Download or read book Social written by Matthew D. Lieberman and published by Crown. This book was released on 2013-10-08 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are profoundly social creatures--more than we know. In Social, renowned psychologist Matthew Lieberman explores groundbreaking research in social neuroscience revealing that our need to connect with other people is even more fundamental, more basic, than our need for food or shelter. Because of this, our brain uses its spare time to learn about the social world--other people and our relation to them. It is believed that we must commit 10,000 hours to master a skill. According to Lieberman, each of us has spent 10,000 hours learning to make sense of people and groups by the time we are ten. Social argues that our need to reach out to and connect with others is a primary driver behind our behavior. We believe that pain and pleasure alone guide our actions. Yet, new research using fMRI--including a great deal of original research conducted by Lieberman and his UCLA lab--shows that our brains react to social pain and pleasure in much the same way as they do to physical pain and pleasure. Fortunately, the brain has evolved sophisticated mechanisms for securing our place in the social world. We have a unique ability to read other people’s minds, to figure out their hopes, fears, and motivations, allowing us to effectively coordinate our lives with one another. And our most private sense of who we are is intimately linked to the important people and groups in our lives. This wiring often leads us to restrain our selfish impulses for the greater good. These mechanisms lead to behavior that might seem irrational, but is really just the result of our deep social wiring and necessary for our success as a species. Based on the latest cutting edge research, the findings in Social have important real-world implications. Our schools and businesses, for example, attempt to minimalize social distractions. But this is exactly the wrong thing to do to encourage engagement and learning, and literally shuts down the social brain, leaving powerful neuro-cognitive resources untapped. The insights revealed in this pioneering book suggest ways to improve learning in schools, make the workplace more productive, and improve our overall well-being.

Download or read book Economic Evolution and Equilibrium written by Marco Lehmann-Waffenschmidt and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-06-10 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work uses various model frameworks to study the evolution of equilibria in an open loop evolving economy in which the model characteristics evolve without any directional restrictions except for continuity. Applying mathematical methods, it is shown that equilibria can always be adapted in a piecewise gradual, non bang-bang way.

Download or read book Cooperative Evolution written by Christopher Bryant and published by ANU Press. This book was released on 2021-03-16 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cooperative Evolution offers a fresh account of evolution consistent with Charles Darwin’s own account of a cooperative, inter-connected, buzzing and ever-changing world. Told in accessible language, treating evolutionary change as a cooperative enterprise brings some surprising shifts from the traditional emphasis on the dominance of competition. The book covers many evolutionary changes reconsidered as cooperation. These include the cooperative origins of life, evolution as a spiral rather than a ladder or tree, humans as a part of natural systems rather than the purpose, relationships between natural and social change, and the role of the individual in adaptive radiation onto new ground. The story concludes with a projection of human evolution from the past into the future. ‘Environmental studies courses have needed a book like Cooperative Evolution for a long time. It is a boon for those teaching the complexity of the evolutionary story.’ — Dr John A. Harris, BSc(Hons) MSc PhD, School of Environmental Science, University of Canberra ‘As a regenerative, holistic-thinking farmer I daily witness the results of cooperative evolution as the seasons unfold. A pleasure to read, Cooperative Evolution gives entry to recent thinking on evolutionary processes.’ — David Marsh, MSA, ‘Allendale’, Boorowa, New South Wales, 2018 National Individual Landcarer Award recipient ‘This book is an engaging new look at ideas about evolution as we know it today. In the hands of two eminent biologists, it presents an approachable yet challenging argument. I heartily recommend it.’ — Emeritus Professor Sue Stocklmayer AO, BSc MSc PhD, Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, The Australian National University

Download or read book Developmental Plasticity and Evolution written by Mary Jane West-Eberhard and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2003-03-13 with total page 815 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive synthesis on development and evolution: it applies to all aspects of development, at all levels of organization and in all organisms, taking advantage of modern findings on behavior, genetics, endocrinology, molecular biology, evolutionary theory and phylogenetics to show the connections between developmental mechanisms and evolutionary change. This book solves key problems that have impeded a definitive synthesis in the past. It uses new concepts and specific examples to show how to relate environmentally sensitive development to the genetic theory of adaptive evolution and to explain major patterns of change. In this book development includes not only embryology and the ontogeny of morphology, sometimes portrayed inadequately as governed by "regulatory genes," but also behavioral development and physiological adaptation, where plasticity is mediated by genetically complex mechanisms like hormones and learning. The book shows how the universal qualities of phenotypes--modular organization and plasticity--facilitate both integration and change. Here you will learn why it is wrong to describe organisms as genetically programmed; why environmental induction is likely to be more important in evolution than random mutation; and why it is crucial to consider both selection and developmental mechanism in explanations of adaptive evolution. This book satisfies the need for a truly general book on development, plasticity and evolution that applies to living organisms in all of their life stages and environments. Using an immense compendium of examples on many kinds of organisms, from viruses and bacteria to higher plants and animals, it shows how the phenotype is reorganized during evolution to produce novelties, and how alternative phenotypes occupy a pivotal role as a phase of evolution that fosters diversification and speeds change. The arguments of this book call for a new view of the major themes of evolutionary biology, as shown in chapters on gradualism, homology, environmental induction, speciation, radiation, macroevolution, punctuation, and the maintenance of sex. No other treatment of development and evolution since Darwin's offers such a comprehensive and critical discussion of the relevant issues. Developmental Plasticity and Evolution is designed for biologists interested in the development and evolution of behavior, life-history patterns, ecology, physiology, morphology and speciation. It will also appeal to evolutionary paleontologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and teachers of general biology.

Download or read book Connection Generation written by Iggy Pintado and published by ConnectGen Pty Limited. This book was released on 2009 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating and remarkable study of how connection affects our place in society and business and the challenges and opportunities this connectedness presents.

Download or read book Nature s Magic written by Peter Corning and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-05-05 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nature's Magic presents a bold vision of the evolutionary process from the Big Bang to the 21st century. Synergy of various kinds is not only a ubiquitous aspect of the natural world but it has also been a wellspring of creativity and the 'driver' of the broad evolutionary trend toward increased complexity, in nature and human societies alike. But in contrast with the many theories of emergence or complexity that rely on some underlying force or 'law', the 'Synergism Hypothesis', as Peter Corning calls it, is in essence an economic theory of biological complexity; it is fully consistent with mainstream evolutionary biology. Corning refers to it as Holistic Darwinism. Among the many important insights that are provided by this new paradigm, Corning presents a scenario in which the human species invented itself; synergistic, behavioral and technological innovations were the 'pacemakers' of our biological evolution. Synergy has also been the key to the evolution of complex modern societies, he concludes.

Download or read book Cognition Evolution and Behavior written by Sara J. Shettleworth and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-12-30 with total page 715 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do animals perceive the world, learn, remember, search for food or mates, communicate, and find their way around? Do any nonhuman animals count, imitate one another, use a language, or have a culture? What are the uses of cognition in nature and how might it have evolved? What is the current status of Darwin's claim that other species share the same "mental powers" as humans, but to different degrees? In this completely revised second edition of Cognition, Evolution, and Behavior, Sara Shettleworth addresses these questions, among others, by integrating findings from psychology, behavioral ecology, and ethology in a unique and wide-ranging synthesis of theory and research on animal cognition, in the broadest sense--from species-specific adaptations of vision in fish and associative learning in rats to discussions of theory of mind in chimpanzees, dogs, and ravens. She reviews the latest research on topics such as episodic memory, metacognition, and cooperation and other-regarding behavior in animals, as well as recent theories about what makes human cognition unique. In every part of this new edition, Shettleworth incorporates findings and theoretical approaches that have emerged since the first edition was published in 1998. The chapters are now organized into three sections: Fundamental Mechanisms (perception, learning, categorization, memory), Physical Cognition (space, time, number, physical causation), and Social Cognition (social knowledge, social learning, communication). Shettleworth has also added new chapters on evolution and the brain and on numerical cognition, and a new chapter on physical causation that integrates theories of instrumental behavior with discussions of foraging, planning, and tool using.

Download or read book Genetics and the Logic of Evolution written by Kenneth M. Weiss and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2004-01-23 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book the authors draw on what is known, largely from recent research, about the nature of genes and cells, the genetics of development and animal and plant body plans, intra- and interorganismal communication, sensation and perception, to propose that a few basic generalizations, along with the modified application of the classical evolutionary theory, can provide a broader theoretical understanding of genes, evolution, and the diverse and complex nature of living organisms.

Download or read book Evolution Chance and God written by Brendan Sweetman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2015-10-22 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evolution, Chance, and God looks at the relationship between religion and evolution from a philosophical perspective. This relationship is fascinating, complex and often very controversial, involving myriad issues that are difficult to keep separate from each other. Evolution, Chance, and God introduces the reader to the main themes of this debate and to the theory of evolution, while arguing for a particular viewpoint, namely that evolution and religion are compatible, and that, contrary to the views of some influential thinkers, there is no chance operating in the theory of evolution, a conclusion that has great significance for teleology. One of the main aims of this book is not simply to critique one influential contemporary view that evolution and religion are incompatible, but to explore specific ways of how we might understand their compatibility, as well as the implications of evolution for religious belief. This involves an exploration of how and why God might have created by means of evolution, and what the consequences in particular are for the status of human beings in creation, and for issues such as free will, the objectivity of morality, and the problem of evil. By probing how the theory of evolution and religion could be reconciled, Sweetman says that we can address more deeply key foundational questions concerning chance, design, suffering and morality, and God's way of acting in and through creation.

Download or read book Who Will It Be written by Paola Vitale and published by Blue Dot Kids Press. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If gills appear, will it be a fish? From fish to frogs to humans, Who Will It Be? introduces the theory of evolution, exploring connections between humans and all life on Earth. Exploring the origin of animals from fish to frogs to humans, Who Will It Be? introduces Darwin's theory of evolution to children with a simple, captivating story. Vibrant illustrations and eye-catching primary colors transition the story, driving young readers' curiosity as they try to discover Who Will it Be? An appendix includes in-depth information about evolutionary science--perfect for parents facing the age-old question: Where did I come from?

Download or read book Software Evolution and Feedback written by Nazim H. Madhavji and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2006-08-30 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evolution of software has long been recognized as one of the most problematic and challenging areas in the field of software engineering, as evidenced by the high, often up to 60-80%, life-cycle costs attributed to this activity over the life of a software system. Studies of software evolution are central to the understanding and practice of software development. Yet it has received relatively little attention in the field of software engineering. This book focuses on topics aimed at giving a scientific insight into the aspect of software evolution and feedback. In summary, the book covers conceptual, phenomenological, empirical, technological and theoretical aspects of the field of software evolution - with contributions from the leading experts. This book delivers an up-to-date scientific understanding of what software evolution is, to show why it is inevitable for real world applications, and it demonstrates the role of feedback in software development and maintenance. The book also addresses some of the phenomenological and technological underpinnings and includes rules and guidelines for increased software evolvability and, in general, sustainability of the evolution process. Software Evolution and Feedback provides a long overdue, scientific focus on software evolution and the role of feedback in the software process, making this the indispensable guide for all software practitioners, researchers and managers in the software industry.

Download or read book Darwinian Sociocultural Evolution written by Marion Blute and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-01-14 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Addresses today's major dilemmas in social scientific theory from the modern Darwinian sociocultural evolutionary approach.

Download or read book Advances in Genomics and Epigenomics of Social Insects written by Greg J. Hunt and published by Frontiers Media SA. This book was released on 2017-01-27 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social insects are among the most successful and ecologically important animals on earth. The lifestyle of these insects has fascinated humans since prehistoric times. These species evolved a caste of workers that in most cases have no progeny. Some social insects have worker sub-castes that are morphologically specialized for discrete tasks. The organization of the social insect colony has been compared to the metazoan body. Males in the order Hymenoptera (bees, ants and wasps) are haploid, a situation which results in higher relatedness between female siblings. Sociality evolved many times within the Hymenoptera, perhaps spurred in part by increased relatedness that increases inclusive fitness benefits to workers cooperating to raise their sisters and brothers rather than reproducing themselves. But epigenetic processes may also have contributed to the evolution of sociality. The Hymenoptera provide opportunities for comparative study of species ranging from solitary to highly social. A more ancient clade of social insects, the termites (infraorder Isoptera) provide an opportunity to study alternative mechanisms of caste determination and lifestyles that are aided by an array of endosymbionts. This research topic explores the use of genome sequence data and genomic techniques to help us explore how sociality evolved in insects, how epigenetic processes enable phenotypic plasticity, and the mechanisms behind whether a female will become a queen or a worker.

Download or read book Piaget Evolution and Development written by Jonas Langer and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1998-06 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings the current interest in primate cognition to bear on studies of cognitive development in humans, with chapters from leading researchers in both areas. For cognitive developmentalists and primatologists and comparative psychologists.

Download or read book Mobile Evolution written by Sebastian Thalanany and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2015-03-02 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents insights, interpretations, concepts, and interdependent views-in the landscape of mobile connectivity and service-that emphasize the significance of a harmonious interplay, cooperation, and coalescing of a variety of interdisciplinary domains of science and art.Mobile Evolution: Insights on Connectivity and Service explores the f

Download or read book The Evolution of Complexity written by Larry Bull and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-01-28 with total page 93 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book gathers together much of the author’s work – both old and new - to explore a number of the key increases in complexity seen in the natural world, seeking to explain each of them purely in terms of the features of fitness landscapes. In a very straightforward manner, the book introduces basic concepts to help readers follow the main ideas. By using variations of the NK model and including the concept of the Baldwin effect, the author presents new abstract models that are able to explain why sources of evolutionary innovation (genomes, symbiosis, sex, chromosomes, multicellularity) have been selected for and hence how complexity has increased over time in some lineages.

Download or read book Foundations of Economic Evolution written by Carsten Herrmann-Pillath and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 695 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ÔThis book is an ambitious intellectual enterprise to build a naturalistic foundation for economics, with amazingly vast knowledge of physical, biological, social sciences and philosophy. Readers will discover that approaches and insights emergent in institutional studies, (social)-neuroscience, network theory, ecological economics, bio-culture dualistic evolution, etc. are persuasively placed in a grand unified frame. It is written in a good Hayekian tradition. I recommend this book particularly to young readers who aspire to go beyond a narrowly specified discipline in the age of expanding communicability of knowledge and ideas.Õ Ð Masahiko Aoki, Stanford University, US ÔCarsten Herrmann-PillathÕs new book is an in-depth application of natural philosophy to economics that draws up an entirely new framework for economic analysis. It offers path-breaking insights on the interactions between human economic activity and nature and outlines a convincing solution to the long-standing reductionism controversy. A must-read for everyone interested in the philosophical underpinnings of economics as a science.Õ Ð Ulrich Witt, Max Planck Institute of Economics, Jena, Germany ÔÒBig pictureÓ philosophy of economics drifted into a dull cul-de-sac as it became obsessively focused on falsifiability and rationality. In this book Carsten Herrmann-Pilath pushes the field back onto the open highway by locating economics in the larger frameworks of metaphysics, evolutionary dynamics and information theory. This is large-scale, ambitious synthesis of ideas of the kind we expect from time to time to see devoted to physics and biology. Why should economics merit anything less? But of course this kind of intellectual tapestry must await the appearance of an unusually devoted scholar with special patience and eccentric independence from the pressure for quick returns that characterizes academic life. In the person of Hermann-Pilath this scholar has appeared. No one who wants to examine economics whole and in its richest context should miss his virtuoso performance in this book.Õ Ð Don Ross, University of Cape Town, South Africa and Georgia State University, US ÔHerrmann-PillathÕs work attempts to bring to bear upon the discipline of economics perspectives from other discourses which have been burgeoning recently Ð namely, thermodynamics, evolutionary biology, and semiotics, aiming at a consilience contextualized by economic activity and problems. This marks the work as a contemporary example of natural philosophy, which is now at the doorstep of a revival. The overall perspective is that human economic activity is an aspect of the ecology of the earthÕs surface, viewing it as an evolving physical system mediated through distributed mentality as expressed in technology evolution. Knowledge is taken to be ÔphysicalÕ with a performative function, as in PeirceÕs pragmaticism. Thus, the social meanings of expectations, prices, and credit are found to be rooted in energy flows. The work draws its foundation from Hegel and C.S. Peirce and its immediate guidance from Hayek, Veblen and Georescu-Roegen. The author generates an energetic theory of economic growth, guided by OdumÕs maximum power principle. Economic discourse itself is reworked in the final chapter, in light of the examinations of the previous chapters, naturalizing economics within an extremely powerful contemporary framework.Õ Ð Stanley N. Salthe, Binghamton University, US ÔAn Oscar-winning performance in the Òtheatre of consilience.Ó ItÕs hard to know which to praise first: Carsten Herrmann-PillathÕs humility or his ambition. He says his book Òis not a great intellectual featÓ because he pursues the Òhumble taskÓ of putting together Òthe ideas of others.Ó When he finally gets to economics he tries to Òbe as simple as possibleÓ and to conceive of economics in terms of the basics, at Òundergraduate level, so to say.Ó On the other hand, the scale of his ambition is to rethink the foundations of economics from first principles, while, at the same time, holding a running dialogue between contemporary sciences and classic philosophy. HeÕs much too modest, of course, because Foundations is a major achievement, but his modesty points to what makes it such a powerful treatise: the book is not about his preferences or prejudices; it is a Òscientific approach that aims at establishing truthful propositions about reality.Ó That is much harder to achieve than grand theories or Òcomplicated mathematics,Ó because it amounts to a new modern synthesis of the field Ð an achievement on a par with Julian HuxleyÕs, whose own modern synthesis of evolutionary theories in the 1940s allowed for the explosive growth of the biosciences over the next decades. The structure of the book is simple enough, providing a framework for the Ònaturalistic turnÓ in economics. Starting from material existence, causation and evolution, Herrmann-Pillath takes us through four fundamental concepts Ð individuals, networks, institutions and technology Ð before coming finally to the Òrealm of economics proper,Ó i.e. markets. However, Herrmann-Pillath believes that the Òfoundations of economics cannot be found within economicsÓ but only in dialogue with other sciences, or what he calls the Òtheatre of consilience.Ó ItÕs a theatre in which various characters come and go, where dialogue ebbs and flows, conflicts arise and are resolved, and where individual actions can be seen as concepts as, leading to higher levels of meaning as the plot unfolds. The magic of theatre, of course, is that the point of intelligibility, where the characters, actions and narrative resolve into meaningfulness, is projected out of the drama itself, into the spectator. ThatÕs you, dear reader. So it is with economics as a discipline. Economics is a player in a much larger performance about what constitutes knowledge, and how we know that. It is also a player in the economy it seeks to explain. To understand why money, firms, growth, prices, markets and other staples of economic thought emerge and function the way they do, it is necessary situate the analysis beyond economics (and the economy), and to engage with developments across the human, evolutionary and complexity sciences. This is what Herrmann-Pillath does, analyzing a breathtaking range of illuminating and sometimes challenging work along the way. We are treated to new ideas about the externalized brain, the evolution of knowledge in the Earth System (i.e. not just among humans), the role of signs and performativity in these processes, as well as that of Òenergetic transformations.Ó But Herrmann-Pillath is not satisfied with the ÒmodestÓ task of bringing the best of modern scientific thought to bear on economic concepts and performances; he really does harbor a deeper purpose. The clue is in his apparently quixotic desire to hang on to philosophical insights associated with pre-evolutionary thinkers like Aristotle and Hegel, and his apparently eccentric desire to place the semiotic philosophy of C.S. Pierce at center stage. But the patient observer will see that he is not seeking to change the facts by imposing idealist notions on them after the event. Instead, he is arguing for a change in the way we perform ourselves in the face of these facts. He is looking for a modern-day equivalent of Confucius or Socrates: one who can imagine values and beliefs that Òdefine the human species in a new way.Ó For those who have eyes to see, as the drama unfolds, it may be that we have found such a figure in Carsten Herrmann-Pillath himself, modesty, ambition and all. This is ÒCultural ScienceÓ as it should be done.Õ Ð John Hartley, Curtin University, Australia and Cardiff University, UK