Natural Philosophy - Biology Notes PDF

# Biology Notes: Taxonomy and Chordates ## Taxonomy ### Ancient Taxonomy - **Great chain of being**: From Aristotle. Everything is organized in a straight line with human beings at the top and organized based upon similarity to humans. - Humans are **rational** (have a rational soul). - An...

# Biology Notes: Taxonomy and Chordates ## Taxonomy ### Ancient Taxonomy - **Great chain of being**: From Aristotle. Everything is organized in a straight line with human beings at the top and organized based upon similarity to humans. - Humans are **rational** (have a rational soul). - Animals have senses, are able to move, have appetites, grow, and can reproduce. They have a **sensitive soul**. - Plants can just grow and reproduce. They have a **vegetative soul**. - Minerals are inanimate and have no **soul.** ### Medieval Taxonomy - Great chain of being now had man in the middle with God at the top. - Between God and man are all of the orders of **angels**. - Man is the centerpiece of the eternal/rational/spiritual realm and the changing material realm. - Man was divided into three estates of clergy, nobles, and peasants. - Animals, plants, and minerals stayed the same. ### Strain on the Great chain of being - New creatures coming in from voyages of **discovery** e.g. kangaroo. - Different groups came up with different systems of organization, so natural philosophers had a hard time communicating with each other. - Carl Linnaeus (18th century) developed a group-within-group system that became the basis for our modern system. He believed that we could ultimately assemble the **GCOB** once we discovered all of the creatures God made and think his thoughts after him. - GCOB was destroyed in the 19th century, especially after Charles Darwin's theory of **evolution**. ### Modern Taxonomy: Group within group system where every level has a category name - ALL living things are made of cells: **Domain**, **Kingdom**, **Phylum**, **Class**, **Order**, **Family**, **Genus**, **Species**. There is ANOTHER modern taxonomic system called **cladistics** that tries to organize creatures based upon hypothesized common ancestry. We are not going over this system. #### 1. **Domain** - The largest category that divides all living things into one of three groups. - **Eukarya**: This group contains all creatures that have eukaryotic cells i.e. they are big and complex e.g. Protists, fungi, plants, and animals. - **Bacteria**: This group contains all creatures that have prokaryotic cells i.e. they are small and simple AND live in normal environments. - **Archaea**: This group contains all creatures that have prokaryotic cells AND live in harsh environments e.g. boiling mud, high acid, or high salt. #### 2. **Kingdom** - Domains are divided up into kingdoms e.g. Domain Eukarya is made up of these kingdoms: - "**Protista**". Not a kingdom anymore, but this group contains the unicellular eukaryotic creatures e.g. amoebas. - **Animalia**: Multicellular heterotrophs with external digestion and cell walls of chitin. - **Plantae**: Multicellular autotrophs with cell walls of cellulose. - **Fungi**: Multicellular heterotrophs with no cell walls. #### 3. **Phylum** - Kingdoms are divided into groups called phyla (Singular phylum) e.g. the animal kingdom contains the following phyla. - **Chordata**: All creatures in this group have the following characteristics at some point in their life: - **Dorsal hollow nerve cord**. - **Pharyngeal pouches and post anal tail**. - **MODERN TAXONOMY PREFERS CELLS AND EMBRYONIC DEVELOPMENT AS ORGANIZING PRINCIPLES INSTEAD OF THE ADULT FORM OF THE CREATURE.** - **Subphylum Vertebrata**: All vertebrates or creatures with a backbone. There are two other subphyla containing lancelets and tunicates - the two gimpy creatures who forced us to have an entire phylum to contain both them and **EVERY** vertebrate. If we valued the adult creature, or the **final cause**, then we would not have this nonsense. - **Arthropoda**: Exoskeleton of chitin. Protostomes. E.g. lobsters and insects - **Echinodermata**: Radial symmetry deuterostomes, e.g. sea stars - **Mollusca**: Protostomes with a mantle that can make a shell e.g. clams - **Platyhelminthes**: Protostomes with no appendages and flat, segmented bodies e.g. flatworm or tapeworm - **Nematoda**: Protostomes with no appendages with round, unsegmented bodies e.g. round worm, ascaris. - **Annelida**: Protostomes with no appendages with round, segmented bodies e.g. earthworms. - **Cnidaria**: Protostomes with radial symmetry and stinging cells e.g. jellyfish - **Porifera**: Protostomes that are asymmetrical e.g. sponges #### 4. **Class**: Phyla are divided into classes. #### 5. **Order**: Classes are divided into orders. #### 6. **Family**: Orders are divided into families. #### 7. **Genus**: Families are divided into Genus. #### 8. **Species**: Genus is divided into species. # Natural Philosophy ## Definitions: - **Natural History**: Observational knowledge of things in God's creation and their names. - **Natural Science**: The demonstrable knowledge of **causes** within God's creation. - **Natural Philosophy**: How natural history and natural science interconnect in light of the **sciences** (what is true of all nature or the science of the sciences). ## Triadic Virtues: - **Good**: Praising the excellence of something, particularly a character in alignment with God. - **True**: What you can rest in as being real. The knowledge of the real. Truth includes mystery. - **Beauty**: That which pulls towards the good and the true. ## Justification of Knowledge (How do we know things): - **Rational**: Sure knowledge of particulars from general principles using deduction. E.g. math, syllogisms. - **Empirical**: Varying reasonableness of knowledge of a general principle from particulars using induction. E.g. science class, crossing the street. - **Practical**: Knowledge from tradition and experience. E.g. playing sport vs. knowing rule book. ## Four Causes: - **Formal**: The essence of a thing. The shape of the statue in mind of sculptor and in sculpture. - **Final**: The reason or goal for a thing. Why was the sculpture made. - **Material**: What a thing is made of. What the sculpture is made of. - **Efficient**: What brought the thing into being. How the sculptor made the sculpture.