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: Social scientists can learn a lot from evolutionary biology - from systematics and principles of evolutionary ecology to theories of social interaction including competition, conflict and cooperation, as well as niche construction, complexity, eco-evo-devo, and the role of the individual in evolutionary processes. Darwinian sociocultural evolutionary theory applies the logic of Darwinism to social-learning based cultural and social change. With a multidisciplinary approach for graduate biologists, philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, social psychologists, archaeologists, linguists, economists, political scientists and science and technology specialists, the author presents this model of evolution drawing on a number of sophisticated aspects of biological evolutionary theory. The approach brings together a broad and inclusive theoretical framework for understanding the social sciences which addresses many of the dilemmas at their forefront - the relationship between history and necessity, conflict and cooperation, the ideal and the material and the problems of agency, subjectivity and the nature of social structure.
Download or read book Cultural Evolution written by Alex Mesoudi and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-07-30 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Darwin changed the course of scientific thinking by showing how evolution accounts for the stunning diversity and biological complexity of life on earth. Recently, there has also been increased interest in the social sciences in how Darwinian theory can explain human culture. Covering a wide range of topics, including fads, public policy, the spread of religion, and herd behavior in markets, Alex Mesoudi shows that human culture is itself an evolutionary process that exhibits the key Darwinian mechanisms of variation, competition, and inheritance. This cross-disciplinary volume focuses on the ways cultural phenomena can be studied scientifically—from theoretical modeling to lab experiments, archaeological fieldwork to ethnographic studies—and shows how apparently disparate methods can complement one another to the mutual benefit of the various social science disciplines. Along the way, the book reveals how new insights arise from looking at culture from an evolutionary angle. Cultural Evolution provides a thought-provoking argument that Darwinian evolutionary theory can both unify different branches of inquiry and enhance understanding of human behavior.
Download or read book Darwinian Social Evolution and Social Change written by William Kerr and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-07-29 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book introduces the value of a Darwinian social evolutionary approach to understanding social change. The chapters discuss several different perspectives on social evolutionary theory, and go on to link these with comparative and historical sociological theory, and two case-studies. Kerr brings together social change theory and theories on nationalism, whilst also providing concrete examples of the theories at work. The book offers a vision of rapprochement between these different areas of theory and study, and to where this could lead future studies of comparative history and sociology. As such, it should be useful to scholars and students of nationalism and social change, sociologists, political scientist and historians.
Download or read book Darwinian Evolution written by Antony Flew and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Darwinian Evolution is a study of the historical background of Darwin's ideas, of their logical structure, and of their alleged and actual implications. Flew explores the Scottish Englightenment, an important and often neglected aspect of Darwin's intellectual background. He compares Darwin with such figures as Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, and Karl Marx, emphasizing not the similarities, but the differences between the natural and social sciences. Flew argues that social science must do what natural science does not: take account of individual choice.
Download or read book Darwin s Conjecture written by Geoffrey M. Hodgson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-12 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A theoretical study dealing chiefly with matters of definition and clarification of terms and concepts involved in using Darwinian notions to model social phenomena.
Download or read book The Evolution of Human Sociality written by Stephen K. Sanderson and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2001 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text attempts a broad theoretical synthesis within the field of sociology and its closely allied sister discipline of anthropology. It draws together these disciplines' theoretical approaches into a synthesized theory called Darwinian conflict theory.
Download or read book Social Evolution written by Benjamin Kidd and published by . This book was released on 1898 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Culture and the Evolutionary Process written by Robert Boyd and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1988-06-15 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do biological, psychological, sociological, and cultural factors combine to change societies over the long run? Boyd and Richerson explore how genetic and cultural factors interact, under the influence of evolutionary forces, to produce the diversity we see in human cultures. Using methods developed by population biologists, they propose a theory of cultural evolution that is an original and fair-minded alternative to the sociobiology debate.
Download or read book Nonzero written by Robert Wright and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2001-04-20 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his bestselling The Moral Animal, Robert Wright applied the principles of evolutionary biology to the study of the human mind. Now Wright attempts something even more ambitious: explaining the direction of evolution and human history–and discerning where history will lead us next. In Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, Wright asserts that, ever since the primordial ooze, life has followed a basic pattern. Organisms and human societies alike have grown more complex by mastering the challenges of internal cooperation. Wright's narrative ranges from fossilized bacteria to vampire bats, from stone-age villages to the World Trade Organization, uncovering such surprises as the benefits of barbarian hordes and the useful stability of feudalism. Here is history endowed with moral significance–a way of looking at our biological and cultural evolution that suggests, refreshingly, that human morality has improved over time, and that our instinct to discover meaning may itself serve a higher purpose. Insightful, witty, profound, Nonzero offers breathtaking implications for what we believe and how we adapt to technology's ongoing transformation of the world.
Download or read book Culture Evolves written by Andrew Whiten and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Culture shapes vast swathes of our lives and has allowed the human species to dominate the planet in an evolutionarily unique way. This book is unique in focusing on the evolutionary continuities in culture, providing an interdisciplinary exploration of culture, written by leading authorities from the biological and cognitive sciences.
Download or read book Evolutionary Theory in Social Science written by M. Schmid and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In retrospect the 19th century tmdoubtedly seems to be the century of evolutionism. The 'discovery of time' and therewith the experience of variability was made by many sciences: not only historians worked on the elaboration and interpretation of this discovery, but also physicists, geographers, biologists and economists, demographers, archaelogists, and even philosophers. The successful empirical fotmdation of evolutive processes by Darwin and his disciples suggested Herbert Spencer's vigorously pursued efforts in searching for an extensive' catalogue of prime and deduced evolutionary principles that would allow to integrate the most different disciplines of natural and social sciences as well as the efforts of philosophers of ethics and epistemologists. Soon it became evident, however, that the claim for integration anticipated by far the actual results of these different disciplines. Darwin I s theory suffered from the fact that in the beginning a hereditary factor which could have his theory could not be detected, while the gainings of grotmd supported in the social sciences got lost in consequence of the completely ahistorical or biologistic speculations of some representatives of the evolutionary research programm and common socialdarwinistic misinterpretations.
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 Imagining the Darwinian Revolution written by Ian Hesketh and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2022-06-14 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume considers the relationship between the development of evolution and its historical representations by focusing on the so-called Darwinian Revolution. The very idea of the Darwinian Revolution is a historical construct devised to help explain the changing scientific and cultural landscape that was ushered in by Charles Darwin’s singular contribution to natural science. And yet, since at least the 1980s, science historians have moved away from traditional “great man” narratives to focus on the collective role that previously neglected figures have played in formative debates of evolutionary theory. Darwin, they argue, was not the driving force behind the popularization of evolution in the nineteenth century. This volume moves the conversation forward by bringing Darwin back into the frame, recognizing that while he was not the only important evolutionist, his name and image came to signify evolution itself, both in the popular imagination as well as in the work and writings of other evolutionists. Together, contributors explore how the history of evolution has been interpreted, deployed, and exploited to fashion the science behind our changing understandings of evolution from the nineteenth century to the present.
Download or read book Was Hitler a Darwinian written by Robert J. Richards and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-11-06 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In tracing the history of Darwin’s accomplishment and the trajectory of evolutionary theory during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most scholars agree that Darwin introduced blind mechanism into biology, thus banishing moral values from the understanding of nature. According to the standard interpretation, the principle of survival of the fittest has rendered human behavior, including moral behavior, ultimately selfish. Few doubt that Darwinian theory, especially as construed by the master’s German disciple, Ernst Haeckel, inspired Hitler and led to Nazi atrocities. In this collection of essays, Robert J. Richards argues that this orthodox view is wrongheaded. A close historical examination reveals that Darwin, in more traditional fashion, constructed nature with a moral spine and provided it with a goal: man as a moral creature. The book takes up many other topics—including the character of Darwin’s chief principles of natural selection and divergence, his dispute with Alfred Russel Wallace over man’s big brain, the role of language in human development, his relationship to Herbert Spencer, how much his views had in common with Haeckel’s, and the general problem of progress in evolution. Moreover, Richards takes a forceful stand on the timely issue of whether Darwin is to blame for Hitler’s atrocities. Was Hitler a Darwinian? is intellectual history at its boldest.
Download or read book Comparative Social Evolution written by Dustin R. Rubenstein and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-24 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Darwin famously described special difficulties in explaining social evolution in insects. More than a century later, the evolution of sociality - defined broadly as cooperative group living - remains one of the most intriguing problems in biology. Providing a unique perspective on the study of social evolution, this volume synthesizes the features of animal social life across the principle taxonomic groups in which sociality has evolved. The chapters explore sociality in a range of species, from ants to primates, highlighting key natural and life history data and providing a comparative view across animal societies. In establishing a single framework for a common, trait-based approach towards social synthesis, this volume will enable graduate students and investigators new to the field to systematically compare taxonomic groups and reinvigorate comparative approaches to studying animal social evolution.
Download or read book Darwin s Cathedral written by David Sloan Wilson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-09-16 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the great intellectual battles of modern times is between evolution and religion. Until now, they have been considered completely irreconcilable theories of origin and existence. David Sloan Wilson's Darwin's Cathedral takes the radical step of joining the two, in the process proposing an evolutionary theory of religion that shakes both evolutionary biology and social theory at their foundations. The key, argues Wilson, is to think of society as an organism, an old idea that has received new life based on recent developments in evolutionary biology. If society is an organism, can we then think of morality and religion as biologically and culturally evolved adaptations that enable human groups to function as single units rather than mere collections of individuals? Wilson brings a variety of evidence to bear on this question, from both the biological and social sciences. From Calvinism in sixteenth-century Geneva to Balinese water temples, from hunter-gatherer societies to urban America, Wilson demonstrates how religions have enabled people to achieve by collective action what they never could do alone. He also includes a chapter considering forgiveness from an evolutionary perspective and concludes by discussing how all social organizations, including science, could benefit by incorporating elements of religion. Religious believers often compare their communities to single organisms and even to insect colonies. Astoundingly, Wilson shows that they might be literally correct. Intended for any educated reader, Darwin's Cathedral will change forever the way we view the relations among evolution, religion, and human society.
Download or read book This View of Life written by David Sloan Wilson and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2019-02-26 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is widely understood that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution completely revolutionized the study of biology. Yet, according to David Sloan Wilson, the Darwinian revolution won’t be truly complete until it is applied more broadly—to everything associated with the words “human,” “culture,” and “policy.” In a series of engaging and insightful examples—from the breeding of hens to the timing of cataract surgeries to the organization of an automobile plant—Wilson shows how an evolutionary worldview provides a practical tool kit for understanding not only genetic evolution but also the fast-paced changes that are having an impact on our world and ourselves. What emerges is an incredibly empowering argument: If we can become wise managers of evolutionary processes, we can solve the problems of our age at all scales—from the efficacy of our groups to our well-being as individuals to our stewardship of the planet Earth.
