Unit 2: Evolution & Populations

Unit Concepts & Resources
Unit Vocabulary

  

Which one of these animations make the most sense to you?

Water freezing back into a cube does not fit into our idea of reality. This illustrates the idea of entropy. Entropy is a measure of the random activity in a system. A scientific law is devoted to this stating that the general tendency of the universe is to move from order and structure to lack of order, lack of structure. Or, in a system entropy has a tendency to increase.

Your room at home does not clean itself up without the energy someone tidying up your space. In the same way, a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle does not put itself back together without a considerable amount of time and attention.

In his Ted Talk David Christian tells The history of our world in 18 minutes.  He suggests that our world is full of complexity. We don't have to look far to agree with him. In our own bodies exist systems with great complexity with cells full of tiny organelles, fully functioning body systems, and DNA providing codes for it all. What's more, our world has produced civilizations with elaborate communication and transportation systems. David Christian asks: In a universe ruled by laws of increasing entropy, how is it possible to generate the sort of complexity that exists in our world today?

In our next unit, we will look into this idea. We'll journey back into time to improve our idea of the geologic timescale. We'll look at the fossil record that has been used to build our concept of the past. We'll look into how populations have changed over time and the many factors that cause that change. We will hopefully come away with a better idea the life that came before us and how it can inform our ever complexifying world before us.