Carl Linnaeus is a world-famous scientist, academician and professor who made a huge contribution to science. Botanists consider him the creator of their science, but in fact, Linnaeus's scientific work is much wider. The man is also valued as the creator of the literary Swedish language in its current form. In addition, the scientist contributed to the introduction of the teaching of natural sciences into the system of university education.
Childhood and youth
Carl was born in 1707 in the small Swiss village of Roshult. Nikolaus Linneus - the boy's father, worked as a priest. Since he was the son of peasants, his parents did not have enough money for his studies. For some time he studied at Lund University, but without receiving a degree, he was forced to return home. There, the young man gets a job as an assistant to the local pastor, and soon takes the clergy and works as an assistant in the church for the parishioners.
Carl's mother is the daughter of a priest. Karl became the first child of the couple, after him four more children were born in the family. Mother's father, Pastor Brodersonius, dies in the year of the birth of the first grandson. And after 2 years, Nikolaus was appointed a priest, and the family moved to the house where his grandfather lived.
Settling in a new place, the head of the family sets up a garden around the house, plants vegetables, fruits and flowers. Karl from early childhood was inquisitive, interested in the outside world, and especially vegetation. At the age of 8, the boy knew most of the plants in his area. Nikolaus gave his son a small plot next to the house, where Karl planted various seeds, grew flowers and herbs.
Karl received his initial knowledge at the lower grammar school in the city of Växche, in the same one where his father studied, and after 8 years he entered the gymnasium. Since this city was located far from home, Karl could not often visit his family, so he saw his father and mother only on vacation. At school, the boy did not study well, the only subject that the young man coped with was mathematics, but he did not cease to be interested in biology.
Studying was not given to the young man so much that the teachers even offered the parents to transfer their son to learn the craft. At that time, the lessons in logic and medical subjects at the school were taught by a doctor who convinced the school authorities to leave the student to study as a doctor. To do this, Karl had to live with a teacher, he taught individually for the boy. In addition to the main classes, the program also included botany, beloved by the future scientist.
The science
After graduating from school, in 1727 Linnaeus entered the university in Lund. There he makes acquaintance with Professor Stobeus. In the future, the man helps him with housing and settles in his house. The young man has access to the professor's library. At the same time, he gets acquainted with a personal collection of sea and river inhabitants and a herbarium of plants collected by a teacher in Lund. Stobeus' lectures played an important role in the development of Linnaeus as a botanist.
In 1728 Linnaeus moved to the University of Uppsala. This university provided more opportunities to study medicine under the guidance of talented professors. Students tried to get as much knowledge as possible and in their free time independently studied the sciences of interest.
There, Karl became friends with a student, he was also interested in biology, and together the young people began to work on revising the natural history classifications that existed at that time. Carl focused on the study of plants. An important stage in the life of Linnaeus was the acquaintance with Olof Celsius, a teacher of theology. This happened in the late 1720s, the man gave the young man access to the library and allowed him to live in his house, since Karl was in a difficult financial situation.
Soon the young man wrote the first scientific research work, in which he included the main ideas of the future sexual classification of plants. Among university teachers, the publication aroused considerable interest. The student's scientific work was also appreciated by Rudbeck, Jr., who is a professor at the university, and allowed Carl to teach as a demonstrator in the university's botanical garden.
An expeditionary train to Lapland took place at Linnaeus in 1732. Since he was not able to finance it on his own, the university took over the expedition. The man went to the Scandinavian Peninsula, for 6 months of the expedition he studied minerals, animals and plants, and also learned the life of the local Sami. In order not to miss important discoveries, he walked almost the entire way and only overcame some sections on horseback. In addition to a rich collection of samples of natural science, the man brought to Sweden and household items of the indigenous people of this country.
Carl submits a report on the expedition to the Uppsala Royal Scientific Society, hoping that his notes will be published in full. But this did not happen, and in 1732 the publication published only a short account of the Lapland flora. It was a catalog of different types of plants.
The article, entitled Florula Lapponica, was the first published work of the scientist, where he talks about the sexual classification system of plants. The scientist divided them into classes, argued that plants have sex, which is determined by pistils and stamens. Karl also divided classes into groups, based on the structural features of the pistils. When studying this topic, Linnaeus often made mistakes, but despite this, the system created by the professor aroused interest and played a significant role in the development of science.
An interesting fact is that only in 1811 was the entry from the man's diary published for the first time, where he described his observations of the life of the Sami. There is practically no other information about the way of life of the indigenous peoples of that era, therefore, for contemporaries, his records are of great value in the field of ethnography.
In 1735, Charles went to Holland, where he defended his dissertation and received a medical doctorate. From there he rushes to Leiden, where he publishes an essay on the topic “The System of Nature”. For 2 years of life in the Dutch city, the professor has many brilliant ideas, which he describes in published publications. The scientist divides animal classes into types: these are birds and mammals, amphibians and fish, worms and insects. It is also noteworthy that he refers man to mammals, invertebrates known in his time fall into the class of worms, and amphibians and reptiles to amphibians.
During this time, the biologist described and classified a huge collection of plants brought from all over the world. At the same time, publications appeared in the biography of Linnaeus, which subsequently changed biological science and glorified the man among scientists.
The years spent in this country became the most productive in Karl's scientific career. During this period, he publishes his main works. In addition to scientific works, the man also wrote an autobiography, where he described life and shared interesting facts and stories from expeditions with readers.
After returning to Sweden, Linnaeus did not leave its borders, at first the man lived in Stockholm, and then moved to Uppsala. Karl worked as a doctor, headed the department of botany, went on expeditions and passed on his knowledge to the younger generation.
Carl Linnaeus made many discoveries in the field of biology and botany. The number of published articles is large, the works were published during his lifetime and after the death of the scientist. The merits of the professor are recognized by the state, and his achievements have become known far beyond the borders of his native country.
Personal life
Linnaeus met his future wife, Sarah Lisa Morea, in Falun. At that time, the girl was 18 years old, her father was a local doctor, the man was educated and had an impressive fortune. 2 weeks after they met, Karl proposes to Lisa, she immediately agrees, and the next day the young people receive the blessing of Lisa's father.
They decided to postpone the wedding for 3 years, went abroad, and immediately after returning, the couple became officially engaged. True, the wedding was played only the next year, the celebration took place in the girl's family farm.
The Linnaeans had 7 children. The first son was born in 1741, the boy was also named Karl, and as an adult, the man became known as Karl Linnaeus Jr. Two children of the family died in infancy.
The personal life of the scientist was successful, he loved his wife, and the feelings were mutual. The man even named the surname of his wife and her father beautiful flowers from the iris family growing in southern Africa.
Death
Since 1758, Linnaeus with his wife and children lived on an estate 10 km from Uppsala, where he rested and worked.
In 1774, Linnaeus suffered a stroke (brain hemorrhage). Then the doctors saved the man, but his health was not fully restored. He was partially paralyzed and the professor stopped lecturing. He entrusted this work to his eldest son, while he himself lived on the estate.
The next blow happened in the winter, in the period from 1776 to 1777. After the second attack, Karl lost his memory, did not recognize close relatives, and even tried to leave home. A man died in 1778 in Uppsala at the age of 71.
Since during his lifetime the scientist was recognized as an honorary citizen of the city, he was buried in Uppsala Cathedral.
After his death, Linnaeus left a huge collection, which included herbaria, as well as an extensive library. All this was inherited by his son Karl Jr., but after the man died suddenly of a heart attack, the widow of Linnaeus decided to sell the collection. Despite the objections of representatives of the scientific world of the native country of the scientist, the collection was nevertheless sold and taken out. Sweden lost the works of Linnaeus, which were valuable for the development of science.
Bibliography
- 1735 - "The System of Nature"
- 1736 - "Botanical Library"
- 1736 - "Fundamentals of Botany"
- 1737 - "Flora of Lapland"
- 1737 - "Plant genera"
- 1738 - "Classes of Plants"
- 1745 - "Flora of Sweden"
- 1749 - "Swedish Pan"
- 1751 - "Philosophy of Botany"
- 1753 - "Plant Species"
Life and work of Carl Linnaeus.
Linnaeus (Linne, Linnaeus) Karl (May 23, 1707, Roshuld - January 10, 1778, Uppsala), Swedish naturalist, member of the Paris Academy of Sciences (1762). He gained worldwide fame thanks to the system of flora and fauna he created. Born in the family of a village pastor. Studied natural and medical sciences at Lund (1727) and Uppsala (since 1728) universities. In 1732 he made a trip to Lapland, which resulted in the work "Flora of Lapland" (1732, complete edition in 1737). In 1735 he moved to the city of Hartekamp (Holland), where he was in charge of the botanical garden; defended his doctoral dissertation "A new hypothesis of intermittent fevers." In the same year he published the book "The System of Nature" (published during his lifetime in 12 editions). From 1738 he was engaged in medical practice in Stockholm; in 1739 he headed the naval hospital, won the right to dissect corpses in order to determine the cause of death. Participated in the creation of the Swedish Academy of Sciences and became its first president (1739). Since 1741, the head of the department at Uppsala University, where he taught medicine and natural sciences.
The system of flora and fauna created by Linnaeus completed the enormous work of botanists and zoologists of the 1st half of the 18th century. One of the main merits of Linnaeus is that in the "System of Nature" he applied and introduced the so-called binary nomenclature, according to which each species is designated by two Latin names - generic and species. Linnaeus defined the concept of "species" using both morphological (similarity within the offspring of one family) and physiological (presence of fertile offspring) criteria, and established a clear subordination between systematic categories: class, order, genus, species, variation.
Linnaeus based the classification of plants on the number, size and arrangement of the stamens and pistils of a flower, as well as the sign of one-, two- or multi-homogeneity of the plant, since he believed that the reproductive organs are the most essential and permanent parts of the body in plants. Based on this principle, he divided all plants into 24 classes. Due to the simplicity of the nomenclature he used, descriptive work was greatly facilitated, the species received clear characteristics and names. Linnaeus himself discovered and described about 1,500 plant species.
Linnaeus divided all animals into 6 classes:
1. Mammals 4. Fish
2. Birds 5. Worms
3. Amphibians 6. Insects
The class of amphibians included amphibians and reptiles, and he included all forms of invertebrates known in his time, except for insects, to the class of worms. One of the advantages of this classification is that man was included in the system of the animal kingdom and assigned to the class of mammals, to the order of primates. The classifications of plants and animals proposed by Linnaeus are artificial from a modern point of view, since they are based on a small number of arbitrarily taken signs and do not reflect the actual relationship between different forms. So, on the basis of only one common feature - the structure of the beak - Linnaeus tried to build a "natural" system based on the totality of many features, but did not reach the goal.
Linnaeus was opposed to the idea of a true development of the organic world; he believed that the number of species remains constant, with the time of their "creation" they did not change, and therefore the task of systematics is to reveal the order in nature established by the "creator". However, the vast experience accumulated by Linnaeus, his acquaintance with plants from various localities, could not but shake his metaphysical ideas. In his last writings, Linnaeus, in a very cautious manner, suggested that all species of the same genus were originally one species, and allowed the possibility of the emergence of new species formed as a result of crossings between already existing species.
Linnaeus also classified soils and minerals, human races, diseases (according to symptoms); discovered the poisonous and healing properties of many plants. Linnaeus is the author of a number of works, mainly in botany and zoology, as well as in the field of theoretical and practical medicine (“Medicinal Substances”, “Generations of Diseases”, “Key to Medicine”).
The libraries, manuscripts and collections of Linnaeus were sold by his widow to the English botanist Smith, who founded (1788) in London the Linnean Society, which still exists today as one of the largest scientific centers.
Carl Linnaeus
(1707-1778)
Carl Linnaeus, the famous Swedish naturalist, was born in Sweden on May 13, 1707. He was of an humble family, his ancestors were simple peasants; father was a poor country priest. The next year after the birth of his son, he received a more profitable parish in Stenbroghult, the year and the whole childhood of Carl Linnaeus passed until the age of ten.
My father was a great lover of flowers and gardening; in the picturesque Stenbroghult he planted a garden, which soon became the first in the whole province. This garden and his father's studies, of course, played a significant role in the spiritual development of the future founder of scientific botany. The boy was given a special corner in the garden, several beds, where he was considered a complete master; they were called so - "Karl's garden"
When the boy was 10 years old, he was sent to an elementary school in the city of Vexie. The gifted child's schoolwork was going badly; he continued to engage in botany with enthusiasm, and the preparation of lessons was tiring for him. The father was going to take the young man from the gymnasium, but the case pushed him into contact with the local doctor Rotman. At Rotman, the classes of the “underachieving” gymnasium went better. The doctor began to gradually introduce him to medicine and even - contrary to the teachers' reviews - made him fall in love with Latin.
After graduating from high school, Karl enters Lund University, but soon moves from there to one of the most prestigious universities in Sweden - Uppsala. Linnaeus was only 23 years old when the professor of botany Oluas Celzki took him as his assistant, after which, while still a student, Karl began teaching at the university. The journey through Lapland became very important for the young scientist. Linnaeus walked almost 700 kilometers, collected significant collections, and as a result published his first book, Flora of Lapland.
In the spring of 1735, Linnaeus arrived in Holland, in Amsterdam. In the small university town of Gardquick, he passed the exam and on June 24 he defended his dissertation on a medical topic - about fever. The immediate goal of his journey was reached, but Charles remained. He remained, fortunately for himself and for science: the rich and highly cultured Holland served as the cradle for his ardent creative activity and his resounding fame.
One of his new friends, Dr. Gronov, suggested that he publish some work; then Linnaeus compiled and printed the first draft of his famous work, which laid the foundation for systematic zoology and botany in the modern sense. This was the first edition of his "Systema naturae", containing only 14 huge pages for the time being, on which brief descriptions of minerals, plants and animals were grouped in the form of tables. With this edition, a series of rapid scientific successes of Linnaeus begins.
In his new works, published in 1736-1737, his main and most fruitful ideas were already contained in a more or less finished form: a system of generic and specific names, improved terminology, an artificial system of the plant kingdom.
At this time, he received a brilliant offer to become the personal physician of George Cliffort with a salary of 1000 guilders and a full allowance.
Despite the successes that surrounded Linnaeus in Holland, little by little he began to pull home. In 1738, he returns to his homeland and encounters unexpected problems. He, accustomed for three years of living abroad to universal respect, friendship and signs of attention of the most prominent and famous people, at home, in his homeland, was just a doctor without a job, without practice and without money, and no one cared about his scholarship . So Linnaeus the botanist gave way to Linnaeus the doctor, and his favorite activities were stopped for a while.
However, already in 1739, the Swedish Diet assigned him one hundred lukats of annual maintenance with the obligation to teach botany and mineralogy.
Finally, he found an opportunity to marry, and on June 26, 1739, a five-year-delayed wedding took place. Alas, as is often the case, his wife was the exact opposite of her husband. An ill-mannered, rude and quarrelsome woman, without intellectual interests, who was only interested in the financial aspects of her husband. Linnaeus had one son and several daughters; the mother loved her daughters, and they grew up under her influence as uneducated and petty girls of a bourgeois family. To her son, a gifted boy, the mother had a strange antipathy, pursued him in every possible way and tried to turn her father against him. But Linnaeus loved his son and passionately developed in him those inclinations for which he himself suffered so much in childhood.
In 1742, Linnaeus's dream came true and he became a professor of botany at his native university. The rest of his life was spent in this city almost without a break. He occupied the department for more than thirty years and left it only shortly before his death.
Now Linnaeus ceased to engage in medical practice, was engaged only in scientific research. He described all medicinal plants known at that time and studied the effect of medicines made from them.
During this time, he invented the thermometer using the Celsius temperature scale.
But the main business of his life, Linnaeus still considered the systematization of plants. The main work "The System of Plants" took 25 years, and only in 1753 did he publish his main work.
The scientist decided to systematize the entire plant world of the Earth. At the time when Liney began his career, zoology was in a period of exceptional predominance of taxonomy. The task that she then set herself was simply to get acquainted with all the breeds of animals living on the globe, without regard to their internal structure and to the connection of individual forms with each other; the subject of zoological writings of that time was a simple enumeration and description of all known animals.
Thus, zoology and botany of that time were mainly concerned with the study and description of species, but boundless confusion reigned in their recognition. The descriptions that the author gave of new animals or plants were inconsistent and inaccurate. The second main shortcoming of the then science was the lack of a more or less basic and precise classification.
These basic shortcomings of systematic zoology and botany were corrected by the genius of Linnaeus. Remaining on the same ground of the study of nature, on which his predecessors and contemporaries stood, he was a powerful reformer of science. Its merit is purely methodical. He did not discover new areas of knowledge and hitherto unknown laws of nature, but he created a new method, clear, logical. And with the help of it, he brought light and order to where chaos and confusion reigned before him, which gave a huge impetus to science, paving the way for further research in a powerful way. This was a necessary step in science, without which further progress would not have been possible.
The scientist proposed a binary nomenclature - a system of scientific naming of plants and animals. Based on the structural features, he divided all plants into 24 classes, also highlighting separate genera and species. Each name, in his opinion, should have consisted of two words - generic and specific designations.
Despite the fact that the principle applied by him was rather artificial, it turned out to be very convenient and became generally pleasant in scientific classification, retaining its significance in our time. But in order for the new nomenclature to be fruitful, it was necessary for the new nomenclature to be fruitful, it was necessary that the species that received the conditional name, at the same time, be so accurately and in detail described that they could not be confused with other species of the same kind. Linnaeus did just that: he was the first to introduce a strictly defined, precise language and a precise definition of features into science.
In his essay "Fundamental Botany", published in Amsterdam during his life with Cliffort and which was the result of seven years of work, the foundations of the botanical terminology that he used to describe plants are outlined.
The zoological system of Linnaeus did not play such a major role in science as the botanical one, although in some respects it was higher than it, as less artificial, but it did not represent its main advantages - convenience in determining. Linnaeus had little knowledge of anatomy.
Linnaeus' work gave a huge impetus to systematic botany and zoology. The developed terminology and convenient nomenclature made it easier to cope with a huge amount of material that had previously been so difficult to understand. Soon all classes of the plant and animal kingdom were systematically studied, and the number of described species increased from hour to hour.
Linnaeus later applied his principle to the classification of all nature, in particular minerals and rocks. He also became the first scientist to classify humans and apes as the same group of animals, primates. As a result of his observations, the naturalist compiled another book - "The System of Nature". He worked on it all his life, from time to time republishing his work. In total, the scientist prepared 12 editions of this work, which gradually turned from a small book into a voluminous multi-volume publication.
The last years of Linnaeus's life were overshadowed by senility and illness. He died on January 10, 1778, at the age of seventy-one.
After his death, the chair of botany at Uppsala University was given to his son, who zealously set about continuing his father's work. But in 1783 he suddenly fell ill and died at the age of forty-two. The son was not married, and with his death, the lineage of Linnaeus in the male generation ceased.
By the 18th century scientists and nature lovers have done a great job collecting and describing plants and animals all over the world. But it became more and more difficult to navigate in the ocean of information accumulated by them. The Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus generalized and brought this knowledge into a system. He laid the foundations of modern taxonomy.
Carl Linnaeus was born on May 23, 1707 in the family of a village priest. Carl's mother from childhood brought up in him a love for all living things, especially for flowers.
But the future president of the Swedish Academy of Sciences remained very indifferent to schoolwork. Latin was not given to him at all. The teachers said that education, apparently, was not up to the boy - it would be better to teach him some kind of craft. The angry father decided to send Karl to be trained by a shoemaker.
And the career of a shoemaker would have been waiting for Liney, if a familiar doctor had not persuaded the boy's father to allow him to study medicine. In addition, he helped Carl finish high school.
Karl studied medicine and biology at the universities of the Swedish cities of Lund and Uppsala. He lived in his student years in poverty.
When Karl was 25 years old, the leadership of the Uppsala University invited him to go on a scientific journey through northern Scandinavia - Lapland, to explore its nature. He carried all his luggage on his shoulders. During this journey, he ate what he had to, barely got out of the swampy swamps, fought mosquitoes. And once he ran into a more serious enemy - a robber who almost killed him. Despite all the obstacles, Linnaeus collected samples of Lapland plants.
At home, Linnaeus could not find a permanent job in his specialty, and for several years he moved to Holland, where he was in charge of one of the best botanical gardens in the country.
Here he received the degree of doctor, here in 1735 his most famous work, The System of Nature, was published. During the life of Linnaeus, 12 editions of this book were published. All this time, Linnaeus constantly supplemented it and increased its volume from 14 pages to 3 volumes.
Carl Linnaeus system:
The concept of the form.
In order to “sort through” a huge number of descriptions of plants and animals, some kind of systematic unit was needed. Such a unit, common to all living things, Linnaeus considered the species. By species, Linnaeus called a group of individuals similar to each other, like children of the same parents and their children. A species consists of many similar individuals that produce fertile offspring. For example, forest raspberries are one species, stone berries are another, cloudberries are the third species of plants. All domestic cats are one species, tigers are another, lions are a third species of animals. Consequently, the whole organic world consists of various types of plants and animals. All living nature consists, as it were, of separate links - species.
Linnaeus discovered and described about 1,500 species of plants and over 400 species of animals, he distributed all types of plants and animals into large groups - classes, he divided each class into orders, each order into genera. Each genus of Linnaeus was composed of similar species.
Nomenclature.
Linnaeus began to give names to species in the very Latin that was so poorly given to him in his school years. Latin was at that time the international language of science. Thus, Linnaeus solved a difficult problem: after all, when names were given in different languages, the same species could be described under many names.
A very important merit of Linnaeus was the introduction of double species names (binary nomenclature) into practice. He proposed to name each species with two words. The first is the name of the genus, which includes closely related species. For example, a lion, a tiger, a domestic cat belong to the genus Felis (Cat). The second word is the name of the species itself (respectively, Felis leo, Felis tigris, Felis do-mestica). In the same way, the European Spruce and Tien Shan Spruce (blue) species are combined into the genus Spruce, the White Hare and Brown Hare species into the Hare genus. Thanks to the double nomenclature, the similarity, commonality, unity of the species that form one genus is revealed.
Systematics of animals.
Linnaeus divided animals into 6 classes:
mammals
Amphibians (in this class he placed amphibians and reptiles)
Insects
The number of "worms" includes molluscs, jellyfish, various worms, and all microorganisms (the latter were combined by Linnaeus into a single genus - Chaos infusorium).
Man (whom he called "reasonable man", Homo sapiens) Linnaeus quite boldly for his time placed in the class of mammals and the detachment of primates along with monkeys. He did it 120 years before Charles Darwin. He did not believe that man was descended from other primates, but he saw a great similarity in their structure.
Systematics of plants.
Linnaeus approached the systematization of plants in more detail than the systematization of animals. He singled out 24 classes among plants. Linnaeus understood that the most essential and characteristic part of a plant is a flower. He attributed plants with one stamen in a flower to the 1st class, to the 2nd - with two, to the 3rd - with three, etc. Mushrooms, lichens, algae, horsetails, ferns - in general, all, devoid of flowers, were in the 24th class ("mystery").
The artificiality of Linnaeus' systematics.
The system of plants and animals of Linnaeus was largely artificial. Plants far from each other (for example, carrots and currants) ended up in the same class only because their flowers have the same number of stamens. Many related plants ended up in different classes. The systematics of Linnaeus is artificial, also because it helped to recognize plants and animals, but did not reflect the course of the historical development of the world.
Linnaeus was aware of this deficiency in his system. He believed that future naturalists should create a natural system of plants and animals, which should take into account all the features of organisms, and not just one or two signs. Trying to develop a natural plant system, Linnaeus became convinced that the science of that time did not provide the knowledge necessary for this.
Despite the artificiality, the Linnaean system played a positive role in biology. The systematic subdivisions and dual nomenclature proposed by Linnaeus have become firmly established in science and are used in modern botany and zoology. Later, two more divisions were introduced:
Type - the highest division that unites similar classes;
Family - uniting similar genera
Linnaeus innovations.
Carl Linnaeus reformed the botanical language. He first proposed such plant names as: corolla, anther, nectary, ovary, stigma, filament, receptacle, perianth. In total, K. Linnaeus introduced about a thousand terms into botany.
Linnaeus' views on nature.
Science at that time was influenced by religion. Linnaeus was an idealist, he argued that in nature there are as many species of plants and animals as "how many different forms the almighty created at the beginning of the world." Linnaeus believed that plant and animal species do not change; they retained their characteristics "from the moment of creation." According to Linnaeus, every modern species is the offspring of the original parent pair created by God. Each species reproduces, but retains, in his opinion, unchanged all the features of this ancestral pair.
As a good observer, Linnaeus could not help but see the contradictions between the ideas about the complete immutability of plants and animals with what is observed in nature. He allowed the formation of varieties within a species due to the influence of climate change and other external conditions on organisms.
The idealistic and metaphysical doctrine of the creation and immutability of species dominated biology until the beginning of the 19th century, until it was refuted as a result of the discovery of many proofs of evolution.