there was a suspicious silence. For if geologists considered the flood as an event at least partially amenable to scientific knowledge, then the creation of the living world, according to Scripture, was a miracle, and there was nothing to study here. In addition, the version of the origin of life proposed by the Bible was not interesting to science. The intervention of a supernatural force did not explain why the Earth was inhabited by these kinds of animals.
Biologists were in no hurry to publish their seditious conclusions, but distrust of Scripture arose in their midst very early and took root deeply. Back in 1735, Carl Linnaeus published the work "The System of Nature", where he proposed a classification of the animal world, which, with minor changes, is still used today. And although in the preface the author mentioned that all animals and birds were created at the same time and remain unchanged, in the work itself, the species were divided into genera and families. That very transparently hinted at the presence of a common ancestor in similar species.
No one expressed any claims to the terminology introduced by Linnaeus. Even then it seemed obvious that the similarity of living beings is caused by kinship. Nevertheless, at this stage, scientific thought stalled, faced with an obstacle much more serious than the authority of Holy Scripture. The thinkers of the middle of the 18th century could not comprehend the causes of speciation.
It was believed that for thousands of years humanity existed in a crumbling and degrading world. Adam and Eve were expelled from Paradise. The bountiful Golden Age gave way to the brutal Iron Age. Ancient wisdom, once revealed by the gods to the first ancestors, was forgotten. Soils were depleted. And each next generation was inferior to the previous one. What any person who lived to gray hair could readily confirm ... Until the 17th century, inclusive, there was no idea of progress in human thinking. And even the latest inventions were considered only a "rediscovery" of what the infallible Aristotle certainly knew. The parchment just didn't survive.
In the 18th century, it became impossible to ignore progress. Having thoroughly raged in military affairs and production, he eventually spread to the humanitarian sphere. Pushing themselves with thought, the philosophers formulated the concept of neo-humanism, according to which the movement towards perfection was still possible. But only as a result of human volitional activity.
All fossil bones have long been considered the remains of giants who died during the flood. After all, Scripture did not mention other extinct species.
Biology, this discovery seemed to give nothing. The differences between modern and fossil species were still explained using Cuvier's hypothesis, according to which all species are unchanged and have existed since the beginning of time, but with each flood the diversity of living things on Earth is reduced.
At the beginning of the 19th century, it became clear that the fossils were arranged in layers in an orderly manner, which means that antediluvian animals did not die in an instant. Because of this, scientists eventually counted as many as twenty-seven Floods!
Only in 1809 Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's Philosophy of Zoology showed science a way out of the impasse. The naturalist, substantiating his point of view with strikingly illiterate arguments even by the standards of the early 19th century, argued that the desire for perfection and complication is an integral property of matter, including living matter. It was Lamarck who first introduced the concept of the evolution of species and the spontaneous generation of life. He also proposed a mechanism for evolutionary change. They occurred, according to the author, as a result of exercises. For example, running led to lengthening of the legs, and then this acquired quality was inherited.
The weakness of Lamarck's hypothesis was evident from the very beginning. The legs, no matter how much you run, did not become longer, and the acquired qualities were not inherited. And many hereditary qualities - for example, protective coloring - could not be improved at all by exercise. Nevertheless, fair criticism did not prevent Lamarckism from gaining many supporters. For the idea of improvement through exercise was ideally suited to the philosophy of humanism.
Along with neo-humanism, dialectical philosophy also developed at the end of the 18th century. But the deciphering of Hegel's writings, written in an impossibly complex, dark and confusing language, took several decades before it was possible to understand: matter moves due to the struggle of opposites. This idea gradually took over the minds, creating the basis for the theory of natural selection.
It may seem strange, but Lamarck's hypothesis, which rejects the involvement of the Creator in the origin of life and species, did not cause outrage. The educated public readily accepted the idea of evolution as the result of individual effort and a metaphysical "striving for perfection." But the publication in 1853 of Darwin's On the Origin of Species had the effect of a bombshell. Supporters of the ideas of Lamarck and Darwin rushed at each other with such fury that the awakened adherents of "intelligent design" literally did not have time to put in a word.
Survived in this confrontation, as it should be according to Darwin, the strongest. The end was set at the beginning of the 20th century thanks to the development of genetics. The opening of the mechanism of heredity showed that lifetime exercises cannot affect the offspring. In science, therefore, the question was closed once and for all.
The merits of Jean Baptiste Lamarck are now forgotten even by creationists. Yes, his hypothesis was wrong. But in science, a well-posed question is more valuable than a found answer. Scientists who comprehended the mysteries of the structure of the Earth from the standpoint of the condensation of the ether, explained glacial deposits in the framework of the flood hypothesis and developed the idea of “evolution by exercise”, moved, of course, in the wrong direction. But along the way, many great discoveries were made.
