The origins of societies

1997 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Maynard Smith ◽  
Eors Szathmary
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Dioxide ◽  
Sex Ratio ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Somatic Cells ◽  
Egg Laying ◽  
The Body ◽  
Narrow Channels ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Animal Societies

The heat generated within a mound of the termite Macrotermes is carried upwards by a central air duct. The air then travels down along narrow channels close to the surface of the mound, where it is cooled, and where, as in a lung, oxygen and carbon dioxide are exchanged. The whole mound is an airconditioning system. Although the mound resembles a human building in having features ensuring the comfort of its inhabitants, it differs in that not one of its builders had a picture of the completed structure before building started. The structure emerged from the rule-governed behaviour of tens of thousands of interacting workers. In this, the mound resembles a human body rather than a human building. The body is built by the rule-governed actions of millions of cells. Nowhere is there anything resembling a blueprint of the body. At most, the genome is a set of instructions for making a body: it is not a description of a body. The resemblance between the development of an insect colony and of an organism has led to the concept of a ‘superorganism’. The analogy has some value. To the extent that individual ants, bees or termites have lost the capacity to reproduce, they can propagate their genes only by ensuring the success of the colony, just as somatic cells can propagate theirs only by ensuring the success of the organism. Hence, the colony can be expected to have features adapted to ensure its success, and it is reasonable to apply concepts of optimization to it, rather than to the individual—as was done, for example, by Oster & Wilson (1978) in their book on insect caste systems. But for our purposes the concept of a super organism is of little use. To understand the origins of animal societies, we must ask how individuals capable of reproduction came to cooperate to the extent that most of them lost the ability to reproduce. To understand their maintenance, we must explain why they are not disrupted by cheating. Unlike somatic cells, the individual workers, although related, are not genetically identical. We would therefore expect within-colony conflict to be widespread, as indeed it is: examples discussed below concern egg laying by workers, and conflict over the sex ratio.

Embodying the culture of achievement: Culture between illness and perfection is a ‘thin line’ – obtaining the ideal female body as an act of achievement

2021 ◽  
pp. 1354067X2110040
Author(s):  
Josefine Dilling ◽  
Anders Petersen
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Study ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Female Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Thin Line ◽  
Complex Processes ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
Body Ideals

In this article, we argue that certain behaviour connected to the attempt to attain contemporary female body ideals in Denmark can be understood as an act of achievement and, thus, as an embodiment of the culture of achievement, as it is characterised in Præstationssamfundet, written by the Danish sociologist Anders Petersen (2016) Hans Reitzels Forlag . Arguing from cultural psychological and sociological standpoints, this article examines how the human body functions as a mediational tool in different ways from which the individual communicates both moral and aesthetic sociocultural ideals and values. Complex processes of embodiment, we argue, can be described with different levels of internalisation, externalisation and materialisation, where the body functions as a central mediator. Analysing the findings from a qualitative experimental study on contemporary body ideals carried out by the Danish psychologists Josefine Dilling and Maja Trillingsgaard, this article seeks to anchor such theoretical claims in central empirical findings. The main conclusions from the study are used to structure the article and build arguments on how expectations and ideals expressed in an achievement society become embodied.

Morphological Evolution of French Military Personnels

2000 ◽  
Vol 44 (38) ◽  
pp. 744-747
Author(s):  
Régis Mollard ◽  
Pierre Yves Hennion ◽  
Alex Coblentz
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Morphological Evolution ◽  
The Body ◽  
Lower Limbs ◽  
Morphological Transformation ◽  
Military Population ◽  
Morphological Modification ◽  
Human Body Models ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Military

The survey realized in 1992 on a military population allowed to collect anthropometric data on 688 males and 328 females. Among 73 measurements and 3 index, 26 of them have been retained for the comparison with previous surveys. Generally used for dimensioning human body models these data represent somatic measurements of reference, as weight and stature and segmentary measurements of trunk and limbs. A comparison with previous data, collected on a equivalent military population in 1973, confirms the modifications along the time are so significant that they can be considered as a phenomenon of morphological evolution. Likewise, the modification of the academic levels, average age and socio-cultural structures in the populations are combined to increase the anthropometric variability. It appears the military population presents a morphological modification with an overall increase in weight, stature and correlated dimensions. Otherwise, a light decrease of the cormic index indicates that the morphological transformation influences on the body proportions, with an increase more notable for the lower limbs compared to the trunk. The collected anthropometric information allow to update the Individual Database of ERGODATA from which ergonomie recommendations and statistical and morphological models of the human body can be proposed.

The mechanisms which affect the periodic cycle of Pacific Wuchereria bancrofti microfilariae

1981 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Hawking ◽  
Tinousi Jennings ◽  
F. J. Louis ◽  
E. Tuira
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Dioxide ◽  
Circadian Rhythm ◽  
Body Temperature ◽  
Sodium Bicarbonate ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Venous Blood ◽  
Wuchereria Bancrofti ◽  
Early Morning ◽  
The Body ◽  
Small Rise

ABSTRACT1. Investigations were made of the effect of various procedures in raising or lowering the microfilaria count of Pacific type Wuchereria bancrofti in the peripheral blood.2. Raising the body temperature in the early morning was followed by a moderate fall in the counts. Breathing increased oxygen, or reduced oxygen (hypoxia) or increased carbon dioxide, or the ingestion of sodium bicarbonate produced no consistent and significant changes in the count. Ingestion of glucose (in one volunteer) was followed by a small rise in the count. Muscular exercise was followed by a fall in the count, which is interpreted as probably being a response to a lower concentration of oxygen in the venous blood returning to the lung.3. It has not been possible to identify the physiological components of the circadian rhythm of the human body which entrain the cycle of these microfilariae. Attempts to obtain evidence incriminating the stimuli described above have been unsuccessful.

scholarly journals Molecular Politics, Wearables, and the Aretaic Shift in Biopolitical Governance

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 71-96
Author(s):  
Peter Lindner
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
The Body ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individual Body

Since the publication of Nikolas Rose’s ‘The Politics of Life Itself’ (2001) there has been vivid discussion about how biopolitical governance has changed over the last decades. This article uses what Rose terms ‘molecular politics’, a new socio-technical grip on the human body, as a contrasting background to ask anew his question ‘What, then, of biopolitics today?’ – albeit focusing not on advances in genetics, microbiology, and pharmaceutics, as he does, but on the rapid proliferation of wearables and other sensor-software gadgets. In both cases, new technologies providing information about the individual body are the common ground for governance and optimization, yet for the latter, the target is habits of moving, eating and drinking, sleeping, working and relaxing. The resulting profound differences are carved out along four lines: ‘somatic identities’ and a modified understanding of the body; the role of ‘expert knowledge’ compared to that of networks of peers and self-experimentation; the ‘types of intervention’ by which new technologies become effective in our everyday life; and the ‘post-discipline character’ of molecular biopolitics. It is argued that, taken together, these differences indicate a remarkable shift which could be termed aretaic: its focus is not ‘life itself’ but ‘life as it is lived’, and its modality are new everyday socio-technical entanglements and their more-than-human rationalities of (self-)governance.

scholarly journals Ekploitasi Tubuh Aktivis Perempuan Pengurus Cabang Pergerakan Mahasiswa Islam Indonesia Kabupaten Malang

AL-HUKAMA ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-171
Author(s):  
Ahmad Zainuri
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Normal State ◽  
Women Activists ◽  
Development Program ◽  
The Body ◽  
Women's Development ◽  
Job Descriptions ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Interesting Event ◽  
Individual Body

In implementing the works program of the Branch Management of Indonesian Islamic Students Movement of Malang Regency, for the sake of a good and interesting event, the owners of power use female activists to become workers. Women activists must carry out tasks that are not in accordance with their job descriptions, get coercion from fellow activists to carry out tasks that they themselves have not yet experienced and only try first, and the most striking is when female activists are not happy if there is a women's development program. The practice of exploitation of these women activists, seen in this article, uses Michel Foucault's body discipline theory. The body's discipline works as a normalization of behavior designed by utilizing the productive and reproductive abilities of the human body. The practice of power through disciplining the body, creates a situation where the individual body can internalize submission and make it look like a normal state. This practice is what Foucault calls the normalization of power over the individual body. Individuals will never feel that they are being used and subjugated because they already consider it to be within reasonable limits. It can also be said that this is a veiled exploitation.

scholarly journals The emergence of artificial Intelligence through the prism of Haeckel’s biogenetic law

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (11) ◽  
pp. 25-36
Author(s):  
С. С. Бескаравайний
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
The Body ◽  
Learning Ability ◽  
The Internet ◽  
The Status ◽  
Genetic Law ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Functional Mechanisms

The article discusses the analogies between the formation of humanity as a collective subject, and the modern process of forming artificial intelligence, which should also have the features of a collective subject. It is shown that attempts to rely solely on the study of individual intelligence are unproductive. The isomorphism of anthroposociogenesis and the creation of AI is motivated by the following: AI is created by human civilization - therefore, its thinking will reproduce both the features of individual intelligence and the features of civilization that ensure the socialization of the individual. The problem of copying consciousness is difficult to analyze, therefore, the formation of subjectivity is considered. A technosubject is a collection of devices and programs that can determine their own future. It has been established that the bio-genetic law acts as a vector for the evolutionary variability of technical devices and sets the boundary conditions that must be met in the process of becoming a techno-subject. Copying the process of the emergence of the human mind and at the same time the practice of society in the accumulation and processing of information shows the path of development. Since now all functional mechanisms of the development of the mind and consciousness have not been revealed, it is necessary to correlate the new, computer mind with the form, with the external manifestations of the previous, natural, intelligence. There are also differences between these processes: 1) in comparison with the formation of human intelligence, the formation of AI is more reflexive, conscious, 2) the fundamentally different physicality of AI, due to the transfer of a large amount of information between machines, 3) the formation of techno-subject can be completely different in speed, since the learning ability of neural networks can exceed the learning ability of a person. Now, technological structures for storing information that we perceive in a socio-technological context can become elements of the body of a new subject. The Internet of things shows the possibility of a fundamentally new physicality, and communications in it are equivalent to unconscious biochemical processes in the human body. At the same time, copying the forms of the human body is redundant, but copying of manipulators and robot operators that can interact with the infrastructure created by man is necessary. It is shown that the Internet as a whole, as a single system, in modern conditions cannot become an AI carrier, it is more a medium than a subject. The carriers of AI should be the structural units of the technosphere, which will become the spokesmen of those contradictions that are sources of development. Probably, these will be technocenoses that will strive to achieve autotrophy, which will require extremely clear goal-setting from them, and, as a result, will lead them to the status of a techno-subject.

scholarly journals Workers influence royal reproduction

2010 ◽  
Vol 278 (1711) ◽  
pp. 1524-1531 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard J. Gill ◽  
Robert L. Hammond
Keyword(s):  
Sex Ratio ◽  
Social Insects ◽  
Cooperative Breeding ◽  
Parentage Analysis ◽  
Egg Laying ◽  
Male Production ◽  
Leptothorax Acervorum ◽  
Worker Brood ◽  
Breeding Groups ◽  
Animal Societies

Understanding which parties regulate reproduction is fundamental to understanding conflict resolution in animal societies. In social insects, workers can influence male production and sex ratio. Surprisingly, few studies have investigated worker influence over which queen(s) reproduce(s) in multiple queen (MQ) colonies (skew), despite skew determining worker-brood relatedness and so worker fitness. We provide evidence for worker influence over skew in a functionally monogynous population of the ant Leptothorax acervorum . Observations of MQ colonies leading up to egg laying showed worker aggressive and non-aggressive behaviour towards queens and predicted which queen monopolized reproduction. In contrast, among-queen interactions were rare and did not predict queen reproduction. Furthermore, parentage analysis showed workers favoured their mother when present, ensuring closely related fullsibs (average r = 0.5) were reared instead of less related offspring of other resident queens ( r ≤ 0.375). Discrimination among queens using relatedness-based cues, however, seems unlikely as workers also biased their behaviour in colonies without a mother queen. In other polygynous populations of this species, workers are not aggressive towards queens and MQs reproduce, showing the outcome of social conflicts varies within species. In conclusion, this study supports non-reproductive parties having the power and information to influence skew within cooperative breeding groups.

Thomas Aquinas (I)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonia Fitzpatrick
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
The Body ◽  
Entire Study ◽  
Substantial Form ◽  
Bodily Resurrection ◽  
Whole Person ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Structure Of Matter

This chapter restores the place of the body within Aquinas’s theory of the composition of human nature, explaining his account of the body’s autonomy relative to the soul. The central arguments of the entire study are elaborated: theological problems, particularly the bodily resurrection, led Aquinas to emphasize the body’s goodness; Aquinas thinks that the individuality of the whole person had its origins in matter; the individual body’s autonomy is underpinned by its unique ‘dimensive quantity’—a corporeal form, but an ‘accidental’, not a substantial form, which individualizes the body’s matter. These arguments are established through attending to: essence and its relationship to the individual; the beauty of the human body; embryology, heredity, and the structure of matter; and individuation. A theme running through the chapter is Aquinas’s radical remodelling of Peter Lombard’s concept of the ‘truth of human nature’, i.e. that from which the resurrected body will be constituted.

INTRODUCTION TO FORENSICS - APPLICATION OF NATURAL SCIENCES

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-202
Author(s):  
Anna Kęskiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Dioxide ◽  
Carbon Monoxide ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
The Body ◽  
Fatal Poisoning ◽  
Scientific Presentation ◽  
Legal Information ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Preventive Methods

A well-known forensic material used in forensic technique is carbon monoxide on environment. In literature an important element that makes it difficult to assess the circumstances of fatal poisoning is the individual way of reacting the body to the action of carbon monoxide. Often staying in the same conditions cause that some people are poisoned while others alive. ''Introduction to forensics - application of natural sciences '' is a scientific presentation in order to disseminate preventive methods. The policy on environment is undoubtedly a theme to these important research methods. In order to analyze in the written work that toxic gas in strictly defined cases are the base of evidence. Empirical studies on the example of environmental protection included: quantitative analysis based on the Legalis Legal Information System, directions, noticeable tendencies in described scope, results of empirical research. Toxic gases on environment are used in the evaluation of the material for palynological analyze. The study took into account the analysis of the most suitable places on the body or clothing for taking palynological samples. The analysis covered whether the forensic traces of carbon dioxide recorded on the surface of the body or clothing, reflect the composition of vegetation occurring in the area of research and whether they can be used to mark the time of the event. The obtained results indicate that traces of carbon dioxide may be useful in determining the time of the event in practice in forensic science.

BODY PHYSICALITY AS A KEY FACTOR OF MEDIA SELF PRESENTATION – BODY IMAGE IN ADVERTISING

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 133-146
Author(s):  
Miroslav Zelinský ◽  
Ivana Bulanda
Keyword(s):  
Body Image ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Emotional Processing ◽  
Mental Image ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
The Body ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
The Individual

The contribution is a consideration of the role of a human body in personal, physical reflections, in the field of art and in media space. The presented text is a thought starting point for a scientific study of the role and forms of the human body in contemporary advertising. In contemporary modern society, there is an increasing interest in the appearance and presentation of the body in its female or male modality. Body image is a complex, dynamic and multidimensional aspect of an individual’s personality, determined by a number of individual and socio-cultural factors. Body image creation takes place under the influence and experience of information and it can change throughout life. The perception of body image is linked to the general ideas that the culture connects with the ideal form of the body. It is not only a mental image, but also includes an assessment component, an attitude based on cognitive schemes and emotional processing of information with which the individual is confronted

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