My Thoughts on Biological Evolution PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download My Thoughts on Biological Evolution PDF full book. Access full book title My Thoughts on Biological Evolution by Motoo Kimura. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Motoo Kimura
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811561656
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 159
Get Book
Book Description
This book, written by Motoo Kimura (1924–94), is a classic in evolutionary biology. In 1968, Kimura proposed the “neutral theory of molecular evolution”, which became the theoretical basis of modern evolutionary studies. After publishing his work in 1983 in the book “Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution”, Kimura wrote this book in 1988 for the general public. It was originally written in Japanese and is translated here for the first time. In the book, Kimura first summarizes the development of evolutionary theory since Lamarck and Darwin. He then shows how the search for mechanisms of evolution developed into population genetics and describes how the study of molecular evolution matured by taking in the fruits of molecular biology. Kimura proceeds to carefully explain his neutral evolution theory at the molecular level. Finally, he presents his view of the world from an evolutionary perspective. The book has long served as an in-depth introduction to evolutionary biology for students and young researchers in Japan. There has been remarkably rapid progress in the field of bioscience at the molecular level over the past 30 years. Nevertheless, the book remains an important contribution that laid the foundations for what followed in molecular evolutionary studies.
Author: Motoo Kimura
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811561656
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 159
Get Book
Book Description
This book, written by Motoo Kimura (1924–94), is a classic in evolutionary biology. In 1968, Kimura proposed the “neutral theory of molecular evolution”, which became the theoretical basis of modern evolutionary studies. After publishing his work in 1983 in the book “Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution”, Kimura wrote this book in 1988 for the general public. It was originally written in Japanese and is translated here for the first time. In the book, Kimura first summarizes the development of evolutionary theory since Lamarck and Darwin. He then shows how the search for mechanisms of evolution developed into population genetics and describes how the study of molecular evolution matured by taking in the fruits of molecular biology. Kimura proceeds to carefully explain his neutral evolution theory at the molecular level. Finally, he presents his view of the world from an evolutionary perspective. The book has long served as an in-depth introduction to evolutionary biology for students and young researchers in Japan. There has been remarkably rapid progress in the field of bioscience at the molecular level over the past 30 years. Nevertheless, the book remains an important contribution that laid the foundations for what followed in molecular evolutionary studies.
Author: National Academy of Sciences
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309063647
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 150
Get Book
Book Description
Today many school students are shielded from one of the most important concepts in modern science: evolution. In engaging and conversational style, Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science provides a well-structured framework for understanding and teaching evolution. Written for teachers, parents, and community officials as well as scientists and educators, this book describes how evolution reveals both the great diversity and similarity among the Earth's organisms; it explores how scientists approach the question of evolution; and it illustrates the nature of science as a way of knowing about the natural world. In addition, the book provides answers to frequently asked questions to help readers understand many of the issues and misconceptions about evolution. The book includes sample activities for teaching about evolution and the nature of science. For example, the book includes activities that investigate fossil footprints and population growth that teachers of science can use to introduce principles of evolution. Background information, materials, and step-by-step presentations are provided for each activity. In addition, this volume: Presents the evidence for evolution, including how evolution can be observed today. Explains the nature of science through a variety of examples. Describes how science differs from other human endeavors and why evolution is one of the best avenues for helping students understand this distinction. Answers frequently asked questions about evolution. Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science builds on the 1996 National Science Education Standards released by the National Research Councilâ€"and offers detailed guidance on how to evaluate and choose instructional materials that support the standards. Comprehensive and practical, this book brings one of today's educational challenges into focus in a balanced and reasoned discussion. It will be of special interest to teachers of science, school administrators, and interested members of the community.
Author: Ernst Mayr
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465013198
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338
Get Book
Book Description
At once a spirited defense of Darwinian explanations of biology and an elegant primer on evolution for the general reader, What Evolution Is poses the questions at the heart of evolutionary theory and considers how our improved understanding of evolution has affected the viewpoints and values of modern man. Science Masters Series
Author: Tobias Uller
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262039923
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 361
Get Book
Book Description
A comprehensive treatment of the concept of causation in evolutionary biology that makes clear its central role in both historical and contemporary debates. Most scientific explanations are causal. This is certainly the case in evolutionary biology, which seeks to explain the diversity of life and the adaptive fit between organisms and their surroundings. The nature of causation in evolutionary biology, however, is contentious. How causation is understood shapes the structure of evolutionary theory, and historical and contemporary debates in evolutionary biology have revolved around the nature of causation. Despite its centrality, and differing views on the subject, the major conceptual issues regarding the nature of causation in evolutionary biology are rarely addressed. This volume fills the gap, bringing together biologists and philosophers to offer a comprehensive, interdisciplinary treatment of evolutionary causation. Contributors first address biological motivations for rethinking evolutionary causation, considering the ways in which development, extra-genetic inheritance, and niche construction challenge notions of cause and process in evolution, and describing how alternative representations of evolutionary causation can shed light on a range of evolutionary problems. Contributors then analyze evolutionary causation from a philosophical perspective, considering such topics as causal entanglement, the commingling of organism and environment, and the relationship between causation and information. Contributors John A. Baker, Lynn Chiu, David I. Dayan, Renée A. Duckworth, Marcus W Feldman, Susan A. Foster, Melissa A. Graham, Heikki Helanterä, Kevin N. Laland, Armin P. Moczek, John Odling-Smee, Jun Otsuka, Massimo Pigliucci, Arnaud Pocheville, Arlin Stoltzfus, Karola Stotz, Sonia E. Sultan, Christoph Thies, Tobias Uller, Denis M. Walsh, Richard A. Watson
Author: Richard Joyce
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262263254
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 285
Get Book
Book Description
Moral thinking pervades our practical lives, but where did this way of thinking come from, and what purpose does it serve? Is it to be explained by environmental pressures on our ancestors a million years ago, or is it a cultural invention of more recent origin? In The Evolution of Morality, Richard Joyce takes up these controversial questions, finding that the evidence supports an innate basis to human morality. As a moral philosopher, Joyce is interested in whether any implications follow from this hypothesis. Might the fact that the human brain has been biologically prepared by natural selection to engage in moral judgment serve in some sense to vindicate this way of thinking—staving off the threat of moral skepticism, or even undergirding some version of moral realism? Or if morality has an adaptive explanation in genetic terms—if it is, as Joyce writes, "just something that helped our ancestors make more babies"—might such an explanation actually undermine morality's central role in our lives? He carefully examines both the evolutionary "vindication of morality" and the evolutionary "debunking of morality," considering the skeptical view more seriously than have others who have treated the subject. Interdisciplinary and combining the latest results from the empirical sciences with philosophical discussion, The Evolution of Morality is one of the few books in this area written from the perspective of moral philosophy. Concise and without technical jargon, the arguments are rigorous but accessible to readers from different academic backgrounds. Joyce discusses complex issues in plain language while advocating subtle and sometimes radical views. The Evolution of Morality lays the philosophical foundations for further research into the biological understanding of human morality.
Author: Mike Cassidy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009028189
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368
Get Book
Book Description
Biological evolution, the theory of natural selection and of common descent, is a triumph both of human reasoning and scientific undertaking. The biological discipline of evolution contains both a chronicle of human endeavour and the story of life on Earth. This book is concerned with living forms and how they developed from 'simple and unpromising beginnings'. It considers evolution as both process and product. The author, an experienced teacher and educator, employs a historical narrative, used to convey the idea of 'change with modification' and to emphasise the relevance of evolution to contemporary bioscience. Biological evolution has now become part of the scientific orthodoxy and this accessible text will assist undergraduate students in the biological sciences within any ongoing debate.
Author: Eva Jablonka
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262525844
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 577
Get Book
Book Description
A pioneering proposal for a pluralistic extension of evolutionary theory, now updated to reflect the most recent research. This new edition of the widely read Evolution in Four Dimensions has been revised to reflect the spate of new discoveries in biology since the book was first published in 2005, offering corrections, an updated bibliography, and a substantial new chapter. Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb's pioneering argument proposes that there is more to heredity than genes. They describe four “dimensions” in heredity—four inheritance systems that play a role in evolution: genetic, epigenetic (or non-DNA cellular transmission of traits), behavioral, and symbolic (transmission through language and other forms of symbolic communication). These systems, they argue, can all provide variations on which natural selection can act. Jablonka and Lamb present a richer, more complex view of evolution than that offered by the gene-based Modern Synthesis, arguing that induced and acquired changes also play a role. Their lucid and accessible text is accompanied by artist-physician Anna Zeligowski's lively drawings, which humorously and effectively illustrate the authors' points. Each chapter ends with a dialogue in which the authors refine their arguments against the vigorous skepticism of the fictional “I.M.” (for Ipcha Mistabra—Aramaic for “the opposite conjecture”). The extensive new chapter, presented engagingly as a dialogue with I.M., updates the information on each of the four dimensions—with special attention to the epigenetic, where there has been an explosion of new research. Praise for the first edition “With courage and verve, and in a style accessible to general readers, Jablonka and Lamb lay out some of the exciting new pathways of Darwinian evolution that have been uncovered by contemporary research.” —Evelyn Fox Keller, MIT, author of Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines “In their beautifully written and impressively argued new book, Jablonka and Lamb show that the evidence from more than fifty years of molecular, behavioral and linguistic studies forces us to reevaluate our inherited understanding of evolution.” —Oren Harman, The New Republic “It is not only an enjoyable read, replete with ideas and facts of interest but it does the most valuable thing a book can do—it makes you think and reexamine your premises and long-held conclusions.” —Adam Wilkins, BioEssays
Author: Eugene V. Koonin
Publisher: FT Press
ISBN: 013262317X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 530
Get Book
Book Description
The Logic of Chance offers a reappraisal and a new synthesis of theories, concepts, and hypotheses on the key aspects of the evolution of life on earth in light of comparative genomics and systems biology. The author presents many specific examples from systems and comparative genomic analysis to begin to build a new, much more detailed, complex, and realistic picture of evolution. The book examines a broad range of topics in evolutionary biology including the inadequacy of natural selection and adaptation as the only or even the main mode of evolution; the key role of horizontal gene transfer in evolution and the consequent overhaul of the Tree of Life concept; the central, underappreciated evolutionary importance of viruses; the origin of eukaryotes as a result of endosymbiosis; the concomitant origin of cells and viruses on the primordial earth; universal dependences between genomic and molecular-phenomic variables; and the evolving landscape of constraints that shape the evolution of genomes and molecular phenomes. "Koonin's account of viral and pre-eukaryotic evolution is undoubtedly up-to-date. His "mega views" of evolution (given what was said above) and his cosmological musings, on the other hand, are interesting reading." Summing Up: Recommended Reprinted with permission from CHOICE, copyright by the American Library Association.
Author: Stephen Jay Gould
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674417925
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1460
Get Book
Book Description
The world’s most revered and eloquent interpreter of evolutionary ideas offers here a work of explanatory force unprecedented in our time—a landmark publication, both for its historical sweep and for its scientific vision. With characteristic attention to detail, Stephen Jay Gould first describes the content and discusses the history and origins of the three core commitments of classical Darwinism: that natural selection works on organisms, not genes or species; that it is almost exclusively the mechanism of adaptive evolutionary change; and that these changes are incremental, not drastic. Next, he examines the three critiques that currently challenge this classic Darwinian edifice: that selection operates on multiple levels, from the gene to the group; that evolution proceeds by a variety of mechanisms, not just natural selection; and that causes operating at broader scales, including catastrophes, have figured prominently in the course of evolution. Then, in a stunning tour de force that will likely stimulate discussion and debate for decades, Gould proposes his own system for integrating these classical commitments and contemporary critiques into a new structure of evolutionary thought. In 2001 the Library of Congress named Stephen Jay Gould one of America’s eighty-three Living Legends—people who embody the “quintessentially American ideal of individual creativity, conviction, dedication, and exuberance.” Each of these qualities finds full expression in this peerless work, the likes of which the scientific world has not seen—and may not see again—for well over a century.
Author: Lynn Helena Caporale
Publisher: Darwin in the Genome
ISBN: 0071378227
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 259
Get Book
Book Description
Publisher Description
