Download or read book In the Light of Evolution written by National Academy of Sciences and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Arthur M. Sackler Colloquia of the National Academy of Sciences address scientific topics of broad and current interest, cutting across the boundaries of traditional disciplines. Each year, four or five such colloquia are scheduled, typically two days in length and international in scope. Colloquia are organized by a member of the Academy, often with the assistance of an organizing committee, and feature presentations by leading scientists in the field and discussions with a hundred or more researchers with an interest in the topic. Colloquia presentations are recorded and posted on the National Academy of Sciences Sackler colloquia website and published on CD-ROM. These Colloquia are made possible by a generous gift from Mrs. Jill Sackler, in memory of her husband, Arthur M. Sackler.

Download or read book The Mating Mind written by Geoffrey Miller and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2011-12-21 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At once a pioneering study of evolution and an accessible and lively reading experience, a book that offers the most convincing—and radical—explanation for how and why the human mind evolved. Consciousness, morality, creativity, language, and art: these are the traits that make us human. Scientists have traditionally explained these qualities as merely a side effect of surplus brain size, but Miller argues that they were sexual attractors, not side effects. He bases his argument on Darwin’ s theory of sexual selection, which until now has played second fiddle to Darwin’ s theory of natural selection, and draws on ideas and research from a wide range of fields, including psychology, economics, history, and pop culture. Witty, powerfully argued, and continually thought-provoking, The Mating Mind is a landmark in our understanding of our own species.

Download or read book Sexual Knowledge Sexual Science written by Roy Porter and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1994-09 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is about those who have investigated sex from antiquity to the present day.

Download or read book Evolution s Rainbow written by Joan Roughgarden and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2013-09-14 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this innovative celebration of diversity and affirmation of individuality in animals and humans, Joan Roughgarden challenges accepted wisdom about gender identity and sexual orientation. A distinguished evolutionary biologist, Roughgarden takes on the medical establishment, the Bible, social science—and even Darwin himself. She leads the reader through a fascinating discussion of diversity in gender and sexuality among fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and mammals, including primates. Evolution's Rainbow explains how this diversity develops from the action of genes and hormones and how people come to differ from each other in all aspects of body and behavior. Roughgarden reconstructs primary science in light of feminist, gay, and transgender criticism and redefines our understanding of sex, gender, and sexuality. Witty, playful, and daring, this book will revolutionize our understanding of sexuality. Roughgarden argues that principal elements of Darwinian sexual selection theory are false and suggests a new theory that emphasizes social inclusion and control of access to resources and mating opportunity. She disputes a range of scientific and medical concepts, including Wilson's genetic determinism of behavior, evolutionary psychology, the existence of a gay gene, the role of parenting in determining gender identity, and Dawkins's "selfish gene" as the driver of natural selection. She dares social science to respect the agency and rationality of diverse people; shows that many cultures across the world and throughout history accommodate people we label today as lesbian, gay, and transgendered; and calls on the Christian religion to acknowledge the Bible's many passages endorsing diversity in gender and sexuality. Evolution's Rainbow concludes with bold recommendations for improving education in biology, psychology, and medicine; for democratizing genetic engineering and medical practice; and for building a public monument to affirm diversity as one of our nation's defining principles.

Download or read book Sciences of the Flesh written by Dianne F. Sadoff and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Psychoanalysis may be said to have been born in the twentieth century,” Freud said late in his career, “but it did not drop from the skies ready-made.” And in his speculative theories of modernism, Bruno Latour argued that “no science can exit from the network of its practice.” Deploying Latour’s model of scientific theory production, this book argues that the historical emergence of psychoanalysis depended on nineteenth-century scientific practices: laboratory experimentation, medical transmission of research findings along collegial or social networks, and medical representation of illness—including case studies, amphitheatrical demonstration of cases, hospital records of symptoms, and laboratory graphology and photography of patients. The author shows how hysteria enabled Freud to appropriate medical and scientific concepts from neurology, sexology, gynecology, psychiatry, and existing rest cures and psychotherapies. His new model eschewed physiological determinism, linking unconscious ideation with counterwill and reproduced memory, psychosexual experience, and affect-laden images of object relations (usually with family members). Constructing around himself a psychoanalytic circle and establishing training institutions, Freud translated this new psycho-physical body and hybrid subjectivity to other research sites. Just as in the 1890’s he had used the figure of the hysteric to mobilize theory production, by the 1920’s he had replaced the hysteric with a modernized figure, the homosexual. Freud used autobiography, summary, and outline to stabilize his concepts and control the dissemination of his new science. Psychoanalysis had successfully created new scientific “plausible bridges” between psyche and soma, nature and the social, to produce a modern theory of hybrid subjectivity that was rooted in yet conceptually separated from the body.

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 436 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 Conceptual Challenges in Evolutionary Psychology written by Harmon R. Holcomb III and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This series will include monographs and collections of studies devoted to the investigation and exploration of knowledge, information, and data-processing systems of all kinds, no matter whether human, (other) animal, or machine. Its scope is intended to span the full range of interests from classical problems in the philosophy of mind and philosophical psychology through issues in cognitive psychology and sociobiology (concerning the mental capabilities of other species) to ideas related to artificial intelligence and to computer science. While primary emphasis will be placed upon theoretical, conceptual, and epistemological aspects of these problems and domains, empirical, experimental, and methodological studies will also appear from time to time. Few areas of inquiry have generated as much interest and enthusiasm in recent times as has the discipline known as "evolutionary psychology", but its pretentions and its accomlishments have not always been properly understood. This collection brings together important work in psychology, anthropology, and the philosophy of science that contributes toward that goal, especially by emphasizing the role of natural selection and sexual selection as crucial factors in the evolution of cognitive mechanisms for information processing. The methodological studies that are presented here are bound to enhance appreciation for the scope and limits of this fascinating domain. The editor has produced a fascinating volume that should appeal to a broad and diverse audience.

Download or read book Havelock Ellis Philosopher of Sex written by Vincent Brome and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-02-03 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1979, Havelock Ellis is a biography of the philosopher of sex. Havelock Ellis trained first as a doctor but soon broke out of conventional medicine to shock Victorian England with his encyclopaedic seven-volume work, Studies in the Psychology of Sex. One of the last representatives of the days when man could attempt to embrace a universal view, he wrote more than fifty books covering such diverse subjects as medicine, eugenics, love, literature, criminal law, and above all, sex. These were strewn with findings on many major problems which still trouble us today and some of his solutions remain highly contemporary. His influence permeated many areas of social thinking, and his works played a considerable part in changing attitudes towards homosexuality, the relation between the sexes and sexual patterns of behaviour. The present biography re-assesses the main themes of Ellis’ work and throws new light on many aspects of his life from a wide variety of published and unpublished sources. It also provides a new account of his relationship with Freud from unpublished sources and an evaluation of their inter-related work. This book will be of interest to students of philosophy and psychology.

Download or read book Desire and Time in Modern English Fiction 1919 2017 written by Richard Dellamora and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning with Somerset Maugham’s innovative, sexually dissident South Seas novel and tales and Alfred Hitchcock’s gay-inflected revisiting of the Jack the Ripper sensation in silent film, this book considers the continuing presence of the past in future-oriented work of the 1930s and the Second World War by Sylvia Townsend Warner, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, and the playwright and novelist, Patrick Hamilton. The final three chapters carry the discussion to the present in analyses of works by lesbian, postcolonial, and gay authors such as Sarah Waters, Amitav Ghosh, and Alan Hollinghurst. Focusing on questions about temporality and changes in gender and sexuality, especially gay and lesbian, straight and queer, following the rejection of the Victorian patriarchal marriage model, this study examines the continuing influence of late Victorian Aestheticist and Decadent culture in Modernist writing and its permutations in England.

Download or read book The Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud written by and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2024-06-04 with total page 8099 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The long-awaited Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (RSE) is founded on the canonical Standard Edition (SE) translation from the German by James Strachey, while adding a new layer of revisions and translations. Conceptual and lexicographic ambiguities are clarified inextensive new annotations. Drawing on established conventions and intellectual traditions, the Revised Standard Edition supplements Freud’s writing with substantial editorial commentaries addressing controversial technical terms and translation issues through the lens of modern scholarship—a living text in dialogue with itself and the reader. The RSE also includes 56 essays and letters which were not included in the SE. In the RSE text and footnotes a subtle underlining distinguishes, in an easy and accessible way, Mark Solms’s revisions and additions, from the historical translation and commentaries of James Strachey’s Standard Edition. Readers can examine what Strachey contributed before the revisions in tandem with Solms’s updates, new translations, annotations, and commentaries, collectively bringing Freud’s text and Strachey’s translation into dialogue with five decades of research, including the most recent developments in the field. Commissioned by the British Psychoanalytical Society and co-published by Rowman & Littlefield, the Revised Standard Edition brings together decades of scholarly deliberation concerning the translation of Freudian technical terms while retaining the best of Strachey’s original English translation.This landmark work will captivate a wide audience, from interested lay readers to practicing clinicians to scientists and scholars in fields related to psychoanalysis.

Download or read book Histories of Sexology written by Alain Giami and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-07-12 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ​Histories of Sexology: Between Science and Politics takes an interdisciplinary and reflexive approach to the historiography of sexology. Drawing on an intellectual history perspective informed by recent developments in science and technology studies and political history of science, this book examines specific social, cultural, intellectual, scientific and political contexts that have given shape to theories of sexuality, but also to practices in medicine, psychology, education and sexology. Furthermore, it explores various ways that theories of sexuality have both informed and been produced by sexologies—as scientific and clinical discourses about sex—in Western countries since the 19th century.

Download or read book The National Union Catalog Pre 1956 Imprints written by and published by . This book was released on 1971 with total page 712 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Sex Differences in Social Behavior written by Alice H. Eagly and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2013-05-13 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In presenting an innovative theory of sex differences in the social context, this volume applies social-role theory and meta-analytic techniques to research in aggression, social influence, helping, nonverbal, and group behavior. Eagly's findings show that gender stereotypic behavior results from different male and female role expectations, and that the disparity between these gender stereotypes and actual sex differences is not as great as is often believed.

Download or read book Love Marriage Death written by Sander L. Gilman and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A pioneering interdisciplinary scholar examines the roles of images in the construction of stereotypes of the Jew’s body in 20th-century art and literature.

Download or read book The Handicap Principle written by Amotz Zahavi and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1999-06-03 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever since Darwin, animal behavior has intrigued and perplexed human observers. The elaborate mating rituals, lavish decorative displays, complex songs, calls, dances and many other forms of animal signaling raise fascinating questions. To what degree can animals communicate within their own species and even between species? What evolutionary purpose do such communications serve? Perhaps most importantly, what can animal signaling tell us about our own non-verbal forms of communication? In The Handicap Principle, Amotz and Ashivag Zahavi offer a unifying theory that brilliantly explains many previously baffling aspects of animal signaling and holds up a mirror in which ordinary human behaviors take on surprising new significance. The wide-ranging implications of the Zahavis' new theory make it arguably the most important advance in animal behavior in decades. Based on 20 years of painstaking observation, the Handicap Principle illuminates an astonishing variety of signaling behaviors in animals ranging from ants and ameba to peacocks and gazelles. Essentially, the theory asserts that for animal signals to be effective they must be reliable, and to be reliable they must impose a cost, or handicap, on the signaler. When a gazelle sights a wolf, for instance, and jumps high into the air several times before fleeing, it is signaling, in a reliable way, that it is in tip-top condition, easily able to outrun the wolf. (A human parallel occurs in children's games of tag, where faster children will often taunt their pursuer before running). By momentarily handicapping itself--expending precious time and energy in this display--the gazelle underscores the truthfulness of its signal. Such signaling, the authors suggest, serves the interests of both predator and prey, sparing each the exhaustion of a pointless chase. Similarly, the enormous cost a peacock incurs by carrying its elaborate and weighty tail-feathers, which interfere with food gathering, reliably communicates its value as a mate able to provide for its offspring. Perhaps the book's most important application of the Handicap Principle is to the evolutionary enigma of animal altruism. The authors convincingly demonstrate that when an animal acts altruistically, it handicaps itself--assumes a risk or endures a sacrifice--not primarily to benefit its kin or social group but to increase its own prestige within the group and thus signal its status as a partner or rival. Finally, the Zahavis' show how many forms of non-verbal communication among humans can also be explained by the Handicap Principle. Indeed, the authors suggest that non-verbal signals--tones of voice, facial expressions, body postures--are quite often more reliable indicators of our intentions than is language. Elegantly written, exhaustively researched, and consistently enlivened by equal measures of insight and example, The Handicap Principle illuminates virtually every kind of animal communication. It not only allows us to hear what animals are saying to each other--and to understand why they are saying it--but also to see the enormously important role non-verbal behavior plays in human communication.

Download or read book Dandyism and Transcultural Modernity written by Hsiao-yen Peng and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-01-28 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book views the Neo-Sensation mode of writing as a traveling genre, or style, that originated in France, moved on to Japan, and then to China. The author contends that modernity is possible only on "the transcultural site"—transcultural in the sense of breaking the divide between past and present, elite and popular, national and regional, male and female, literary and non-literary, inside and outside. To illustrate the concept of transcultural modernity, three icons are highlighted on the transcultural site: the dandy, the flaneur, and the translator. Mere flaneurs and flaneurses simply float with the tide of heterogeneous information on the transcultural site, whereas the dandy/flaneur and the cultural translator, propellers of modernity, manage to bring about transformative creation. Their performance marks the essence of transcultural modernity: the self-consciousness of working on the threshold, always testing the limits of boundaries and tempted to go beyond them. To develop the concept of dandyism—the quintessence of transcultural modernity—the Neo-Sensation gender triad formed by the dandy, the modern girl, and the modern boy is laid out. Writers discussed include Liu Na’ou, a Shanghai dandy par excellence from Taiwan, Paul Morand, who looked upon Coco Chanel the female dandy as his perfect other self, and Yokomitsu Riichi, who developed the theory of Neo-Sensation from Kant’s the-thing-in-itself.

Download or read book The Psychology of Men in Context written by Michael Addis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-09-02 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it really mean to say that boys will be boys, men are from Mars, or that contemporary men are in crisis? Does modern psychology support or refute these notions? And how is psychological theory and research about boys and men used in society? The Psychology of Men in Context is an essential introduction to the field which challenges readers to examine psychological research on men, masculinity, and gender, and consider its impact on daily life, through everyday speech, popular media, political rhetoric, and more. The authors offer a range of lenses for studying masculinity, including biology, social learning, social constructionism, feminism, and intersectionality. Demonstrating how these frameworks can be used to understand research on pressing topics such as violence, health, and relationships, the book also considers masculinity in its broader philosophical and historical contexts, equipping readers with the tools needed to connect the psychology of men with other areas of social science. Exercises and prompts to help students relate the research to their own lives are included throughout. Designed for students at undergraduate and graduate level, but suitable for anyone curious about understanding the field from a more critical social scientific perspective, The Psychology of Men in Context is a valuable introduction to the history, current scholarship, and social implications of the psychological study of men and masculinity.