Behavioural genetics: An introduction

1999 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 42-44
Author(s):  
F. Sluyter ◽  
B.A. Ellenbroek
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Behavioural Genetics ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
Behavioural Patterns ◽  
Famous Book ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Descent Of Man ◽  
Behavioural Sciences

Behavioural genetics is the study of the hereditary influence on behaviour, and can therefore be regarded as the intersection between behavioural sciences and genetics. As with most other fields of research it is difficult to exactly pinpoint when behavioural genetics started. In fact, one might say that the notion behavioural traits can be inherited may have appeared in human thought as early at 8000 BC, when the domestication of the dog began.The scientific era of behavioural genetics is generally considered to start with Charles Darwin. In his famous book On the Origin of Species by Means of natural Selection, or the Preservation of favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, published in 1859 (and sold out the first day), he devoted an entire chapter on instinctive behavioural patterns. Some years later, in his book The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, he clearly stated that the difference between the mind of a human being and the mind of an animal ‘is certainly one of degree and not of kind’. Moreover he gave considerable thought that mental powers (and insanity) are heritable aspects.

Fatal asymmetries

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Luis Sánchez
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Artificial Selection ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Descent Of Man

Abstract In Descent of Man, Charles Darwin noted the impact of political institutions on natural selection. He thought that institutions such as asylums or hospitals may deter natural selection; however, he did not reach a decisive answer. Questions remain as to whether the selective impacts of political institutions, which in Darwin’s terms may be referred to as “artificial selection,” are compatible with natural selection, and if so, to what extent. This essay argues that currently there appears to be an essential mismatch between nature and political institutions. Unfitted institutions put exogenous and disproportionate pressures on living beings. This creates consequences for what is postulated as the condition of basic equivalence, which allows species and individuals to enjoy similar chances of survival under natural circumstances. Thus, contrary to Darwin’s expectations, it is sustained that assumed natural selection is not discouraged but becomes exacerbated by political institutions. In such conditions, selection becomes primarily artificial and perhaps mainly political, with consequences for species’ evolutionary future.

Chapter VI: Darwin

1980 ◽  
Vol 25 (S1) ◽  
pp. 34-48
Author(s):  
Richard Albert Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Mental Development ◽  
Fiftieth Anniversary ◽  
Unique Characteristic ◽  
Main Trend ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Descent Of Man ◽  
Animal World

In this year falls the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Charles Darwin—one of those rare individuals who have altered the main trend of thought and inaugurated a new attitude and a new outlook in human affairs.—JULIAN HUXLEY, Contemporary Review, October 1932.Language has justly been considered as one of the chief distinctions between man and the lower animals. But man, as a highly competent judge, Archbishop Whately, remarks, ‘is not the only animal that can make use of language to express what is passing in his mind, and can understand, more or less, what is so expressed by another.’—DARWIN, Descent of Man, Chap. III.The investigation of language, as pointed out in the last chapter, had been carried on for a hundred years in the belief that language was a unique characteristic of man, and did not extend to the animal world beneath him. But with the publication of the Descent of Man in 1871 the whole problem of language was suddenly expanded into a much wider region. Darwin, in that book, distinctly challenged the human boundaries that had been set to language as being artificial and arbitrary, and extended the problem over into the animal world, maintaining that the difference between the language of man and the cries of animals was not a difference in kind, as had been formerly thought, but a difference in degree only, a difference in definiteness of connotation and distinctness of articulation. This difference in language followed naturally, he maintained, upon the difference in degree of their mental development.

scholarly journals Darwin's Use of Intellectual Disability in The Descent of Man

2008 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven A. Gelb
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Disability ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Intellectual Disabilities ◽  
Human Evolution ◽  
Mental State ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Descent Of Man

When Charles Darwin turned his attention to writing about human descent in 1871 he attempted to narrow the fossil gap between human beings and higher primates by presenting persons with intellectual disabilities — "idiots" in the language of the day — as evidence in support of the theory of evolution. This paper explores the four ways that Darwin used persons with intellectual disabilities in The Descent of Man: 1) as intermediate rung on the evolutionary ladder connecting humans and primates; 2) as exemplars of the inevitable waste and loss produced by natural selection acting upon variability; 3) as the floor of a scale representing the "lowest", most unfit variety of any species when individuals were rank ordered by intelligence; and 4) as atavistic reversions to extinct forms whose study would reveal the characteristics of earlier stages of human evolution. Darwin's strategic use of intellectual disability is brought to bear on the controversy regarding the mental state of Darwin's last child.

The Loss of Rational Design

2005 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 235-257
Author(s):  
Friedel Weinert
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Rational Design ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
British Association ◽  
Human Origins ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Descent Of Man

Charles Darwin published hisOrigin of Specieson November 24, 1859. Whatever hurdle the theory of natural selection faced in its struggle for acceptance, its impact on human self-images was almost immediate. Well before Darwin had the chance of applying the principle of natural selection to human origins—in hisDescent of Man(1871)—his contemporaries quickly and rashly drew the inference to man's descent from the ape. Satirical magazines likePunchdelighted in depicting Darwin with his imposing head on an apish body. At the Oxford meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (June 1860), Bishop Wilberforce asked T. H. Huxley triumphantly whether he traced his ancestry to the ape on his grandfather's or grandmother's side. A wave of evolutionary texts swept over Europe (L. Biichner, E. Haeckel, T. H. Huxley, J. B. Lamarck, C. Lyell, F. Rolle, E. Tyler and K. Vogt). Written in English, French and German, they all had a common focus: the place of humans in a Darwinian world, including religion and morality.

The Loss of Rational Design

2005 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 20-21
Author(s):  
Friedel Weinert
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Rational Design ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
British Association ◽  
Human Origins ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Descent Of Man

Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species on November 24, 1859. Whatever hurdle the theory of natural selection faced in its struggle for acceptance, its impact on human self-images was almost immediate. Well before Darwin had the chance of applying the principle of natural selection to human origins—in his Descent of Man (1871)—his contemporaries quickly and rashly drew the infer–ence to man’s descent from the ape. Satirical magazines like Punch delighted in depicting Darwin with his imposing head on an apish body. At the Oxford meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (June 1860), Bishop Wilberforce asked T.

scholarly journals Charles Darwin, sexual selection and the evolution of other-regarding ethics

BJHS Themes ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Piers J. Hale
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Woman Question ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Acquired Characters ◽  
Other Regarding ◽  
Descent Of Man ◽  
Selection Of

Abstract Although many read Charles Darwin's Origin of Species as an endorsement, rather than merely a description, of individualism and competition, in Descent of Man (1871) Darwin intended to show that natural selection could account for the most noble aspects of human morality and conscience. He did so in response to Alfred Russel Wallace's 1869 statement to the contrary. In doing so, Darwin appealed to the natural selection of groups rather than individuals, and to the maternal, parental and filial instincts, as the origin of truly other-regarding moral sentiments. Further, the inheritance of acquired characters and sexual selection had important implications for Darwin's understanding of how other-regarding ethics might prevail in an evolutionary framework that seemed to reward self-interest. In a short addendum to this essay I highlight just three of a number of Darwin's contemporaries who were impressed by this aspect of his work: the science popularizer Arabella Buckley, the Scottish Presbyterian scholar Henry Drummond and the anarchist geographer and naturalist Peter Kropotkin. In closing, I point to an extensive network of others who framed their concerns about both the ‘labour question’ and the ‘woman question’ in evolutionary terms, as a fruitful area for future research in this direction.

scholarly journals The proportion of the sexes produced by whites and coloured peoples in Cuba

1909 ◽  
Vol 81 (545) ◽  
pp. 32-37 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Relative Number ◽  
General Tendency ◽  
Great Work ◽  
Great Ability ◽  
Relative Age ◽  
Illegitimate Children ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Descent Of Man ◽  
Determining Factor

Introduction .—Darwin, in his great work on the Descent of Man, deals with the proportion of the sexes in various animals and the power of natural selection to regulate the proportional number of the sexes. He recognises a general tendency to equality is often greatly disturbed. In certain rare cases of marked inequality he concludes they might have been acquired through natural selection, but in all ordinary cases, such as, for instance, the difference in the proportion of the sexes in legitimate and illegitimate children, it can hardly be so accounted for and must be attributed to unknown conditions, although, he adds, natural selection will always tend to equalise the relative number of the two sexes. About that time a host of writers were engaged in investigating various possible causes for this inequality, and many theories were promulgated to account for it, such as the relative age of the parents, the time of conception, and so forth. Prominent amongst them was Düsing, who set himself to show that nutriment was the chief determining factor. He set forth his case with great ability and brought an enormous mass of evidence in support of his view.

scholarly journals A New Class of Autopoietic and Cognitive Machines

Information ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 24
Author(s):  
Rao Mikkilineni
Keyword(s):  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Cognitive Behaviors ◽  
New Class ◽  
Reasoning System ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Living Organisms ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Computing Machines

Making computing machines mimic living organisms has captured the imagination of many since the dawn of digital computers. However, today’s artificial intelligence technologies fall short of replicating even the basic autopoietic and cognitive behaviors found in primitive biological systems. According to Charles Darwin, the difference in mind between humans and higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind. Autopoiesis refers to the behavior of a system that replicates itself and maintains identity and stability while facing fluctuations caused by external influences. Cognitive behaviors model the system’s state, sense internal and external changes, analyze, predict and take action to mitigate any risk to its functional fulfillment. How did intelligence evolve? what is the relationship between the mind and body? Answers to these questions should guide us to infuse autopoietic and cognitive behaviors into digital machines. In this paper, we show how to use the structural machine to build a cognitive reasoning system that integrates the knowledge from various digital symbolic and sub-symbolic computations. This approach is analogous to how the neocortex repurposed the reptilian brain and paves the path for digital machines to mimic living organisms using an integrated knowledge representation from different sources.

Darwinism

On Purpose ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 91-113
Author(s):  
Michael Ruse
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Slow Process ◽  
End Point ◽  
Julian Huxley ◽  
The World ◽  
Hans Christian Andersen ◽  
Descent Of Man

This chapter describes how Charles Darwin changed the world after publishing On the Origin of Species in 1859 and The Descent of Man in 1871. Although there were those who continued generally to stand firm against evolution, even the religious accepted that organisms, including humans, are the end point of a long, slow process of natural development. As in the Hans Christian Andersen tale about the lad who said openly that the king has no clothes, so when Darwin said “evolution,” almost everyone said that they had known it all along! Natural selection had more mixed success. Everyone accepted it to some extent. Julian Huxley, for instance, always had some doubts about its universal power and applicability, but when it came to humans physically, he was fully convinced of its overwhelming importance. This said, the scientific community was slower in coming to full acceptance, and it was more in the popular domain that natural selection—and even more sexual selection—was a huge success. Poets, novelists, politicians, and many others also harped on and on about its importance.

scholarly journals A New Class of Autopoietic and Cognitive Machines

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rao Mikkilineni
Keyword(s):  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Cognitive Behaviors ◽  
Intelligent Machines ◽  
New Class ◽  
Current State ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Living Organisms ◽  
The Mind

Making computing machines mimic living organisms has captured the imagination of many since the dawn of digital computers. However, today’s artificial intelligence technologies fall short in replicating even the basic autopoietic and cognitive behaviors found in primitive biological systems. According Charles Darwin, the difference in mind between humans and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind. Autopoiesis refers to the behavior of a system that replicates itself and maintains its own identity and stability while facing fluctuations caused by external influences. Cognitive behaviors model the system’s state, sense internal and external changes, analyze, predict and take action to mitigate any risk to its functional fulfilment. How did intelligence evolve? what is the relationship between the mind and body? Answers to these questions should guide us to infuse autopoietic and cognitive behaviors into digital machines. In this paper we use recent advances in our understanding of general theory of information, and the role of structures in managing the transformations between information and knowledge to pave the path to infuse autopoietic and cognitive functions into digital computing and build a new class of intelligent machines going beyond the current state of the art.

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