scholarly journals Methodology for studying the «Struggle for existence» topic within the university course «Theory of Evolution»

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 268-274
Author(s):  
Elena A. Lamekhova ◽  
Yuri G. Lamekhov

The paper discusses a methodology for studying one of the most complex phenomena in the organic world struggle for existence within the course Theory of Evolution at a pedagogical university. The study of information about the history of development and the formation of evolutionary concepts shows that the discovery of the factors of the organic world evolution is one of the outstanding achievements in the development of biology. In the 20th century, scientific knowledge about the causes of the evolutionary process expanded and together with the material factors of evolution discovered by Charles Darwin stand out as follows: mutation process, dynamics of the number of organisms, isolation, migration, struggle for existence and natural selection. The modern level of struggle for existence theory development is based on achievements in the field of ecology and evolutionary biology and proves that this factor of evolution really exists. The developed methodology for studying this topic includes the content of the course program, a list of questions for study, recommendations for laboratory studies and independent observations in nature. Since the course is studied in the 5th year, it relies on students knowledge from other biological courses as well as on the skills they develop. The course contains the use of elements of partial search and research methods (laboratory work, observations in nature) of teaching with options for conversation, comparison of different points of view, etc. The proposed variant of studying the Struggle for Existence topic will contribute to the high-quality training of students prospective teachers of biology.

Author(s):  
Derek Partridge

The decade from 1844 to 1854 in which Charles Darwin first published two books and then studied barnacles for the final eight years has long been a puzzling digression from the development of his theory of evolution. This essay proposes that it was a conjunction of two quite different activities: a three-year pause initiated to assess and hopefully finalize the editorial completion of his 1844 Essay for publication, followed by a step-change decision to redirect his primary research activity in late 1847. A disenchantment hypothesis is proposed; it presents the step-change decision as a consequence of weighing up the accumulated unencouraging prospects for species-theory development in competition with the emergence of promising projections associated with a broad study of marine invertebrates. Recognition of the triumph, as Darwin initially saw it, of his Essay, followed by years of hostile inputs, opens this new route to understanding this decade. Within it Joseph Hooker emerges as a significant causal force. Many of the customary ‘postponement’ explanations of this digression can be integrated with this pause-and-step-change explanation, whereas explanation of the interval as a gap due to a pre-planned activity cannot, and is revealed to be seriously faulty.


Author(s):  
Izak J.J. Spangenberg

The greening of Christianity: Charles Darwin, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Lloyd Geering. Since the time of Charles Darwin, evolutionary biology challenged the metanarrative of Christianity which can be summarised as Fall-Redemption-Judgement. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin tried to circumvent these challenges by integrating the traditional Christian doctrines with evolutionary biology. However, he did not succeed since the Catholic Church, time and again, vetoed his theological publications. A number of Protestant theologians promoted his views but even they could not convince ordinary Christians to accept his views. These were too esoteric for Christians. Most of them were convinced that the acceptance of the theory of evolution will eventually undermine their faith. In recent years Lloyd Geering argued a case for the creation of a new narrative in which the Big Bang and the theory of evolution do play a role. He calls it the ‘Greening of Christianity’. This article discusses the metanarrative of Christianity and the challenges the theory of evolution presents before it assesses the views of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Lloyd Geering.


Author(s):  
J. Arvid Ågren

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 Darwin, the way many biologists think 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


2012 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Detlev Tönsing

The Enlightenment introduced to European philosophy and thought-patterns the strict dichotomy between res extensa and res cogitans; that is, matter and spirit. How to overcome the dichotomy and conceive of the interactions between these planes of reality has since become an overarching issue for philosophers. The theory of evolution, as founded by Charles Darwin, understands human beings, with their ability to think, to have arisen in the evolutionary process. Neuroscience utilises insights from the theory of complex systems to attempt to understand how perception, thought and self-awareness can arise as a consequence of the complex system that is the brain. However, already at the height of the Enlightenment, a contemporary and critic of Immanuel Kant, Johann Georg Hamann, suggested a metaphor for understanding the interrelationship of matter and thought. This metaphor is language. The appropriateness of this metaphor can be seen both in the importance that language abilities play in the evolutionary transition to the human species and in the characteristics of complex adaptive systems.


2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. David Archibald

Studies of the origin and diversification of major groups of plants and animals are contentious topics in current evolutionary biology. This includes the study of the timing and relationships of the two major clades of extant mammals – marsupials and placentals. Molecular studies concerned with marsupial and placental origin and diversification can be at odds with the fossil record. Such studies are, however, not a recent phenomenon. Over 150 years ago Charles Darwin weighed two alternative views on the origin of marsupials and placentals. Less than a year after the publication of On the origin of species, Darwin outlined these in a letter to Charles Lyell dated 23 September 1860. The letter concluded with two competing phylogenetic diagrams. One showed marsupials as ancestral to both living marsupials and placentals, whereas the other showed a non-marsupial, non-placental as being ancestral to both living marsupials and placentals. These two diagrams are published here for the first time. These are the only such competing phylogenetic diagrams that Darwin is known to have produced. In addition to examining the question of mammalian origins in this letter and in other manuscript notes discussed here, Darwin confronted the broader issue as to whether major groups of animals had a single origin (monophyly) or were the result of “continuous creation” as advocated for some groups by Richard Owen. Charles Lyell had held similar views to those of Owen, but it is clear from correspondence with Darwin that he was beginning to accept the idea of monophyly of major groups.


Since its origin in the early 20th century, the modern synthesis theory of evolution has grown to represent the orthodox view on the process of organic evolution. It is a powerful and successful theory. Its defining features include the prominence it accords to genes in the explanation of development and inheritance, and the role of natural selection as the cause of adaptation. Since the advent of the 21st century, however, the modern synthesis has been subject to repeated and sustained challenges. In the last two decades, evolutionary biology has witnessed unprecedented growth in the understanding of those processes that underwrite the development of organisms and the inheritance of characters. The empirical advances usher in challenges to the conceptual foundations of evolutionary theory. Many current commentators charge that the new biology of the 21st century calls for a revision, extension, or wholesale rejection of the modern synthesis theory of evolution. Defenders of the modern synthesis maintain that the theory can accommodate the exciting new advances in biology, without forfeiting its central precepts. The original essays collected in this volume—by evolutionary biologists, philosophers of science, and historians of biology—survey and assess the various challenges to the modern synthesis arising from the new biology of the 21st century. Taken together, the essays cover a spectrum of views, from those that contend that the modern synthesis can rise to the challenges of the new biology, with little or no revision required, to those that call for the abandonment of the modern synthesis.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 262
Author(s):  
Febrytha Nur Azizah ◽  
I Putu Anom

Agro-tourism is an alternative tourism activity that relies on plantations and agriculture as its main attraction. Along with the development of tourism, agro-tourism has now become an economic driving commodity for the surrounding community, so that agro-tourism is increasingly taken into account in the world of tourism. The development of an agro-tourism can not be separated from the evolutionary process that occurs through various stages of the beginning of the tourist attraction built until now. This study aims to determine the evolution of developments in Satria Agrowisata. The research method used is descriptive qualitative by conducting data collection techniques through online interview as primary data, and conducting online observations as secondary data. The results show that Satria Agrowisata can adapt well to the various changes that exist and continue to innovate in order to survive in the world of tourism until now. In Darwin's theory of evolution, he put forward two key words in his theory, natural selection and adaptation. Natural selection as a mechanism for evolutionary change, and adaptations that occur in its development over time.   Keyword: Evolution, Agrotourism, Satria Agrowisata, Bali.


Author(s):  
Emmanuelle Jousselin ◽  
Marianne Elias

During the last two decades, ecological speciation has been a major research theme in evolutionary biology. Ecological speciation occurs when reproductive isolation between populations evolves as a result of niche differentiation. Phytophagous insects represent model systems for the study of this evolutionary process. The host-plants on which these insects feed and often spend parts of their life cycle constitute ideal agents of divergent selection for these organisms. Adaptation to feeding on different host-plant species can potentially lead to ecological specialization of populations and subsequent speciation. This process is thought to have given birth to the astonishing diversity of phytophagous insects and is often put forward in macroevolutionary scenarios of insect diversification. Consequently, numerous phylogenetic studies on phytophagous insects have aimed at testing whether speciation driven by host-plant adaptation is the main pathway for the diversification of the groups under investigation. The increasing availability of comprehensive and well-resolved phylogenies and the recent developments in phylogenetic comparative methods are offering an unprecedented opportunity to test hypotheses on insect diversification at a macroevolutionary scale, in a robust phylogenetic framework. Our purpose here is to review the contribution of phylogenetic analyses to investigate the importance of plant-mediated speciation in the diversification of phytophagous insects and to present suggestions for future developments in this field.


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gentur Agustinus Naru

Although there have been many studies regarding sensationalism on television, there have not been enough studies to explain why sensational news always attracts viewers' attention regardless of space or time difference. Encouraged by this background, this research tries to answer the question, "What makes sensational news interesting to television viewers?" Inspired by a biological evolutionary perspective, this article formulates a hypothesis that reads, "Sensationalism can draw the attention of the audience because sensational news arouses the most basic instincts of humans, namely the mode of survival (Gurven, 2017)". In this view, the model has become inherent in humans as a result of the evolutionary process. In other words, this hypothesis also believes that audience interest in sensational news is universal rather than contextual.   This article explores a variety of literature in biology, psychology, and communication to try to answer that hypothesis. In order to that, this article is divided into three main sections. We will first explore the history of sensational journalism on television to show the historicity of sensational topics and techniques on television. Second, we will demonstrate the philosophical roots of an evolutionary biology view that explains the relationship between information stimuli and the workings of the human brain and the basic instincts we have carried since evolution thousands of years ago. Finally, we will show studies that prove empirically how news patterns (both sensational topics and production formats) impact viewing interest.


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