Download or read book Evolution Made to Order written by Helen Anne Curry and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-07-06 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plant breeders have long sought technologies to extend human control over nature. Early in the twentieth century, this led some to experiment with startlingly strange tools like x-ray machines, chromosome-altering chemicals, and radioactive elements. Contemporary reports celebrated these mutation-inducing methods as ways of generating variation in plants on demand. Speeding up evolution, they imagined, would allow breeders to genetically engineer crops and flowers to order. Creating a new food crop or garden flower would soon be as straightforward as innovating any other modern industrial product. In Evolution Made to Order, Helen Anne Curry traces the history of America’s pursuit of tools that could intervene in evolution. An immersive journey through the scientific and social worlds of midcentury genetics and plant breeding and a compelling exploration of American cultures of innovation, Evolution Made to Order provides vital historical context for current worldwide ethical and policy debates over genetic engineering.
Download or read book The Origins of Order written by Stuart A. Kauffman and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stuart Kauffman here presents a new paradigm for evolutionary biology, one that extends the basic concepts of Darwinian evolution to accommodate recent findings and perspectives from the fields of biology, physics, chemistry and mathematics. The book drives to the heart of the exciting debate on the origins of life and maintenance of order in complex biological systems. It focuses on the concept of self-organization: the spontaneous emergence of order that is widely observed throughout nature Kauffman argues that self-organization plays an important role in the Darwinian process of natural selection. Yet until now no systematic effort has been made to incorporate the concept of self-organization into evolutionary theory.
Download or read book Social Evolution and Sociological Categories Routledge Revivals written by Paul Q. Hirst and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-01-21 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1976, this book is concerned with the nature of classification in the social sciences. Its thesis is that classifications are dependent upon and are derived from theoretical explanations. Classification is not a theoretically neutral typification or ordering of social forms. This is because objects classified – societies, social institutions – are not given to knowledge independently of the categories which construct them and because the categories of classification are themselves the products of theories.
Download or read book Evolution Order and Complexity written by Kenneth Boulding and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-01-04 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evolution, Order and Complexity reflects topical interest in the relationship between the social and natural worlds. It represents the cutting edge of current thinking which challenges the natural/social dichotomy thesis by showing how the application of ideas which derive from biology can be applied and offer insight into the social realm. This is done by introducing the general system theory to the methodological debate on the relation of human and natural sciences.
Download or read book Development and Evolution written by Stanley N. Salthe and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Development and Evolution surveys and illuminates the key themes of rapidly changing fields and areas of controversy that the redefining the theory and philosophy of biology. It continues Stanley Salthe's investigation of evolutionary theory, begun in his influential book Evolving Hierarchical Systems, while negating the implicit philosophical mechanisms of much of that work. Here Salthe attempts to reinitiate a theory of biology from the perspective of development rather than from that of evolution, recognizing the applicability of general systems thinking to biological and social phenomena and pointing towards a non-Darwinian and even a postmodern biology.
Download or read book Evolution and Emergence written by Nancey Murphy and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2007-04-05 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays by experts in the field, exploring how nature works to produce systems of increasing complexity from simple components, and how our understanding of this phenomenon of emergence can lead us to a deeper appreciation of both our humanity and our relationship with God.
Download or read book God and Evolution Science Meets Faith written by Dr. Gerard M. Verschuuren and published by "O'Reilly Media, Inc.". This book was released on 2012-10-29 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meet the “match made in heaven” between religion and science as they harmoniously converge through exploring the Catholic view on God and evolution. Author Dr. Verschuuren, a practicing Catholic and human geneticist, challenges the ‘black and white’ attitude toward matters of religion and science. Through drawing upon religion, philosophy, and biology, he reveals that science and religion answer different dimensions to the same fundamental question, “Where do we come from?” allowing for a compatible, and desirable coexistence—one that preserves, and in fact intensifies, God’s splendor.
Download or read book In the Light of Evolution written by National Academy of Sciences and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2013-01-25 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The central goal of the In the Light of Evolution (ILE) series is to promote the evolutionary sciences through state-of-the-art colloquia-in the series of Arthur M. Sackler colloquia sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences-and their published proceedings. Each installment explores evolutionary perspectives on a particular biological topic that is scientifically intriguing but also has special relevance to contemporary societal issues or challenges. This book is the outgrowth of the Arthur M. Sackler Colloquium "Brain and Behavior," which was sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences on January 20-21, 2012, at the Academy's Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center in Irvine, CA. It is the sixth in a series of Colloquia under the general title "In the Light of Evolution." Specifically, In Light of Evolution: Brain and Behavior focuses on the field of evolutionary neuroscience that now includes a vast array of different approaches, data types, and species. This volume is also available for purchase with the In the Light of Evolution six-volume set.
Download or read book Thinking and Literacy written by Carolyn N. Hedley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores higher level, critical, and creative thinking, as well as reflective decision making and problem solving -- what teachers should emphasize when teaching literacy across the curriculum. Focusing on how to encourage learners to become independent thinking, learning, and communicating participants in home, school, and community environments, this book is concerned with integrated learning in a curriculum of inclusion. It emphasizes how to provide a curriculum for students where they are socially interactive, personally reflective, and academically informed. Contributors are authorities on such topics as cognition and learning, classroom climates, knowledge bases of the curriculum, the use of technology, strategic reading and learning, imagery and analogy as a source of creative thinking, the nature of motivation, the affective domain in learning, cognitive apprenticeships, conceptual development across the disciplines, thinking through the use of literature, the impact of the media on thinking, the nature of the new classroom, developing the ability to read words, the bilingual, multicultural learner, crosscultural literacy, and reaching the special learner. The applications of higher level thought to classroom contexts and materials are provided, so that experienced teacher educators, and psychologists are able to implement some of the abstractions that are frequently dealt with in texts on cognition. Theoretical constructs are grounded in educational experience, giving the volume a practical dimension. Finally, appropriate concerns regarding the new media, hypertext, bilingualism, and multiculturalism as they reflect variation in cognitive experience within the contexts of learning are presented.
Download or read book The Blind Watchmaker Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design written by Richard Dawkins and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2015-09-28 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Dawkins’s classic remains the definitive argument for our modern understanding of evolution. The Blind Watchmaker is the seminal text for understanding evolution today. In the eighteenth century, theologian William Paley developed a famous metaphor for creationism: that of the skilled watchmaker. In The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins crafts an elegant riposte to show that the complex process of Darwinian natural selection is unconscious and automatic. If natural selection can be said to play the role of a watchmaker in nature, it is a blind one—working without foresight or purpose. In an eloquent, uniquely persuasive account of the theory of natural selection, Dawkins illustrates how simple organisms slowly change over time to create a world of enormous complexity, diversity, and beauty.
Download or read book An Essay Concerning Sociocultural Evolution written by Jürgen Klüver and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-04-17 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writing about sociocultural evolution is always a complicated enterprise, because the subject is not only difficult in a scientific way but also in a political one. In particular since the events of September 11, 2001 the debates about the differences between cultures and their evolutionary developments have left the fields of pure scientific research once and for all. However, there have probably never been scientific discourses that did not touch the realms of political discussions - Darwin, Marx, the atomic physicists and the recent debates about genetic engineering are just a few examples. The aim of this book is not to take part in these debates but it is written as a contribution to the foundations of evolutionary theories in the social sciences. The readers will have to judge if I have succeeded with it. Perhaps essays like this one will help to clarify the problems we all have to face just now in regard to intercultural discourses. Theoretically and mathematically grounded insights into cultural development as the source of many political problems will not solve to how to deal with them them immediately but may serve as signposts in the long run.
Download or read book Report of the Commissioner of Education to the Governor written by Connecticut. State Dept. of Education and published by . This book was released on 1896 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Domesticated Evolution in a Man Made World written by Richard C. Francis and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2015-05-25 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An essential read for anyone interested in the stories of the animals in our home or on our plate.”—BBC Focus Without our domesticated plants and animals, human civilization as we know it would not exist. We would still be living at subsistence level as hunter-gatherers if not for domestication. It is no accident that the cradle of civilization—the Middle East—is where sheep, goats, pigs, cattle, and cats commenced their fatefully intimate association with humans. Before the agricultural revolution, there were perhaps 10 million humans on earth. Now there are more than 7 billion of us. Our domesticated species have also thrived, in stark contrast to their wild ancestors. In a human-constructed environment—or man-made world—it pays to be domesticated. Domestication is an evolutionary process first and foremost. What most distinguishes domesticated animals from their wild ancestors are genetic alterations resulting in tameness, the capacity to tolerate close human proximity. But selection for tameness often results in a host of seemingly unrelated by-products, including floppy ears, skeletal alterations, reduced aggression, increased sociality, and reduced brain size. It's a package deal known as the domestication syndrome. Elements of the domestication syndrome can be found in every domesticated species—not only cats, dogs, pigs, sheep, cattle, and horses but also more recent human creations, such as domesticated camels, reindeer, and laboratory rats. That domestication results in this suite of changes in such a wide variety of mammals is a fascinating evolutionary story, one that sheds much light on the evolutionary process in general. We humans, too, show signs of the domestication syndrome, which some believe was key to our evolutionary success. By this view, human evolution parallels the evolution of dogs from wolves, in particular. A natural storyteller, Richard C. Francis weaves history, archaeology, and anthropology to create a fascinating narrative while seamlessly integrating the most cutting-edge ideas in twenty-first-century biology, from genomics to evo-devo.
Download or read book Galaxy Formation and Evolution written by Houjun Mo and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-05-20 with total page 841 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A coherent introduction for researchers in astronomy, particle physics, and cosmology on the formation and evolution of galaxies.
Download or read book Handbook of Grammatical Evolution written by Conor Ryan and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-09-11 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook offers a comprehensive treatise on Grammatical Evolution (GE), a grammar-based Evolutionary Algorithm that employs a function to map binary strings into higher-level structures such as programs. GE's simplicity and modular nature make it a very flexible tool. Since its introduction almost twenty years ago, researchers have applied it to a vast range of problem domains, including financial modelling, parallel programming and genetics. Similarly, much work has been conducted to exploit and understand the nature of its mapping scheme, triggering additional research on everything from different grammars to alternative mappers to initialization. The book first introduces GE to the novice, providing a thorough description of GE along with historical key advances. Two sections follow, each composed of chapters from international leading researchers in the field. The first section concentrates on analysis of GE and its operation, giving valuable insight into set up and deployment. The second section consists of seven chapters describing radically different applications of GE. The contributions in this volume are beneficial to both novices and experts alike, as they detail the results and researcher experiences of applying GE to large scale and difficult problems. Topics include: • Grammar design • Bias in GE • Mapping in GE • Theory of disruption in GE · Structured GE · Geometric semantic GE · GE and semantics · Multi- and Many-core heterogeneous parallel GE · Comparing methods to creating constants in GE · Financial modelling with GE · Synthesis of parallel programs on multi-cores · Design, architecture and engineering with GE · Computational creativity and GE · GE in the prediction of glucose for diabetes · GE approaches to bioinformatics and system genomics · GE with coevolutionary algorithms in cybersecurity · Evolving behaviour trees with GE for platform games · Business analytics and GE for the prediction of patient recruitment in multicentre clinical trials
Download or read book Time s Arrow and Evolution written by Harold Francis Blum and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-12-08 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a book that has become a milestone of scientific writing Dr. Blum uses "time's arrow," the second law of thermodynamics, as a key concept to show how the nature and evolution of the nonliving world place limits on the nature and evolution of life. He seeks to show that, from the beginning of the universe, physical and chemical laws have inexorably channeled the course of evolution so that possibilities were already limited when life first emerged. Originally published in 1951. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book The Space Transportation Market Evolution or Revolution written by Michael J Rycroft and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2000-12-31 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: M. Rycroft, FacultyMember, InternationalSpaceUniversity e-mail:[email protected] "The Space Transportation Market: Evolution or Revolution?" was the question which was the focus for the papers presented, and also the Panel Discussions, at the fifth annual Symposium organised by the International Space University. Held in Strasbourg, France, for three lively days at the end of May 2000, the Symposium brought together representatives of the developers, providers and operators of space transportation systems, of regulatory bodies, and of users of the space transportation infrastructure in many fields, as well as experts in policy and market analysis. From the papers published here, it is clear that today's answer to the question tends more towards evolution than to revolution. The space launch industry is still not a fully mature one, and is still reliant on at least partial funding by governments. Better cooperation is essential between governments, launch providers, satellite builders and satellite operators in order to reduce the problems which the space transportation market faces today.
