Evolutionary Restraints

Author : Mark E. Borrello
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 227 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2010-10-15
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780226067025

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Evolutionary Restraints by Mark E. Borrello Pdf

Much of the evolutionary debate since Darwin has focused on the level at which natural selection occurs. Most biologists acknowledge multiple levels of selection—from the gene to the species. The debate about group selection, however, is the focus of Mark E. Borrello’s Evolutionary Restraints. Tracing the history of biological attempts to determine whether selection leads to the evolution of fitter groups, Borrello takes as his focus the British naturalist V. C. Wynne-Edwards, who proposed that animals could regulate their own populations and thus avoid overexploitation of their resources. By the mid-twentieth century, Wynne-Edwards became an advocate for group selection theory and led a debate that engaged the most significant evolutionary biologists of his time, including Ernst Mayr, G. C. Williams, and Richard Dawkins. This important dialogue bled out into broader conversations about population regulation, environmental crises, and the evolution of human social behavior. By examining a single facet in the long debate about evolution, Borrello provides powerful insight into an intellectual quandary that remains relevant and alive to this day.

Author : Thomas E. Dickins,Benjamin J.A. Dickins
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 606 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2023-04-09
Category : Science
ISBN : 9783031220289

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Evolutionary Biology: Contemporary and Historical Reflections Upon Core Theory by Thomas E. Dickins,Benjamin J.A. Dickins Pdf

This book is reflecting upon core theories in evolutionary biology – in a historical as well as contemporary context. It exposes the main areas of interest for discussion, but more importantly draws together hypotheses and future research directions. The Modern Synthesis (MS), sometimes referred to as Standard Evolutionary Theory (SET), in evolutionary biology has been well documented and discussed, but was also critically scrutinized over the last decade. Researchers from diverse disciplinary backgrounds have claimed that there is a need for an extension to that theory, and have called for an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES). The book starts with an introductory chapter that summarizes the main points of the EES claim and indicates where those points receive treatment later in the book. This introduction to the subjects can either serve as an initiation for readers new to the debate, or as a guide for those looking to pursue particular lines of enquiry. The following chapters are organized around historical perspectives, theoretical and philosophical approaches and the use of specific biological models to inspect core ideas. Both empirical and theoretical contributions have been included. The majority of chapters are addressing various aspects of the EES position, and reflecting upon the MS. Some of the chapters take historical perspectives, analyzing various details of the MS and EES claims. Others offer theoretical and philosophical analyses of the debate, or take contemporary findings in biology and discuss those findings and their possible theoretical interpretations. All of the chapters draw upon actual biology to make their points. This book is written by practicing biologists and behavioral biologists, historians and philosophers - many of them working in interdisciplinary fields. It is a valuable resource for historians and philosophers of biology as well as for biologists. Chapters 8, 20, 22 and 33 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Author : Niles Eldredge,Telmo Pievani,Emanuele Serrelli,Ilya Temkin
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 394 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2016-09-23
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780226426228

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Evolutionary Theory by Niles Eldredge,Telmo Pievani,Emanuele Serrelli,Ilya Temkin Pdf

The natural world is infinitely complex and hierarchically structured, with smaller units forming the components of larger systems: genes are components genomes, cells are building blocks of tissues and organs, individuals are members of populations, which, in turn, are parts of species. In the face of such awe inspiring complexity, scientists need tools like the hierarchy theory of evolution, which provides a theoretical framework and an interdisciplinary research program that aims to understand the way complex biological systems work and evolve. The multidisciplinary approach looks at the structure of the myriad intricate interactions across levels of organization that range from molecules to the biosphere. Evolutionary Theory: A Hierarchical Perspective provides an introduction to the theory, which is currently driving a great deal of research in bioinformatics and evolutionary theory. Written by a diverse and renowned group of contributors, and edited by the founder of Hierachy Theory Niles Eldredge, this work will help make transparent the fundamental patterns driving living sytems.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : ScholarlyEditions
Page : 505 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2013-01-10
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781481645775

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Issues in Biochemistry and Biomaterials: 2012 Edition by Anonim Pdf

Issues in Biochemistry and Biomaterials / 2012 Edition is a ScholarlyEditions™ eBook that delivers timely, authoritative, and comprehensive information about Biological Chemistry. The editors have built Issues in Biochemistry and Biomaterials: 2012 Edition on the vast information databases of ScholarlyNews.™ You can expect the information about Biological Chemistry in this eBook to be deeper than what you can access anywhere else, as well as consistently reliable, authoritative, informed, and relevant. The content of Issues in Biochemistry and Biomaterials: 2012 Edition has been produced by the world’s leading scientists, engineers, analysts, research institutions, and companies. All of the content is from peer-reviewed sources, and all of it is written, assembled, and edited by the editors at ScholarlyEditions™ and available exclusively from us. You now have a source you can cite with authority, confidence, and credibility. More information is available at http://www.ScholarlyEditions.com/.

Author : Naomi Beck
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2018-06-21
Category : History
ISBN : 9780226556147

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Hayek and the Evolution of Capitalism by Naomi Beck Pdf

Few economists can claim the influence—or fame—of F. A. Hayek. Winner of the Nobel Prize, Hayek was one of the most consequential thinkers of the twentieth century, his views on the free market echoed by such major figures as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Yet even among those who study his work in depth, few have looked closely at his use of ideas from evolutionary science to advance his vision of markets and society. With this book Naomi Beck offers the first full-length engagement with Hayek’s thought from this perspective. Hayek argued that the capitalism we see in advanced civilizations is an unintended consequence of group selection—groups that adopted free market behavior expanded more successfully than others. But this attempt at a scientific grounding for Hayek’s principles, Beck shows, fails to hold water, plagued by incoherencies, misinterpretations of the underlying science, and lack of evidence. As crises around the globe lead to reconsiderations of the place of capitalism, Beck’s excavation of this little-known strand of Hayek’s thought—and its failure—is timely and instructive.

Author : Ciprian Jeler
Publisher : Springer
Page : 151 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2018-06-07
Category : Science
ISBN : 9783319786773

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Multilevel Selection and the Theory of Evolution by Ciprian Jeler Pdf

This book puts multilevel selection theory into a much needed historical perspective. This is achieved by discussing multilevel selection in the first half of the twentieth century, the reasons for the energetic rejection of Wynne-Edwards’ group selectionist stance in the 1960s, Elisabeth Lloyd’s contribution to the units of selection debate, Price’s hierarchical equation and its possible interpretations and, finally, species selection in macroevolutionary contexts. Another idea also seems to emerge from these studies; namely, that perhaps a more sure-footed position for multilevel selection theory would be acquired if we were to show a renewed interest in 'old group selection', i.e. in scenarios in which the differential reproduction of the groups themselves affects the frequencies of either individual-level or group-level traits. This book will be of interest to philosophers and historians of biology, as well as to theoretically inclined biologists who have an interest in multilevel selection theory.

Author : Piers J. Hale
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 451 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2014-08-05
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780226108520

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Political Descent by Piers J. Hale Pdf

Historians of science have long noted the influence of the nineteenth-century political economist Thomas Robert Malthus on Charles Darwin. In a bold move, Piers J. Hale contends that this focus on Malthus and his effect on Darwin’s evolutionary thought neglects a strong anti-Malthusian tradition in English intellectual life, one that not only predated the 1859 publication of the Origin of Species but also persisted throughout the Victorian period until World War I. Political Descent reveals that two evolutionary and political traditions developed in England in the wake of the 1832 Reform Act: one Malthusian, the other decidedly anti-Malthusian and owing much to the ideas of the French naturalist Jean Baptiste Lamarck. These two traditions, Hale shows, developed in a context of mutual hostility, debate, and refutation. Participants disagreed not only about evolutionary processes but also on broader questions regarding the kind of creature our evolution had made us and in what kind of society we ought therefore to live. Significantly, and in spite of Darwin’s acknowledgement that natural selection was “the doctrine of Malthus, applied to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms,” both sides of the debate claimed to be the more correctly “Darwinian.” By exploring the full spectrum of scientific and political issues at stake, Political Descent offers a novel approach to the relationship between evolution and political thought in the Victorian and Edwardian eras.

Author : N.S. Thompson
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 362 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 1995-05-31
Category : Medical
ISBN : 0306449064

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Perspectives in Ethology by N.S. Thompson Pdf

'A book rich and various in ideas and substance...It belongs on the shelf of anyone wanting to keep up with what is happening in ethology.'-Bioscience, from a review of an earlier volume Beginning with Volume 11, Nicholas S. Thompson takes over the editorship of this remarkable series. For this volume, contributors bring fresh perspectives to the subject of natural design.

Author : J. Arvid Ågren
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2021-07-21
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780192607027

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The Gene's-Eye View of Evolution by J. Arvid Ågren Pdf

'Arvid Ågren has undertaken the most meticulously thorough reading of the relevant literature that I have ever encountered, deploying an intelligent understanding to pull it into a coherent story. As if that wasn't enough, he gets it right.' (Richard Dawkins) To many evolutionary biologists, the central challenge of their discipline is to explain adaptation, the appearance of design in the living world. With the theory of evolution by natural selection, Charles Darwin elegantly showed how a purely mechanistic process can achieve this striking feature of nature. Since then, the way many biologists have thought about evolution and natural selection is as a theory about individual organisms. Over a century later, a subtle but radical shift in perspective emerged with the gene's-eye view of evolution in which natural selection was conceptualized as a struggle between genes for replication and transmission to the next generation. This viewpoint culminated with the publication of The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (Oxford University Press, 1976) and is now commonly referred to as selfish gene thinking. The gene's-eye view has subsequently played a central role in evolutionary biology, although it continues to attract controversy. The central aim of this accessible book is to show how the gene's-eye view differs from the traditional organismal account of evolution, trace its historical origins, clarify typical misunderstandings and, by using examples from contemporary experimental work, show why so many evolutionary biologists still consider it an indispensable heuristic. The book concludes by discussing how selfish gene thinking fits into ongoing debates in evolutionary biology, and what they tell us about the future of the gene's-eye view of evolution. The Gene's-Eye View of Evolution is suitable for graduate-level students taking courses in evolutionary biology, behavioural ecology, and evolutionary genetics, as well as professional researchers in these fields. It will also appeal to a broader, interdisciplinary audience from the social sciences and humanities including philosophers and historians of science.

Author : David S. Wilson,Alan Kirman
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 409 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2016-08-19
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780262035385

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Complexity and Evolution by David S. Wilson,Alan Kirman Pdf

An exploration of how approaches that draw on evolutionary theory and complexity science can advance our understanding of economics. Two widely heralded yet contested approaches to economics have emerged in recent years: one emphasizes evolutionary theory in terms of individuals and institutions; the other views economies as complex adaptive systems. In this book, leading scholars examine these two bodies of theory, exploring their possible impact on economics. Relevant concepts from evolutionary theory drawn on by the contributors include the distinction between proximate and ultimate causation, multilevel selection, cultural change as an evolutionary process, and human psychology as a product of gene-culture coevolution. Applicable ideas from complexity theory include self-organization, fractals, chaos theory, sensitive dependence, basins of attraction, and path dependence. The contributors discuss a synthesis of complexity and evolutionary approaches and the challenges that emerge. Focusing on evolutionary behavioral economics, and the evolution of institutions, they offer practical applications and point to avenues for future research. Contributors Robert Axtell, Jenna Bednar, Eric D. Beinhocker, Adrian V. Bell, Terence C. Burnham, Julia Chelen, David Colander, Iain D. Couzin, Thomas E. Currie, Joshua M. Epstein, Daniel Fricke, Herbert Gintis, Paul W. Glimcher, John Gowdy, Thorsten Hens, Michael E. Hochberg, Alan Kirman, Robert Kurzban, Leonhard Lades, Stephen E. G. Lea, John E. Mayfield, Mariana Mazzucato, Kevin McCabe, John F. Padgett, Scott E. Page, Karthik Panchanathan, Peter J. Richerson, Peter Schuster, Georg Schwesinger, Rajiv Sethi, Enrico Spolaore, Sven Steinmo, Miriam Teschl, Peter Turchin, Jeroen C. J. M. van den Bergh, Sander E. van der Leeuw, Romain Wacziarg, John J. Wallis, David S. Wilson, Ulrich Witt

Author : Pradeep Chhaya
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 562 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2024-07-01
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 9789819943180

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The Topological Model of Genome and Evolution by Pradeep Chhaya Pdf

Author : Joshua Mitteldorf
Publisher : CRC Press
Page : 254 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2017-02-03
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9781315354033

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Aging is a Group-Selected Adaptation by Joshua Mitteldorf Pdf

Although books exist on the evolution of aging, this is the first book written from the perspective of again as an adaptive program. It offers an insight into the implications of research on aging genetics, The author proposes the Demographic Theory of Senescence, whereby aging has been affirmatively selected because it levels the death rate over time helping stabilize population dynamics and prevent extinctions.

Author : David Evans Walter,Heather C. Proctor
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 505 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2013-10-08
Category : Science
ISBN : 9789400771642

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Mites: Ecology, Evolution & Behaviour by David Evans Walter,Heather C. Proctor Pdf

More than 40,000 species of mites have been described, and up to 1 million may exist on earth. These tiny arachnids play many ecological roles including acting as vectors of disease, vital players in soil formation, and important agents of biological control. But despite the grand diversity of mites, even trained biologists are often unaware of their significance. Mites: Ecology, Evolution and Behaviour (2nd edition) aims to fill the gaps in our understanding of these intriguing creatures. It surveys life cycles, feeding behaviour, reproductive biology and host-associations of mites without requiring prior knowledge of their morphology or taxonomy. Topics covered include evolution of mites and other arachnids, mites in soil and water, mites on plants and animals, sperm transfer and reproduction, mites and human disease, and mites as models for ecological and evolutionary theories.

Author : Ugo Bastolla,Markus Porto,Eduardo Roman,Michele Vendruscolo
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 375 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2007-05-26
Category : Science
ISBN : 9783540353065

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Structural Approaches to Sequence Evolution by Ugo Bastolla,Markus Porto,Eduardo Roman,Michele Vendruscolo Pdf

Recent advances in understanding the thermodynamics of macromolecules, the topological properties of gene networks, the organization and mutation capabilities of genomes, and the structure of populations make it possible to incorporate these key elements into a broader and deeply interdisciplinary view of molecular evolution. This book gives an account of such a new approach, through clear tutorial contributions by leading scientists.

Author : Eckart Voland,Karl Grammer
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 394 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2003-06-12
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 3540436707

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Evolutionary Aesthetics by Eckart Voland,Karl Grammer Pdf

Evolutionary aesthetics is the attempt to understand the aesthetic judgement of human beings and their spontaneous distinction between "beauty" and "ugliness" as a biologically adapted ability to make important decisions in life. The hypothesis is - both in the area of "natural beauty" and in sexuality, with regard to landscape preferences, but also in the area of "artificial beauty" (i.e. in art and design) - that beauty opens up fitness opportunities, while ugliness holds fitness risks. In this book, this adaptive view of aesthetics is developed theoretically, presented on the basis of numerous examples, and its consequences for evolutionary anthropology are illuminated.