natural history response questions week two - marianne

question one, 
initially the burgess shale fossils were all categorized by modern (in 1909) categories,  even if they may not have appeared to fit they were shoehorned into the categories.  the fossils were put in as older versions of forms that later evolved and became better. later harry whittington showed that most of the fossils did not belong in groups that already existed, rather their own separate groups.  the iconography comes from places like A.O. Lovejoy's  The Great Chain of Living.
question two, 
gould states that the idea of a cone shape for evolution isn't helpful in thinking of how evolution actually happens.  it's better than a ladder idea but it still has implications that newer is more complex and/or better, and that to think of evolution in these ways doesn't help a person to actually understand. gould advocated for looking at it like a bush, with lots of twigs and branches breaking off into different directions,  and not specifying better/worse  old/new superior/inferior, etc.  
question two-b, 
when gould wrote about replaying the tape of life he was saying that he felt if all of earth's history,  and the evolution of creatures on it,  were a tape, and you were to rewind the entire tape and thoroughly erase everything that was on it and then let it play again there would be a very good chance that things would go exactly the same as they had the first time around.  i think cuvier would likely agree.  
question three, 
diversity means there is a lot of variation in the species, as in lots of branches for that specific thing,  and disparity is there being a small amount of variety in the species.  for example there is a lot of diversity within domestic cats,  and not so much in elephants.  
question four, 
the museum organized their hall of fossils in a way that mimicked a tree trunk and its many branches, allowing the visitor to walk throughout learning about the evolution of these things without the notion of age signifying if something is old or new, good or bad, simple or complex,  etc.