Morphological evolution of galaxies over the last 8 billion years

In this chapter I describe the motivation behind this Thesis work. I briefly review the main theoretical aspects and the very broad observational scenario, explaining the fundamental goals of this work and summarizing its most relevant contributions to the study of galaxy evolution. The review of previous work, both observational and theoretical, is by no means to be intended as exhaustive nor complete, and I certainly by–pass to mention several important steps in extragalactic astronomy research, as well as to address many issues which are still relevant today. It is only meant to set this work in a context, thus allowing its fundamental aspects to be highlighted. 1.1 The hierarchical Universe The Aristotelian cosmology (see Figure 1.1) dominated the Western thinking for nearly 2000 years. Aristotle’s Cosmos was a brilliantly integrated whole, which holistically linked Matter, Place, Motion, Cause, and Value. The relations between Man, Nature, and God were never in doubt. Everything was connected and reinforcing.That mainly explains why the Copernicus’ innocent suggestion raised such furor. The current, only few tens of years old, standard model for our Universe, the Hot Big Bang model, draws everything we see today from an initial state of exceedingly high temperature and density. Starting from this initial condition, the Universe expanded for almost 14 billion