THE INFORMATIONAL GENE AND THE SUBSTANTIAL BODY: ON THE GENERALIZATION OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY BY ABSTRACTION

1962 ◽  
Vol 11 (02) ◽  
pp. 137-143
Author(s):  
M. Schwarzschild

It is perhaps one of the most important characteristics of the past decade in astronomy that the evolution of some major classes of astronomical objects has become accessible to detailed research. The theory of the evolution of individual stars has developed into a substantial body of quantitative investigations. The evolution of galaxies, particularly of our own, has clearly become a subject for serious research. Even the history of the solar system, this close-by intriguing puzzle, may soon make the transition from being a subject of speculation to being a subject of detailed study in view of the fast flow of new data obtained with new techniques, including space-craft.


2012 ◽  
pp. 145-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Maevsky

The author claims that J. Kornai in his paper Innovation and Dynamism (Voprosy Ekonomiki. 2012. No 4) ignored the understanding of socialism as a specific type of culture and not just as an economic system. He also shows profound differences between Schumpeters theory and mainstream economic models. Evolutionary theory, he claims, may itself become mainstream if Schumpeters legacy is not interpreted straightforwardly and if evolutionary economists consider not only micro-, but also macro-level of analysis in studying macrogenerations of capital of a different age.


2003 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim Kleinman

On at least four occasions, Edgar Anderson (1897–1969) began revising his book Plants, man and life (1952). Given both its place in Anderson's career and his place in the development of evolutionary theory in the mid-twentieth century, the emendations are noteworthy. Though a popular work, Plants, man and life served as the distillation of Anderson's ideas on hybridization as an evolutionary mechanism, the need for more scientific attention on domesticated and semi-domesticated plants, and the opportunities such plants provided for the study of evolution. Anderson was an active participant in several key events in what historians have come to call the Evolutionary Synthesis. For example, he and Ernst Mayr shared the 1941 Jesup Lectures on “Systematics and the origin of species”. Anderson's proposed revisions to his book reflect both an attempt to soften certain acerbic comments as well as an attempt to recast the book as a whole.


2008 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. BRINK-ROBY

This paper argues that, for a number of naturalists and lay commentators in the second half of the nineteenth century, evolutionary – especially Darwinian – theory gave new authority to mythical creatures. These writers drew on specific elements of evolutionary theory to assert the existence of mermaids, dragons and other fabulous beasts. But mythological creatures also performed a second, often contrapositive, argumentative function; commentators who rejected evolution regularly did so by dismissing these creatures. Such critics agreed that Darwin's theory legitimized the mythological animal, but they employed this legitimization to undermine the theory itself. The mermaid, in particular, was a focus of attention in this mytho-evolutionary debate, which ranged from the pages of Punch to the lecture halls of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Crossing social boundaries and taking advantage of a range of venues, this debate arose in response to the indeterminate challenge of evolutionary theory. In its discussions of mermaids and dragons, centaurs and satyrs, this discourse helped define that challenge, construing and constructing the meanings and implications of evolutionary theory in the decades following Darwin's publication.


2012 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Mulhall

While neglected Irish male poets of the mid century have seen some recuperation in recent decades, the work of Irish women poets still languishes in obscurity. A growing body of scholarship has identified the need to bring critical attention to bear on this substantial body of work. In this essay I explore the positioning of Irish women poets in mid-century periodical culture, to flesh out the ways in which the terms of this ‘forgetting’ are already established within the overwhelmingly masculinist homosocial suppositions and idioms that characterized contemporary debates about the proper lineage and aesthetic norms for the national literary culture that was then under construction. Within the terms set by those debates, the woman writer was caught in the double bind that afflicted any woman wishing to engage in a public, politicized forum in post-revolutionary Ireland. While women poets engage in sporadic or oblique terms with such literary and cultural debates, more often their voices are absent from these dominant discourses – the logic of this absence has continued in the occlusion of these women poets from the national poetic canon.


2014 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven C. Hertler

Abstract The five factor trait of conscientiousnessis a supertrait, denoting on one hand a pattern of excessive labor, rigidity, orderliness and compulsivity,and on the other hand a pattern of strict rectitude, scrupulosity, dutifulness and morality. In both respects the obsessive-compulsive personality is conscientious; indeed, it has been labeled a disorder of extreme conscientiousness (Widiger et al., 2009). Antisocial personality disorder, in the present paper, is described as occupying the opposite end of the conscientiousness continuum. The antisocial is impulsive rather than compulsive, illicit rather than licit, and furtive rather than forthright.After clinically comparing the obsessive and antisocial personalities, the present paper invokes evolutionary theory to explain their resultant behavioral, ideological, political and demographic differences.


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