Download or read book The Human Beast through the Lens of Evolution written by Nigel Barber and published by . This book was released on 2021-07-30 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Human Beast scrutinizes riddles of human psychology through the lens of evolutionary theory. The book offers many surprising takes on everyday behavior. It appeals to a broad range of readers.
Download or read book God Or Beast written by Robert Claiborne and published by New York : Norton. This book was released on 1974 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The science writer refutes the ideas of Desmond Morris, B. F. Skinner, and others in presenting his theory about human behavior and man's evolutionary lineage.
Download or read book The Human Advantage written by Suzana Herculano-Houzel and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2016-03-18 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why our human brains are awesome, and how we left our cousins, the great apes, behind: a tale of neurons and calories, and cooking. Humans are awesome. Our brains are gigantic, seven times larger than they should be for the size of our bodies. The human brain uses 25% of all the energy the body requires each day. And it became enormous in a very short amount of time in evolution, allowing us to leave our cousins, the great apes, behind. So the human brain is special, right? Wrong, according to Suzana Herculano-Houzel. Humans have developed cognitive abilities that outstrip those of all other animals, but not because we are evolutionary outliers. The human brain was not singled out to become amazing in its own exclusive way, and it never stopped being a primate brain. If we are not an exception to the rules of evolution, then what is the source of the human advantage? Herculano-Houzel shows that it is not the size of our brain that matters but the fact that we have more neurons in the cerebral cortex than any other animal, thanks to our ancestors' invention, some 1.5 million years ago, of a more efficient way to obtain calories: cooking. Because we are primates, ingesting more calories in less time made possible the rapid acquisition of a huge number of neurons in the still fairly small cerebral cortex—the part of the brain responsible for finding patterns, reasoning, developing technology, and passing it on through culture. Herculano-Houzel shows us how she came to these conclusions—making “brain soup” to determine the number of neurons in the brain, for example, and bringing animal brains in a suitcase through customs. The Human Advantage is an engaging and original look at how we became remarkable without ever being special.
Download or read book A Story of Us written by Lesley Newson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-19 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's time for a story of human evolution that goes beyond describing "ape-men" and talks about what women and children were doing. In a few decades, a torrent of new evidence and ideas about human evolution has allowed scientists to piece together a more detailed understanding of what went on thousands and even millions of years ago. We now know much more about the problems our ancestors faced, the solutions they found, and the trade-offs they made. The drama of their experiences led to the humans we are today: an animal that relies on a complex culture. We are a species that can and does rapidly evolve cultural solutions as we face new problems, but the intricacies of our cultures mean that this often creates new challenges. Our species' unique capacity for culture began to evolve millions of years ago, but it only really took off in the last few hundred thousand years. This capacity allowed our ancestors to survive and raise their difficult children during times of extreme climate chaos. Understanding how this has evolved can help us understand the cultural change and diversity that we experience today. Lesley Newson and Peter Richerson, a husband-and-wife team based at the University of California, Davis, began their careers with training in biology. The two have spent years together and individually researching and collaborating with scholars from a wide range of disciplines to produce a deep history of humankind. In A Story of Us, they present this rich narrative and explain how the evolution of our genes relates to the evolution of our cultures. Newson and Richerson take readers through seven stages of human evolution, beginning seven million years ago with the apes that were the ancestors of humans and today's chimps and bonobos. The story ends in the present day and offers a glimpse into the future.
Download or read book Man Beast and Zombie written by Kenan Malik and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A landmark book that draws on cutting-edge sciences to assess what precisely they have to say about human nature.
Download or read book Beast People Onscreen and in Your Brain written by Mark Pizzato and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2016-02-22 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new take on our bio-cultural evolution explores how the "inner theatre" of the brain and its "animal-human stages" are reflected in and shaped by the mirror of cinema. Vampire, werewolf, and ape-planet films are perennial favorites—perhaps because they speak to something primal in human nature. This intriguing volume examines such films in light of the latest developments in neuroscience, revealing ways in which animal-human monster movies reflect and affect what we naturally imagine in our minds. Examining specific films as well as early cave images, the book discusses how certain creatures on rock walls and movie screens express animal-to-human evolution and the structures of our brains. The book presents a new model of the human brain with its theatrical, cinematic, and animal elements. It also develops a theory of "rasa-catharsis" as the clarifying of emotions within and between spectators of the stage or screen, drawing on Eastern and Western aesthetics as well as current neuroscience. It focuses on the "inner movie theater" of memories, dreams, and reality representations, involving developmental stages, as well as the "hall of mirrors," ape-egos, and body-swapping identifications between human beings. Finally, the book shows how ironic twists onscreen—especially of contradictory emotions—might evoke a reappraisal of feelings, helping spectators to be more attentive to their own impulses. Through this interdisciplinary study, scholars, artists, and general readers will find a fresh way to understand the potential for interactive mindfulness and yet cathartic backfire between human brains—in cinema, in theater, and in daily life.
Download or read book Human Evolution written by Bernard Grant Campbell and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this new fourth edition, Campbell has revised and updated his classic introduction to the field. Human Evolution synthesizes the major findings of modern research and theory and presents a complete and integrated account of the evolution of human beings. New developments in microbiology and recent fossil records are incorporated into the enormous range of this volume, with the resulting text as lucid and comprehensive as earlier editions. The fourth edition retains the thematic structure and organization of the third, with its cogent treatment of human variability and speciation, primate locomotion, and nonverbal communication and the evolution of language, supported by more than 150 detailed illustrations and an expanded and updated glossary and bibliography. As in prior editions, the book treats evolution as a concomitant development of the main behavioral and functional complexes of the genus Homo among them motor control and locomotion, mastication and digestion, the senses and reproduction. It analyzes each complex in terms of its changing function, and continually stresses how the separate complexes evolve interdependently over the long course of the human journey. All these aspects are placed within the context of contemporary evolutionary and genetic theory, analyses of the varied extensions of the fossil record, and contemporary primatology and comparative morphology. The result is a primary text for undergraduate and graduate courses, one that will also serve as required reading for anthropologists, biologists, and nonspecialists with an interest in human evolution. "Synthesizes the conventional academic thought into a textbook or detailed account for lay readers. Along the chronological narrative are discussions of progress in homeostasis, the primate radiation, locomotion and the hindlimb, function and structure of the head, reproduction and social structure, and culture and society." Book News Bernard Campbell has been a visiting lecturer at Harvard and Cambridge, and has taught and conducted research in Eastern and Southern Africa. He was professor of anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles, from 1970-76. Dr. Campbell is author/coauthor of Sexual Selection and the Descent of Man; Human Ecology (second edition, Aldine); Humankind Emerging and the definitive three-volume Catalogue of Fossil Hominids.
Download or read book The Evolution of the Human Head written by Daniel E. Lieberman and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-03 with total page 769 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In one sense, human heads function much like those of other mammals. We use them to chew, smell, swallow, think, hear, and so on. But, in other respects, the human head is quite unusual. Unlike other animals, even our great ape cousins, our heads are short and wide, very big brained, snoutless, largely furless, and perched on a short, nearly vertical neck. Daniel E. Lieberman sets out to explain how the human head works, and why our heads evolved in this peculiarly human way. Exhaustively researched and years in the making, this innovative book documents how the many components of the head function, how they evolved since we diverged from the apes, and how they interact in diverse ways both functionally and developmentally, causing them to be highly integrated. This integration not only permits the head’s many units to accommodate each other as they grow and work, but also facilitates evolutionary change. Lieberman shows how, when, and why the major transformations evident in the evolution of the human head occurred. The special way the head is integrated, Lieberman argues, made it possible for a few developmental shifts to have had widespread effects on craniofacial growth, yet still permit the head to function exquisitely. This is the first book to explore in depth what happened in human evolution by integrating principles of development and functional morphology with the hominin fossil record. The Evolution of the Human Head will permanently change the study of human evolution and has widespread ramifications for thinking about other branches of evolutionary biology.
Download or read book Bittersweet Destiny written by Del Thiessen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bittersweet Destiny combines discourse on the evolution of human behavior with a philosophical perspective. It explores evolutionary theory aimed at determining human behavior. Del Thiessen presents this material against the broad background of everyday life, allowing the reader to see the theory of evolution as it has shaped his or her own behavior. However, he points out that when evolutionary theory is aimed at human behavior, the critics object, and controversy results. Thiessen argues that nothing in our lives makes sense unless we look at it through a biological lens. We can thereby understand our origin, our affiliation with all animals and plants, and our cultural destination. However, we can also discover a dark side to our destiny—our favoritism to those who share our own genes, our ability to deceive, and our capacity for abuse, rape, and murder. Good, bad, and indifferent, we serve the replication of our DNA. Critics extrapolate evolutionary theory to a wide range of animal species, and even human morphology and physiology, but when the same perspective is applied to human behavior there is strong dissent. What these critics fear, according to Thiessen, is that accepting evolutionary notions about human behavior strikes at the heart of free will, self-determination, and social equality. Bittersweet Destiny describes the heroic efforts of naturalists Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace to unlock the secrets of evolution. It continues with a vivid description of our fossil history and our chance beginnings. From there the story implicates disease processes in evolution, highlights our rational and irrational nature, focuses on those characteristics of brain evolution and language that make us distinctive, and illustrates our most basic survival and reproductive mechanisms. Thiessen warns the reader that things are as they are no matter what we might wish; we ignore facts and controversy at our own risk. This book will be significant to anthropologists, psychologists, biologists, and sociologists.
Download or read book The Evolution of Beauty written by Richard O. Prum and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2017-05-09 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, SMITHSONIAN, AND WALL STREET JOURNAL A major reimagining of how evolutionary forces work, revealing how mating preferences—what Darwin termed "the taste for the beautiful"—create the extraordinary range of ornament in the animal world. In the great halls of science, dogma holds that Darwin's theory of natural selection explains every branch on the tree of life: which species thrive, which wither away to extinction, and what features each evolves. But can adaptation by natural selection really account for everything we see in nature? Yale University ornithologist Richard Prum—reviving Darwin's own views—thinks not. Deep in tropical jungles around the world are birds with a dizzying array of appearances and mating displays: Club-winged Manakins who sing with their wings, Great Argus Pheasants who dazzle prospective mates with a four-foot-wide cone of feathers covered in golden 3D spheres, Red-capped Manakins who moonwalk. In thirty years of fieldwork, Prum has seen numerous display traits that seem disconnected from, if not outright contrary to, selection for individual survival. To explain this, he dusts off Darwin's long-neglected theory of sexual selection in which the act of choosing a mate for purely aesthetic reasons—for the mere pleasure of it—is an independent engine of evolutionary change. Mate choice can drive ornamental traits from the constraints of adaptive evolution, allowing them to grow ever more elaborate. It also sets the stakes for sexual conflict, in which the sexual autonomy of the female evolves in response to male sexual control. Most crucially, this framework provides important insights into the evolution of human sexuality, particularly the ways in which female preferences have changed male bodies, and even maleness itself, through evolutionary time. The Evolution of Beauty presents a unique scientific vision for how nature's splendor contributes to a more complete understanding of evolution and of ourselves.
Download or read book The Human Story written by Robin Ian MacDonald Dunbar and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the latest thinking on human evolution, by ?one of the most respected evolutionary psychologists in Britain?. For scientists studying evolution, the past decade has seen astonishing advances across many disciplines - discoveries which have revolutionised scientific thinking and turned upside down our understanding of who we are. The Human Story brings together these threads of research in genetics, behaviour and psychology to provide an understanding of just what it is that makes us human. Robin Dunbar looks in particular at how the human mind has evolved, and draws on his own research during the last five years into the deep psychological and biological bases of music and religion.
Download or read book Ask the Beasts Darwin and the God of Love written by Elizabeth A. Johnson and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-01-16 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For millennia plant and animal species have received little sustained attention as subjects of Christian theology and ethics in their own right. Focused on the human dilemma of sin and redemptive grace, theology has considered the doctrine of creation to be mainly an overture to the main drama of human being`s relationship to God. What value does the natural world have within the framework of religious belief? The crisis of biodiversity in our day, when species are going extinct at more than 1,000 times the natural rate, renders this question acutely important. Standard perspectives need to be realigned; theology needs to look out of the window, so to speak as well as in the mirror. Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love leads to the conclusion that love of the natural world is an intrinsic element of faith in God and that far from being an add-on, ecological care is at the centre of moral life.
Download or read book Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Language Art and Cultural Exchange ICLACE 2024 written by Chaoqun Shen and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2024 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Space Civilization written by James Gilley and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-10-07 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As humanity begins to move in earnest towards becoming a multiplanetary civilization, the social science questions of what will be required of that civilization begin to emerge. This work seeks to highlight these questions and to provide some answers about the economic, political, and social predicaments of space civilization.
Download or read book The Evolution of Social Communication in Primates written by Marco Pina and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-05-23 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did social communication evolve in primates? In this volume, primatologists, linguists, anthropologists, cognitive scientists and philosophers of science systematically analyze how their specific disciplines demarcate the research questions and methodologies involved in the study of the evolutionary origins of social communication in primates in general and in humans in particular. In the first part of the book, historians and philosophers of science address how the epistemological frameworks associated with primate communication and language evolution studies have changed over time and how these conceptual changes affect our current studies on the subject matter. In the second part, scholars provide cutting-edge insights into the various means through which primates communicate socially in both natural and experimental settings. They examine the behavioral building blocks by which primates communicate and they analyze what the cognitive requirements are for displaying communicative acts. Chapters highlight cross-fostering and language experiments with primates, primate mother-infant communication, the display of emotions and expressions, manual gestures and vocal signals, joint attention, intentionality and theory of mind. The primary focus of the third part is on how these various types of communicative behavior possibly evolved and how they can be understood as evolutionary precursors to human language. Leading scholars analyze how both manual and vocal gestures gave way to mimetic and imitational protolanguage and how the latter possibly transitioned into human language. In the final part, we turn to the hominin lineage, and anthropologists, archeologists and linguists investigate what the necessary neurocognitive, anatomical and behavioral features are in order for human language to evolve and how language differs from other forms of primate communication.
Download or read book Join the Club written by Tina Rosenberg and published by Icon Books Ltd. This book was released on 2011-04-08 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the style of Nudge or The Spirit Level - a groundbreaking book that will change the way you look at the world. Tina Rosenberg has spent her career tackling some of the world's hardest problems. The Haunted Land, her searing book on how Eastern Europe faced the crimes of Communism, was awarded both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in the US. In Join the Club, she identifies a brewing social revolution that is changing the way people live, based on harnessing the positive force of peer pressure. Her stories of peer power in action show how it has reduced teen smoking in the United States, made villages in India healthier and more prosperous, helped minority students get top grades in college calculus, and even led to the fall of Slobodan Milosevic. She tells how creative social entrepreneurs are starting to use peer pressure to accomplish goals as personal as losing weight and as global as fighting terrorism. Inspiring and engrossing, Join the Club explains how we can better our world through humanity's most powerful and abundant resource: our connections with one another.
Download or read book The Beast Within written by Jessica Serra and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2024-01-30 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How different from animals are we really? Are humans the only creatures who love, laugh, cry, possess morals, and wage war? In The Beast Within, scientific researcher and ethologist Jessica Serra upends the assumptions that underpin our very human hypothesis that we possess a superior place in the hierarchy of organisms on Earth. How did we come to think of our animality as standing in opposition to our humanity—and does this reasoning have a scientific basis? Through the fascinating discoveries made by ethologists, anthropologists, and archeologists, Serra deciphers our behaviors in light of their animal roots and demystifies ideas about how different animals are from humans. She compares human behaviors with those exhibited by other species in chapters spanning topics as varied as sex, morality, emotions, intelligence, and family. Exploring the evolution of various animal species, as well as the evolution of historical ideas about humanity and animality, Serra theorizes that human behaviors and motivations may hold more in common with those of animals than we think. These explorations of scientific findings encourage us to reconsider how much we have truly removed ourselves from "the beast within."
