J.T. Gulick
Encyclopedia
John Thomas Gulick was an American
missionary and naturalist
. He is credited with some of the first modern evolutionary study, starting with a collection of Hawaiian land snails.
on Kauai Island
, during the Kingdom of Hawaii
. His father was missionary Peter Johnson Gulick
(1796–1877) and mother was Fanny (Thomas) Gulick (1798–1883). In 1851, he started to collect and study Hawaiian land snails. He had been interested in snails (a field now known as Conchology
) since his early teens, and developed independently the concept of their evolution. He discovered many species of snails were only found in very specific areas within the islands, and there was no overlap between these areas.
In 1853, after reading Charles Darwin
's Voyage of the Beagle
and Hugh Miller
's The Footprints of the Creator, Gulick presented his paper, "The Distribution of Plants and Animals", to the Punahou School
Debating Society. In 1855, he enrolled for one year at New York University
and then Williams College
in Massachusetts
, and studied in their Lyceum of Natural History. In 1859, he was elected Lyceum President, and graduated with an A.B. degree.
Gulick followed a family tradition of attending theological school, and enrolled in Union Theological Seminary in New York City
from 1859 to 1861. While there, he read Darwin's On the Origin of Species. He then collected shells in Panama
and Japan
.
On August 22, 1864, Gulick was ordained as a missionary in China
, but also continued his study of snails. On September 3, 1864 he married Emily De la Cour. In 1872, he wrote "On the Variation of Species as Related to Their Geographical Distribution, Illustrated by the Achatinellinae", which was published in the journal Nature
. In 1872, he traveled to England
for two years. While there, he corresponded with Charles Darwin regarding his studies. He finally met Darwin and gave him a synopsis of an upcoming paper. That paper was "On Diversity of Evolution Under One Set of External Conditions", which was published in the Journal of the Linnean Society of London, Zoology. in 1873. Gulick then returned to China, and remained there until 1875.
After his first wife died in 1875 he moved to Japan to continue missionary work. As in China, he studied snails while performing as a missionary. On May 31, 1880 he married Frances Amelia Stevens (1848–1928).
In 1888 he went again to London
where his paper "Divergent Evolution Through Cumulative Segregation" was published in the Journal of the Linnean Society of London, Zoology. He met George Romanes
who worked with Gulick to further refine evolution biology.
In 1889, he received an honorary A.M. and Ph.D from Adelbert College of Western Reserve University. In 1891, another paper, "Intensive Segregation, or Divergence Through Independent Transformation" was published in the Journal of the Linnean Society of London, Zoology.
He moved to Oberlin, Ohio
in 1899. He expanded his study to societal evolution in humans, coming to believe societal evolution could be attributed to altruistic motives and a spirit of cooperation between humanity. He put forth this thesis in his paper "Evolution, Racial and Habitudinal" in 1905 and received an honorary Ph.D. by Oberlin College
.
Later in 1905, he returned to Hawaii and sold his shell collection to Charles Montague Cooke, Jr. the new curator of the Bernice P. Bishop Museum. He remained there until his death, on April 14, 1923 in Honolulu.
He and his second wife are buried in the Mission Houses
cemetery.
They had two children, Addison and Louise (Gulick) Whitaker.
"). He came to this theory while noting that there was a large diversity of local populations of Hawaiian land snails (Achatinella) which showed random variation under seemingly identical environmental conditions. Although he certainly promoted the importance of random factors in evolution, he also was a strong supporter of Darwinian natural selection
, and this led to disagreement with Moritz Wagner
's "Migration Theory" of the origin of species.
In 1888, Gulick introduced new terms for two patterns of evolution that can be observed: the term monotypic evolution (previously called "transformation;" today "anagenesis
") and the term "polytypic evolution" (previously called "diversification"; today "cladogenesis
") – simultaneous processes, such as the multiplication of species, manifested by different populations and incipient species. George Romanes later adopted this terminology during his evolutionary studies.
Gulick later proposed general geographic models of speciation
, and disputed Moritz Wagner
's more extreme claims that geographic speciation was the only possible route to speciation.
Romanes said of Gulick:
Hawaiian snail species to him and fellow collectors such as his schoolmate David Dwight Baldwin
.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
missionary and naturalist
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
. He is credited with some of the first modern evolutionary study, starting with a collection of Hawaiian land snails.
Life
John Thomas Gulick was born on March 13, 1832, in WaimeaWaimea, Kauai County, Hawaii
Waimea is a census-designated place in Kauai County, Hawaii, United States. The population was 1,787 at the 2000 census...
on Kauai Island
Kauai
Kauai or Kauai, known as Tauai in the ancient Kaua'i dialect, is geologically the oldest of the main Hawaiian Islands. With an area of , it is the fourth largest of the main islands in the Hawaiian archipelago, and the 21st largest island in the United States. Known also as the "Garden Isle",...
, during the Kingdom of Hawaii
Kingdom of Hawaii
The Kingdom of Hawaii was established during the years 1795 to 1810 with the subjugation of the smaller independent chiefdoms of Oahu, Maui, Molokai, Lānai, Kauai and Niihau by the chiefdom of Hawaii into one unified government...
. His father was missionary Peter Johnson Gulick
Peter Johnson Gulick
Peter Johnson Gulick was a missionary to the Kingdom of Hawaii and Japan. He was patriarch of a family that also carried on the tradition of missionary work, and included several scientists.-Life:...
(1796–1877) and mother was Fanny (Thomas) Gulick (1798–1883). In 1851, he started to collect and study Hawaiian land snails. He had been interested in snails (a field now known as Conchology
Conchology
Conchology is the scientific or amateur study of mollusc shells. Conchology is one aspect of malacology, the study of molluscs, however malacology studies molluscs as whole organisms, not just their shells. Conchology pre-dated malacology as a field of study. It includes the study of land and...
) since his early teens, and developed independently the concept of their evolution. He discovered many species of snails were only found in very specific areas within the islands, and there was no overlap between these areas.
In 1853, after reading Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
's Voyage of the Beagle
Voyage of the Beagle
The voyage of the Beagle can refer to:*The second voyage of HMS Beagle*Charles Darwin's book about that voyage, The Voyage of the Beagle*Other voyages of HMS Beagle...
and Hugh Miller
Hugh Miller
Hugh Miller was a self-taught Scottish geologist and writer, folklorist and an evangelical Christian.- Life and work :Born in Cromarty, he was educated in a parish school where he reportedly showed a love of reading. At 17 he was apprenticed to a stonemason, and his work in quarries, together with...
's The Footprints of the Creator, Gulick presented his paper, "The Distribution of Plants and Animals", to the Punahou School
Punahou School
Punahou School, once known as Oahu College, is a private, co-educational, college preparatory school located in Honolulu CDP, City and County of Honolulu in the U.S. State of Hawaii...
Debating Society. In 1855, he enrolled for one year at New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
and then Williams College
Williams College
Williams College is a private liberal arts college located in Williamstown, Massachusetts, United States. It was established in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams. Originally a men's college, Williams became co-educational in 1970. Fraternities were also phased out during this...
in Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
, and studied in their Lyceum of Natural History. In 1859, he was elected Lyceum President, and graduated with an A.B. degree.
Gulick followed a family tradition of attending theological school, and enrolled in Union Theological Seminary in New York City
Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York
Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York is a preeminent independent graduate school of theology, located in Manhattan between Claremont Avenue and Broadway, 120th to 122nd Streets. The seminary was founded in 1836 under the Presbyterian Church, and is affiliated with nearby Columbia...
from 1859 to 1861. While there, he read Darwin's On the Origin of Species. He then collected shells in Panama
Panama
Panama , officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of Central America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The...
and Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
.
On August 22, 1864, Gulick was ordained as a missionary in China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, but also continued his study of snails. On September 3, 1864 he married Emily De la Cour. In 1872, he wrote "On the Variation of Species as Related to Their Geographical Distribution, Illustrated by the Achatinellinae", which was published in the journal Nature
Nature (journal)
Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
. In 1872, he traveled to England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
for two years. While there, he corresponded with Charles Darwin regarding his studies. He finally met Darwin and gave him a synopsis of an upcoming paper. That paper was "On Diversity of Evolution Under One Set of External Conditions", which was published in the Journal of the Linnean Society of London, Zoology. in 1873. Gulick then returned to China, and remained there until 1875.
After his first wife died in 1875 he moved to Japan to continue missionary work. As in China, he studied snails while performing as a missionary. On May 31, 1880 he married Frances Amelia Stevens (1848–1928).
In 1888 he went again to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
where his paper "Divergent Evolution Through Cumulative Segregation" was published in the Journal of the Linnean Society of London, Zoology. He met George Romanes
George Romanes
George John Romanes FRS was a Canadian-born English evolutionary biologist and physiologist who laid the foundation of what he called comparative psychology, postulating a similarity of cognitive processes and mechanisms between humans and other animals.He was the youngest of Charles Darwin's...
who worked with Gulick to further refine evolution biology.
In 1889, he received an honorary A.M. and Ph.D from Adelbert College of Western Reserve University. In 1891, another paper, "Intensive Segregation, or Divergence Through Independent Transformation" was published in the Journal of the Linnean Society of London, Zoology.
He moved to Oberlin, Ohio
Oberlin, Ohio
Oberlin is a city in Lorain County, Ohio, United States, to the south and west of Cleveland. Oberlin is perhaps best known for being the home of Oberlin College, a liberal arts college and music conservatory with approximately 3,000 students...
in 1899. He expanded his study to societal evolution in humans, coming to believe societal evolution could be attributed to altruistic motives and a spirit of cooperation between humanity. He put forth this thesis in his paper "Evolution, Racial and Habitudinal" in 1905 and received an honorary Ph.D. by Oberlin College
Oberlin College
Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students. Connected to the college is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the oldest continuously operating...
.
Later in 1905, he returned to Hawaii and sold his shell collection to Charles Montague Cooke, Jr. the new curator of the Bernice P. Bishop Museum. He remained there until his death, on April 14, 1923 in Honolulu.
He and his second wife are buried in the Mission Houses
Mission Houses Museum
The Mission Houses Museum at 553 South King Street in Honolulu, Hawaii, was established in 1920 by the Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society, a private, non-profit organization and genealogical society, on the 100th anniversary of the arrival of the first Christian missionaries in Hawaii...
cemetery.
They had two children, Addison and Louise (Gulick) Whitaker.
Evolutionary theories
In 1872, Gulick was the first to propose the theory that the majority of evolutionary changes are the result of chance variation, which has no effect on the survival and reproductive success of a species (today called "genetic driftGenetic drift
Genetic drift or allelic drift is the change in the frequency of a gene variant in a population due to random sampling.The alleles in the offspring are a sample of those in the parents, and chance has a role in determining whether a given individual survives and reproduces...
"). He came to this theory while noting that there was a large diversity of local populations of Hawaiian land snails (Achatinella) which showed random variation under seemingly identical environmental conditions. Although he certainly promoted the importance of random factors in evolution, he also was a strong supporter of Darwinian natural selection
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
, and this led to disagreement with Moritz Wagner
Moritz Wagner
Moritz Wagner was a German explorer, collector, geographer and natural historian. Wagner devoted three years to the exploration of Algiers: it was here that he made important observations in natural history, which he later supplemented and developed: that geographical isolation could play a key...
's "Migration Theory" of the origin of species.
In 1888, Gulick introduced new terms for two patterns of evolution that can be observed: the term monotypic evolution (previously called "transformation;" today "anagenesis
Anagenesis
Anagenesis, also known as "phyletic change," is the evolution of species involving an entire population rather than a branching event, as in cladogenesis. When enough mutations have occurred and become stable in a population so that it is significantly differentiated from an ancestral population,...
") and the term "polytypic evolution" (previously called "diversification"; today "cladogenesis
Cladogenesis
Cladogenesis is an evolutionary splitting event in a species in which each branch and its smaller branches forms a "clade", an evolutionary mechanism and a process of adaptive evolution that leads to the development of a greater variety of sister species...
") – simultaneous processes, such as the multiplication of species, manifested by different populations and incipient species. George Romanes later adopted this terminology during his evolutionary studies.
Gulick later proposed general geographic models of speciation
Speciation
Speciation is the evolutionary process by which new biological species arise. The biologist Orator F. Cook seems to have been the first to coin the term 'speciation' for the splitting of lineages or 'cladogenesis,' as opposed to 'anagenesis' or 'phyletic evolution' occurring within lineages...
, and disputed Moritz Wagner
Moritz Wagner
Moritz Wagner was a German explorer, collector, geographer and natural historian. Wagner devoted three years to the exploration of Algiers: it was here that he made important observations in natural history, which he later supplemented and developed: that geographical isolation could play a key...
's more extreme claims that geographic speciation was the only possible route to speciation.
Romanes said of Gulick:
...to his essays on the subject I attribute a higher value than to any other work in the field of Darwinian thought since the dat of Darwin's death.
Criticism
Gulick reported collecting 44,500 Hawaiian snails in just three years. Some were of no scientific value because he did not record where they were obtained. Of many of the species he collected, no similar species remain in the wild today. Some modern observers attribute the extinction of many endemicEndemic (ecology)
Endemism is the ecological state of being unique to a defined geographic location, such as an island, nation or other defined zone, or habitat type; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsewhere. For example, all species of lemur are endemic to the...
Hawaiian snail species to him and fellow collectors such as his schoolmate David Dwight Baldwin
David Dwight Baldwin
David Dwight Baldwin was a businessman, educator, and biologist on Maui in the Hawaiian islands. Within biology he is known for his contributions to the study of Hawaiian land snails, part of malacology....
.
Works
- Gulick J. T. (18 July 1872) "On the Variation of Species as Related to their Geographical Distribution, Illustrated by The AchatinellinaeAchatinellidaeAchatinellidae is a family of tropical air-breathing land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusks in the superfamily Achatinelloidea.- Taxonomy :...
". NatureNature (journal)Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
6: 222-224. doi:10.1038/006222b0 - Gulick J. T. (1873). "On the classification of the Achatinellidae". Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 1873(1): 89-91.
Further reading
- works by J. T. Gulick at Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...