A few weeks ago, I had a first class with Dr.
Parameswari for cellular and developmental biology subject. In that first week,
Dr. Parameswari had introduced to class about the theory of Darwin in
evolution. Before this, when I was in foundation at UiTM, I had learnt about
this theory but not really in detail. My lecturer on that time told the class even
though some of the theories are not really make sense, but we just take it as a
knowledge and to appreciate what has been done by those scientists on that time
to bring the information about the evolution. It was exactly like what Dr.
Parameswari just told the class on the first week. She said we come from
different types of religion and have different opinions, so be open minded and
take it as a knowledge. As we know, the most popular theory from Darwin is
about humans came from apes. Of course some of us definitely not agree with
that theory but after I tried to go more deep into the topic, I found it was
interesting actually. There are many other theories from Darwin and not just
that ape’s theory that have been found by Darwin. Dr. Parameswari gave us a video about a lecture
that tell us about the background of Darwin. How he could involve in this field
and what was his circumstances that he needed to overcome in order to publish
his book. What I got after I watched that video, I knew before Darwin came with
all that studies in evolution, he was a medical student. It shocked me actually
on that time because Darwin was also like other students who studied science,
majority want to pursue in medical field but he quitted from medical school
because he could not see blood and those kind of cringe visuals. On that time,
there was no anesthetic drug for the patient, so the patient will be operated
alive! I have seen this operation on Discovery channel about how they operated
the patient alive. Then, Darwin went for a voyage at age 22 for 2 years but it
became 5. On this voyage, Darwin came up with the idea that lands form change
which led to his first great theory, formation of coral reefs. He also found
fossil which is a giant fossil ground sloth. He knew there were sloths in South
America and he saw these sloths but these fossils showed the sloths were in
bigger sized like cow sized. At first, I could not understand about the
formation of coral reefs led to the change of landforms. After that, I tried to
watch the video again, the terms such as fringing reefs, I tried to google it
and find the images. Finally, I could imagine the formation. Other than that,
there are four sources for evidence which are fossils, geography, embryology
and anatomy. For the anatomy, there are two structures which are homologous and
vestigial. For natural selection, there are four main principles such as
variation, overproduction, adaptation and descent with modification. Dr.
Parameswari had gave an assignment in order to improve our understanding in
natural selection. We need to draw comic cartoon about how the animals in the
cartoon adapt with the environment and evolved into another species. In
conclusion, even though I felt this topic a little bit tough to understand but
after I became familiar with all the terms and activities, I felt the
improvement in my understanding.
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