The Social Evolution of Human Nature

The Social Evolution of Human Nature PDF Author: Harry Smit
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107055199
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Harry Smit examines the elements of current evolutionary theory and how they bear on the evolution of the human mind.

The Social Evolution of Human Nature

The Social Evolution of Human Nature PDF Author: Harry Smit
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107055199
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Harry Smit examines the elements of current evolutionary theory and how they bear on the evolution of the human mind.

Human Nature and the Evolution of Society

Human Nature and the Evolution of Society PDF Author: Stephen Sanderson
Publisher: Westview Press
ISBN: 0813349362
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Book Description
Drawing on evolutionary psychology, sociobiology, and human behavioral ecology, this introduction to human behavior and the organization of social life explores the evolutionary dynamics underlying social life.

Ultrasocial

Ultrasocial PDF Author: John M. Gowdy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110883826X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
Society is an ultrasocial superorganism whose requirements take precedence over individuals. What does this mean for humanity's future?

The Social Cage

The Social Cage PDF Author: Alexandra Maryanski
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804720021
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
The authors assert that traditional sociological theories of human nature and society do not pay sufficient attention to the evolution of "big-brained hominoids," resulting in assumptions about humans' propensity for "groupness" that go against the record of primate evolution. When this record is analyzed in detail, and is supplemented by a review of the social structures of contemporary apes and the basic types of human societies (hunter-gathering, horticultural, agrarian, and industrial), commonplace criticisms about the de-humanizing effects of industrial society appear overdrawn, if not downright incorrect. The book concludes that the mistakes in contemporary social theory - as well as much of general social commentary - stem from a failure to analyze humans as "big-brained" apes with certain phylogenetic tendencies. This failure is usually coupled with a willingness to romanticize societies of the past, notably horticultural and agrarian systems

Human Nature and the Evolution of Society

Human Nature and the Evolution of Society PDF Author: Stephen K. Sanderson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429979592
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
If evolution has changed humans physically, has it also affected human behavior? Drawing on evolutionary psychology, sociobiology, and human behavioral ecology, Human Nature and the Evolution of Society explores the evolutionary dynamics underlying social life. In this introduction to human behavior and the organization of social life, Stephen K. Sanderson discusses traditional subjects like mating behavior, kinship, parenthood, status-seeking, and violence, as well as important topics seldom included in books of this type, especially gender, economies, politics, foodways, race and ethnicity, and the arts. Examples and research on a wide range of human societies, both industrial and nonindustrial, are integrated throughout. With chapter summaries of key points, thoughtful discussion questions, and important terms defined within the text, the result is a broad-ranging and comprehensive consideration of human society, thoroughly grounded in an evolutionary perspective.

Biology, Evolution, and Human Nature

Biology, Evolution, and Human Nature PDF Author: Timothy H. Goldsmith
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0471182192
Category : Science
Languages : de
Pages : 390

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Book Description
This book uses evolution as the unifying theme to trace the connections between levels of biological complexity from genes through nervous systems, animal societies, and human cultures. It examines the history of evolutionary theory from Darwin to the present, including: the impact of molecular biology and the emergence of evolutionary social theory.

The Primate Origins of Human Nature

The Primate Origins of Human Nature PDF Author: Carel P. Van Schaik
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470147636
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 546

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Book Description
The Primate Origins of Human Nature (Volume 3 in The Foundations of Human Biology series) blends several elements from evolutionary biology as applied to primate behavioral ecology and primate psychology, classical physical anthropology and evolutionary psychology of humans. However, unlike similar books, it strives to define the human species relative to our living and extinct relatives, and thus highlights uniquely derived human features. The book features a truly multi-disciplinary, multi-theory, and comparative species approach to subjects not usually presented in textbooks focused on humans, such as the evolution of culture, life history, parenting, and social organization.

On Human Nature

On Human Nature PDF Author: Jonathan H. Turner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000213757
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
In this book, Jonathan H. Turner combines sociology, evolutionary biology, cladistic analysis from biology, and comparative neuroanatomy to examine human nature as inherited from common ancestors shared by humans and present-day great apes. Selection pressures altered this inherited legacy for the ancestors of humans—termed hominins for being bipedal—and forced greater organization than extant great apes when the hominins moved into open-country terrestrial habitats. The effects of these selection pressures increased hominin ancestors’ emotional capacities through greater social and group orientation. This shift, in turn, enabled further selection for a larger brain, articulated speech, and culture along the human line. Turner elaborates human nature as a series of overlapping complexes that are the outcome of the inherited legacy of great apes being fed through the transforming effects of a larger brain, speech, and culture. These complexes, he shows, can be understood as the cognitive complex, the psychological complex, the emotions complex, the interaction complex, and the community complex.

Epistemic Uses of Imagination

Epistemic Uses of Imagination PDF Author: Christopher Badura
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000399060
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
This book explores a topic that has recently become the subject of increased philosophical interest: how can imagination be put to epistemic use? Though imagination has long been invoked in contexts of modal knowledge, in recent years philosophers have begun to explore its capacity to play an epistemic role in a variety of other contexts as well. In this collection, the contributors address an assortment of issues relating to epistemic uses of imagination, and in particular, they take up the ways in which our imaginings must be constrained so as to justify beliefs and give rise to knowledge. These constraints are explored across several different contexts in which imagination is appealed to for justification, namely reasoning, modality and modal knowledge, thought experiments, and knowledge of self and others. Taken as a whole, the contributions in this volume break new ground in explicating when and how imagination can be epistemically useful. Epistemic Uses of Imagination will be of interest to scholars and advanced students who are working on imagination, as well as those working more broadly in epistemology, aesthetics, and philosophy of mind. Chapters 6 and 12 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

The Social Conquest of Earth

The Social Conquest of Earth PDF Author: Edward O. Wilson
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0871403307
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
New York Times Bestseller and Notable Book of the Year A Kirkus Reviews Book of the Year (Nonfiction) Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence (Nonfiction) From the most celebrated heir to Darwin comes a groundbreaking book on evolution, the summa work of Edward O. Wilson's legendary career. Sparking vigorous debate in the sciences, The Social Conquest of Earth upends “the famous theory that evolution naturally encourages creatures to put family first” (Discover). Refashioning the story of human evolution, Wilson draws on his remarkable knowledge of biology and social behavior to demonstrate that group selection, not kin selection, is the premier driving force of human evolution. In a work that James D. Watson calls “a monumental exploration of the biological origins of the human condition,” Wilson explains how our innate drive to belong to a group is both a “great blessing and a terrible curse” (Smithsonian). Demonstrating that the sources of morality, religion, and the creative arts are fundamentally biological in nature, the renowned Harvard University biologist presents us with the clearest explanation ever produced as to the origin of the human condition and why it resulted in our domination of the Earth’s biosphere.