Between Evolution and History: Biology, Culture, and the Myth of Human Origins

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Ingold
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Life Histories ◽  
Relational Model ◽  
Human Origins ◽  
Organic Evolution ◽  
Organic World ◽  
Total Process ◽  
Development And Evolution ◽  
Biological Organisms

This chapter explains how the phenomena of both organic evolution and cultural change can be accommodated within a single explanatory paradigm. It first argues that a model of variation under selection cannot fully grasp the generative dynamics of cultural change, and instead calls for an emphasis on the activities that give rise to artefacts, rather than on the final forms of such artefacts. It then discusses history as but one aspect of a total process of evolution that embraces the entire organic world; how biological organisms and cultural artefacts condition the development of other entities or beings to which they relate; and genotypes and phenotypes in relation to natural selection. It also describes the genealogical model in comparison with the relational model, with particular reference to their application to understanding the kinship of both human and nonhuman beings, and how the relational model can be applied not only to persons but also to the development and evolution of organisms. The chapter concludes by discussing the life-histories of artefacts in terms of replication and reproduction.

Size change in development and evolution

1968 ◽  
Vol 42 (S2) ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Tyler Bonner
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Maximum Size ◽  
Size Increase ◽  
Size Change ◽  
Genetic Changes ◽  
Organic Evolution ◽  
Fluctuating Environments ◽  
Development And Evolution

Phylogeny is a succession of ontogenies, and the two have been compared by considering them in terms of rates of size change. In development, the larger the organism, the slower its rate of size increase. In evolution, the rates of size change can be put into three distinct categories: fast, medium, and slow. The fast changes occur over short periods of time (1–10 thousand years) and are as likely to show size decrease as increase. The medium changes occur over longer time spans (5–20 million years) and are predominantly or entirely instances of size increase. The slow changes occur over the entire span of organic evolution and represent the maximum size attained in various phyla, which again show an over-all increase.For ontogeny, a decrease in rate of size change is correlated with an increase in complexity, an increase in the number of gene actions. For evolution, it is correlated with an increase in the number of genetic changes required of the genome by natural selection in fluctuating environments.

scholarly journals Value of species and the evolution of conservation ethics

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (11) ◽  
pp. 181038 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darragh Hare ◽  
Bernd Blossey ◽  
H. Kern Reeve
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Inclusive Fitness ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Apparent Contradiction ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Conservation Ethics ◽  
Cultural Conditions ◽  
Evolution By Natural Selection ◽  
Time Required

The theory of evolution by natural selection can help explain why people care about other species. Building upon recent insights that morality evolves to secure fitness advantages of cooperation, we propose that conservation ethics (moral beliefs, attitudes, intuitions and norms regarding other species) could be adaptations that support cooperation between humans and non-humans. We present eco-evolutionary cost–benefit models of conservation behaviours as interspecific cooperation (altruism towards members of other species). We find that an evolutionary rule identical in structure to Hamilton's rule (which explains altruistic behaviour towards related conspecifics) can explain altruistic behaviour towards members of other species. Natural selection will favour traits for selectively altering the success of members of other species (e.g. conserving them) in ways that maximize inclusive fitness return benefits. Conservation behaviours and the ethics that evolve to reinforce them will be sensitive to local ecological and socio-cultural conditions, so will assume different contours in different places. Difficulties accurately assessing costs and benefits provided by other species, time required to adapt to ecological and socio-cultural change and barriers to collective action could explain the apparent contradiction between the widespread existence of conservation ethics and patterns of biodiversity decline globally.

scholarly journals Nature v Natural Selection An Essay on Organic Evolution

Nature ◽  
1896 ◽  
Vol 53 (1374) ◽  
pp. 386-387
Author(s):  
E. B. P.
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Organic Evolution

scholarly journals A Simple Model of Unbounded Evolutionary Versatility as a Largest-Scale Trend in Organismal Evolution

2000 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter D. Turney
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Simple Model ◽  
Computational Model ◽  
Local Adaptation ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Changing Environment ◽  
Local Environments ◽  
Global Trend ◽  
Evolutionary Pace ◽  
Biological Organisms

The idea that there are any large-scale trends in the evolution of biological organisms is highly controversial. It is commonly believed, for example, that there is a large-scale trend in evolution towards increasing complexity, but empirical and theoretical arguments undermine this belief. Natural selection results in organisms that are well adapted to their local environments, but it is not clear how local adaptation can produce a global trend. In this paper, I present a simple computational model, in which local adaptation to a randomly changing environment results in a global trend towards increasing evolutionary versatility. In this model, for evolutionary versatility to increase without bound, the environment must be highly dynamic. The model also shows that unbounded evolutionary versatility implies an accelerating evolutionary pace. I believe that unbounded increase in evolutionary versatility is a large-scale trend in evolution. I discuss some of the testable predictions about organismal evolution that are suggested by the model.

scholarly journals Is Human Society an Organism Made of Many Animals?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Narcis Marincat
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Biological Processes ◽  
The Past ◽  
Social Organism ◽  
Biological Organisms ◽  
Natural Cycles ◽  
Biological Reasoning

Social organism theories of the past have defined human societies as “biological organisms”, similar to animals or plants. This present work draws from the recent technological breakthroughs in both biology and astronomy to define the worldwide human society as a “multizoa organism”, i.e. an organism made of many animals. The paper then puts forth the idea that as a multizoa organism, human society is subject to some of the same biological processes that apply to other organisms, such as the natural cycles of growth, feeding and reproduction, the principles of evolution through natural selection, and the dangers of evolutionary pressures. Finally, it argues that war can be understood as a multizoa disease that decreases the chances of a society to survive in its environment and reproduce, thus providing a purely biological reasoning against the use of warfare.

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.

Cultural evolution

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matteo Mameli ◽  
Kim Sterelny
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Social Learning ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Biological Evolution ◽  
Phenotypic Traits ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
Cumulative Change ◽  
Cultural Traits ◽  
Changes Over Time ◽  
Over Time

Cultural traits are those phenotypic traits whose development depends on social learning. These include practices, skills, beliefs, desires, values, and artefacts. The distribution of cultural traits in the human species changes over time. But this is not enough to show that culture evolves. That depends on the mechanisms of change. In the cultural realm, one can often observe something similar to biology’s ‘descent with modification’: cultural traits are sometimes modified, their modifications are sometimes retained and passed on to others through social learning, until new modifications are added. In this way, new modifications are piled on top of old modifications, generating cumulative change. But, again, this is not enough to show that culture evolves. For culture to evolve, cumulative change must be the result of hidden-hand mechanisms similar to those that explain cumulative biological change. If cumulative cultural change cannot be explained in these terms, the analogy between cultural change and biological evolution is unhelpful. The best-known biological mechanism is natural selection. There are reasons to think that cultural change is at least sometimes due to natural-selection-like mechanisms. The adaptive fit often found between cultural traits and the environment in many cases has been built gradually and in a way that involves natural selection operating at the cultural level. The parallel with morphological adaptation is compelling. No complete and universally accepted account of natural-selection-like processes operating at the cultural level exists at this stage. But at least three kinds of processes seem possible: - A natural-selection-like process can be generated by culturally heritable differences in fitness between individuals. - A natural-selection-like process can be generated by culturally heritable differences in fitness between groups. - A natural-selection-like process can operate at the level of cultural variants themselves, independently of the effects that cultural variants have on the fitness of individuals or groups. The theory of memes (initially presented by Dawkins and then developed by Dennett) is one possible account of how (iii) might work; but other accounts exist too.

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