The Point of Politics

1994 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Betzig
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Reproductive Competition ◽  
Western History ◽  
Dominance Hierarchies ◽  
Men And Women

AbstractWhy do men and women compete? And what makes them compete more or less? An answer to the first question follows directly from Darwin. If Homo sapiens, like other species, is a product of natural selection, then we should have evolved to compete in order to reproduce. An answer to the second question follows from more recent versions of Darwinism. People, like other organisms, are likely to compete socially - to form dominance hierarchies - to the extent that it is costly for subordinates to flee ecologically. This paper first reviews evidence that winners at political competition have consistently won at reproductive competition. Next, it documents the slow shift toward declining political competition - toward democracy, and toward declining reproductive competition - toward monogamy, in the course of Western history. Last, it offers a model of what might account for that change.

Darwinian Evolutionary Theory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Ruse
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Descent Of Man

Charles Robert Darwin, the English naturalist, published On the Origin of Species in 1859 and the follow-up work The Descent of Man in 1871. In these works, he argued for his theory of evolution through natural selection, applying it to all organisms, living and dead, including our own species, Homo sapiens. Although controversial from the start, Darwin’s thinking was deeply embedded in the culture of his day, that of a middle-class Englishman. Evolution as such was an immediate success in scientific circles, but although the mechanism of selection had supporters in the scientific community (especially among those working with fast-breeding organisms), its real success was in the popular domain. Natural selection, and particularly the side mechanism of sexual selection, were known to all and popular themes in fiction and elsewhere.

Homo Sapiens Adaptation and the Law of Natural Selection

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Karen Kh. Momdzhyan
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
The Law

A Brief History of Life and Brain Evolution

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Frederick L. Coolidge
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Brain Evolution ◽  
Cognitive Differences ◽  
Behavioral Features ◽  
Survival And Reproduction ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Brain Shape ◽  
Evolutionary Fitness

This chapter reviews some of the fundamentals of evolution, particularly adaptations and exaptations. Adaptations are physical or behavioral features that through natural selection aided survival and reproduction. Exaptations are physical or behavioral features that have been co-opted from their initial adaptive functions and subsequently enhanced fitness. The reuse, recycling, or redeployment of brain neurons for purposes other than their original adaption may be considered a central organizing principle of the brain. The chapter reviews the beginnings of life and presents a timeline of life through the evolution of hominins. The term hominin refers to all current and extinct relatives and ancestors of Homo sapiens, including the australopithecines and habilines, within about the last 6 million years. The chapter introduces the hypothesis that Homo sapiens survived and flourished, instead of Neandertals, Denisovans, and other hominins, because of brain shape differences, which created cognitive differences that enhanced the evolutionary fitness of Homo sapiens.

“Data for the Problem of Evolution in Man. V. On the Correlation between Duration of Life and the Number of Offspring”

1901 ◽  
Vol 35 (6) ◽  
pp. 458-479
Author(s):  
M. Beeton ◽  
G. U. Yule ◽  
Karl Pearson
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Breeding Season ◽  
The Other ◽  
Similar Statement ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Darwinian Theory ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Biennial Plants ◽  
Long Life ◽  
Breeding Seasons

According to the Darwinian theory of evolution the members of a community less fitted to their environment are removed by death. But this process of natural selection would not permanently modify a race, if the members thus removed were able before death to propagate their species in average numbers. It then becomes an important question to ascertain how far duration of life is related to fertility. In the case of many insects death can interfere only with their single chance of offspring; they live or not for their one breeding season only. A similar statement holds good with regard to annual and biennial plants. In such cases there might still be a correlation between duration of life and fertility, but it would be of the indirect character, which we actually find in the case of men and women living beyond sixty years of age—a long life means better physique and better physique increased fertility. On the other hand, there is a direct correlation of fertility and duration of life in the case of those animals which generally survive a number of breeding seasons, and it is this correlation which we had at first in view when investigating the influence of duration of life on fertility in man. The discovery of the indirect factor in the correlation referred to above was therefore a point of much interest. For it seems to show that the physique fittest to survive is really the physique which is in itself (and independently of the duration of life) most fecund.

Differences in male and female cognitive abilities: Sexual selection or division of labor?

1996 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 254-255
Author(s):  
Michael T. Ghiselin
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Sexual Dimorphism ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Reproductive Competition ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Males And Females

AbstractIn Darwinian terminology, “sexual selection” refers to purely reproductive competition and is conceptually distinct from natural selection as it affects reproduction generally. As natural selection may favor the evolution of sexual dimorphism by virtue of the division of labor between males and females, this possibility needs to be taken very seriously.

The rise and fall of Homo sapiens sapiens

1989 ◽  
Vol 325 (1228) ◽  
pp. 479-488 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Food ◽  
The World ◽  
Present Rate

Human beings have broken the ecological ‘law’ that says that big, predatory animals are rare. Two crucial innovations in particular have enabled us to alter the planet to suit ourselves and thus permit unparalleled expansion: speech (which implies instant transmission of an open-ended range of conscious thoughts) and agriculture (which causes the world to produce more human food than unaided nature would do). However, natural selection has not equipped us with a long-term sense of self-preservation. Our population cannot continue to expand at its present rate for much longer, and the examples of many other species suggests that expansion can end in catastrophic collapse. Survival beyond the next century in a tolerable state seems most unlikely unless all religions and economies begin to take account of the facts of biology. This, if it occurred, would be a step in cultural evolution that would compare in import with the birth of agriculture.

scholarly journals The colours of humanity: the evolution of pigmentation in the human lineage

2017 ◽  
Vol 372 (1724) ◽  
pp. 20160349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina G. Jablonski ◽  
George Chaplin
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Genetic Drift ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Skin Colour ◽  
Population Bottlenecks ◽  
Melanin Pigmentation ◽  
Evolutionary Forces ◽  
History Of ◽  
Skin Coloration ◽  
Perception Function

Humans are a colourful species of primate, with human skin, hair and eye coloration having been influenced by a great variety of evolutionary forces throughout prehistory. Functionally naked skin has been the physical interface between the physical environment and the human body for most of the history of the genus Homo , and hence skin coloration has been under intense natural selection. From an original condition of protective, dark, eumelanin-enriched coloration in early tropical-dwelling Homo and Homo sapiens , loss of melanin pigmentation occurred under natural selection as Homo sapiens dispersed into non-tropical latitudes of Africa and Eurasia. Genes responsible for skin, hair and eye coloration appear to have been affected significantly by population bottlenecks in the course of Homo sapiens dispersals. Because specific skin colour phenotypes can be created by different combinations of skin colour–associated genetic markers, loss of genetic variability due to genetic drift appears to have had negligible effects on the highly redundant genetic ‘palette’ for the skin colour. This does not appear to have been the case for hair and eye coloration, however, and these traits appear to have been more strongly influenced by genetic drift and, possibly, sexual selection. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Animal coloration: production, perception, function and application’.

Making artistic popular music: the goal of true folk

Popular Music ◽  
1981 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 9-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Blacking
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Good Evidence ◽  
Social Differentiation ◽  
Human History ◽  
Music Culture ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Mutual Communication

There is good evidence that for over ninety-nine per cent of human history, and for ninety-seven per cent of the time since the emergence of our own species (homo sapiens sapiens) approximately 70,000 years ago, all music was popular, in so far as it was shared and enjoyed by all members of a society. If there were distinctions of style within a society's music, they were accepted as sings of functional or social differentiation rather than as barriers to mutual communication. Distinctions between sacred and secular music, between music for young and old or men and women, were generally drawn within the style of each music culture, and, at least in principle, a member of one group could perform and appreciate the music of another group in the same society.

The Temporal Lobes

2020 ◽  
pp. 130-151
Author(s):  
Frederick L. Coolidge
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Storage Capacity ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Mating Strategies ◽  
Evolution Of Language ◽  
Genetic Event ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Temporal Lobes ◽  
Selection For

One of the major adaptations of the temporal lobes is the storage and application of meanings to sounds. With the evolution of primates and later hominins, the temporal lobes became exapted for protolanguage and, later, fully modern recursive language. Language evolved through natural selection for communication. This chapter presents the hypothesis that a recent beneficent genetic event increased working memory and phonological storage capacity, allowing the release of recursive phrasing, a prerequisite for use of the subjunctive mode. The evolution of language may have been influenced by gossip, which served to keep cheaters in check in larger social groups. Freud proposed that jokes may have arisen to relieve aggressive and sexual tensions, and others have proposed that incongruent jokes may have emerged to reduce the probability of being surprised. The evolution of humor may be related to creativity; humor production and receptivity differences have been demonstrated in men and women, which may be correlated to mating strategies.

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