Author: Radu J. Bogdan
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262262002
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 177
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Book Description
An exploration of why and how the human competence for predication came to be. The predicative mind singles out and represents an item in order to attribute to it a property, a relation, an action, an evaluation; it thinks, and says, of a house that it is big, of a car that it is to the left of the house, of a cat that it is about to jump, of a hypothesis that it is plausible. The capacity to predicate appears to be neither innate nor learned, yet it is universal among humans. Puzzling in evolutionary, developmental, and philosophical terms, the mental competence for predication still awaits a coherent and plausible explanation. In this exploration of the predicative roots of human thinking, Radu Bogdan takes up the challenge. Bogdan argues that predication is not only an outcome of development but also a by-product of uniquely human features of development, many of them social in nature and unrelated to representation, cognition, and thinking. Humans develop predicative minds for disparate reasons, which bear initially on physiological coregulation, affective and manipulative communication, and the socially shared acquisition of words. Once developed, the competence for predication in turn redesigns human thinking and communication. Predication is at the heart of conscious, deliberate, explicit, and language-based human thinking, and it is the fuel of higher mental activities. Understanding the uniqueness and representational power of the human mind, Bogdan contends, requires an explanation of why and how predication came to be.
Author: Michael Tomasello
Publisher: Belknap Press
ISBN: 0674980859
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 393
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Book Description
Winner of the William James Book Award Winner of the Eleanor Maccoby Book Award “A landmark in our understanding of human development.” —Paul Harris, author of Trusting What You’re Told “Magisterial...Makes an impressive argument that most distinctly human traits are established early in childhood and that the general chronology in which these traits appear can...be identified.” —Wall Street Journal Virtually all theories of how humans have become such a distinctive species focus on evolution. Becoming Human looks instead to development and reveals how those things that make us unique are constructed during the first seven years of a child’s life. In this groundbreaking work, Michael Tomasello draws from three decades of experimental research with chimpanzees, bonobos, and children to propose a new framework for psychological growth between birth and seven years of age. He identifies eight pathways that differentiate humans from their primate relatives: social cognition, communication, cultural learning, cooperative thinking, collaboration, prosociality, social norms, and moral identity. In each of these, great apes possess rudimentary abilities, but the maturation of humans’ evolved capacities for shared intentionality transform these abilities into uniquely human cognition and sociality. “How does human psychological growth run in the first seven years, in particular how does it instill ‘culture’ in us? ...Most of all, how does the capacity for shared intentionality and self-regulation evolve in people? This is a very thoughtful and also important book.” —Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution “Theoretically daring and experimentally ingenious, Becoming Human squarely tackles the abiding question of what makes us human.” —Susan Gelman “Destined to become a classic. Anyone who is interested in cognitive science, child development, human evolution, or comparative psychology should read this book.” —Andrew Meltzoff
Author: Roger Buvat
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642736351
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 592
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Book Description
With improved microscope and preparation techniques, studies of histo logical structures of plant organisms experienced a revival of interest at the end of the 19th century. From that time, histological data have sub stantially studies of the pioneers in botanical science. From the beginning of the 20th century, the microscope allowed research in cell structure, the general functional unit of living beings. Advances in cytology gradually influenced histology, at first, however, rather timidly. Only the new and spectacular progress in ultrastructural cytology and cytochemistry led to a great increase in modern work on the structures of vascular plants and the related ontogenical and physiological data, thanks to the use of the electron microscope and the contribution of molecular biology. Not only did new techniques lead to new approaches, but achieve ments in general biology shifted the orientation of research, linking in vestigation to the physiological aspects of cell and tissue differentiation. Among these, the demonstration of the general principles of develop ment, and the characterization of molecules common to plants and animals, which control and govern the main basic functions of cells and tissues, have widened the scope of modern research on plant struc tures. Present trends in biological research show that it is necessary to know the structures thoroughly, from the ultrastructural cytological scale to the scale of tissue and organ arrangement, even for physiological research on either cells, tissues, or whole organs. The study of growth factors, differ entiation, or organogenesis can be mentioned as an example.
Author: Rick A. Adams
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521626323
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 414
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Book Description
This book explores the importance of understanding developmental processes in analyses of bat ecology and evolution.
Author: Howard Moltz
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 032314750X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 513
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Book Description
The Ontogeny of Vertebrate Behavior is a collection of articles focused on the comparative psychology researches. The text is devoted to the development of vertebrate behavior, emphasizes the ontogenetic determinants, and answers questions related to the differentiation of selected response systems. The book is organized into 10 chapters that feature the concepts of vertebrate behavior and its ontogeny. It presents the study of behavioral development, as well as the visual perceptual systems and its evolution. It explains the perceptual abilities of the human infant and the early experience and problem-solving behavior. Cerebral effects of environmental manipulation and the behavioral phenomena are explained. The book also talks about the ontogeny of emotional, play, and exploratory behaviors; of sexuality and maternal behavior; and of mother-infant relations. It also discusses the principle and procedure of imprinting. Finally, it explains the vocal learning of avian species and the ontogeny of language, as well as the vocal abnormalities. This text will be invaluable to the students, novices, and professionals in psychology, ethology, endocrinology, and behavioral and developmental biology.
Author: Alessandro Minelli
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139437801
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 343
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Book Description
Contemporary research in the field of evolutionary developmental biology, or 'evo-devo', has to date been predominantly devoted to interpreting basic features of animal architecture in molecular genetics terms. Considerably less time has been spent on the exploitation of the wealth of facts and concepts available from traditional disciplines, such as comparative morphology, even though these traditional approaches can continue to offer a fresh insight into evolutionary developmental questions. The Development of Animal Form aims to integrate traditional morphological and contemporary molecular genetic approaches and to deal with post-embryonic development as well. This approach leads to unconventional views on the basic features of animal organization, such as body axes, symmetry, segments, body regions, appendages and related concepts. This book will be of particular interest to graduate students and researchers in evolutionary and developmental biology, as well as to those in related areas of cell biology, genetics and zoology.
Author: Roy C. Major
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135649413
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 222
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Book Description
Even though second-language learners may master the grammar and vocabulary of the new languages, they almost never achieve a native phonology (accent). Scholars and professionals dealing with second-language learners would agree that this is one of the most persistent challenges they face. Now, for the first time, Roy Major's Foreign Accent covers the exploding scholarship in this area and lays out the issues specifically for audiences in the second language acquisition and applied linguistics community.
Author: Stephen Jay Gould
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674263960
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 522
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Book Description
“Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” was Haeckel’s answer—the wrong one—to the most vexing question of nineteenth-century biology: what is the relationship between individual development (ontogeny) and the evolution of species and lineages (phylogeny)? In this, the first major book on the subject in fifty years, Stephen Jay Gould documents the history of the idea of recapitulation from its first appearance among the pre-Socratics to its fall in the early twentieth century. Mr. Gould explores recapitulation as an idea that intrigued politicians and theologians as well as scientists. He shows that Haeckel’s hypothesis—that human fetuses with gill slits are, literally, tiny fish, exact replicas of their water-breathing ancestors—had an influence that extended beyond biology into education, criminology, psychoanalysis (Freud and Jung were devout recapitulationists), and racism. The theory of recapitulation, Gould argues, finally collapsed not from the weight of contrary data, but because the rise of Mendelian genetics rendered it untenable. Turning to modern concepts, Gould demonstrates that, even though the whole subject of parallels between ontogeny and phylogeny fell into disrepute, it is still one of the great themes of evolutionary biology. Heterochrony—changes in developmental timing, producing parallels between ontogeny and phylogeny—is shown to be crucial to an understanding of gene regulation, the key to any rapprochement between molecular and evolutionary biology. Gould argues that the primary evolutionary value of heterochrony may lie in immediate ecological advantages for slow or rapid maturation, rather than in long-term changes of form, as all previous theories proclaimed. Neoteny—the opposite of recapitulation—is shown to be the most important determinant of human evolution. We have evolved by retaining the juvenile characters of our ancestors and have achieved both behavioral flexibility and our characteristic morphology thereby (large brains by prolonged retention of rapid fetal growth rates, for example). Gould concludes that “there may be nothing new under the sun, but permutation of the old within complex systems can do wonders. As biologists, we deal directly with the kind of material complexity that confers an unbounded potential upon simple, continuous changes in underlying processes. This is the chief joy of our science.”
Author: Diego Demarco
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781536174571
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 291
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Book Description
"This book delves into the many facets of the study of plant development and demonstrates the importance of ontogenetic studies in analyzing the structure, function, and evolution of glands, structures, and organs. The nine chapters that make up this book represent the state of the art of the scientific knowledge on the subject and bring unpublished contributions and important reviews of the most diverse developmental issues of plants compiled for the first time in a single book. Chapter 1 describes an unprecedented way secretory ducts form as the result of cavity coalescence in Malvaceae. Chapter 2 describes a case of homeoheterotopic alteration between nectaries and colleters in Passifloraceae and analyzes the evolution of leaf glands in the family. Chapter 3 emphasizes the importance of anatomical, histochemical and ontogenetic studies in distinguishing colleters and nectaries in leaves of Sapium (Euphorbiaceae) and highlights the importance of ontogenetic studies for the observation of new colleters since many of them are deciduous. Chapter 4 reviews leaf development in vascular plants using traditional morphological and anatomical knowledge combined with the most recent data obtained in molecular studies. Chapter 5 reviews the morphogenesis and evolution of haustoria in mistletoes and evaluates the likely reasons that led to the change from root parasitism to aerial parasitism in Santalales. Chapter 6 demonstrates the importance of the meristematic activity and bud formation for the structure of inflorescences in Acanthaceae, revealing the causes of their architectural diversity in genera such as Lepidagathis. Chapter 7 reveals the ontogenetic causes that resulted in varying degrees of flower reduction, separation of sexes, and their relationship with pollination in urticalean rosids. Chapter 8 uses the ontogenetic study of flowers to analyze the diversity of polyads in Leguminosae and their importance in the taxonomy of the family and the dispersal mode of pollen. Chapter 9 investigates the mode of formation of the pseudomonomerous gynoecia using Anacardiaceae as a model and discusses the evolution of this morphological reduction of gynoecium in other lineages of angiosperms"--
Author: Susan Oyama
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822380668
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 298
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Book Description
The Ontogeny of Information is a critical intervention into the ongoing and perpetually troubling nature-nurture debates surrounding human development. Originally published in 1985, this was a foundational text in what is now the substantial field of developmental systems theory. In this revised edition Susan Oyama argues compellingly that nature and nurture are not alternative influences on human development but, rather, developmental products and the developmental processes that produce them. Information, says Oyama, is thought to reside in molecules, cells, tissues, and the environment. When something wondrous occurs in the world, we tend to question whether the information guiding the transformation was pre-encoded in the organism or installed through experience or instruction. Oyama looks beyond this either-or question to focus on the history of such developments. She shows that what developmental “information” does depends on what is already in place and what alternatives are available. She terms this process “constructive interactionism,” whereby each combination of genes and environmental influences simultaneously interacts to produce a unique result. Ontogeny, then, is the result of dynamic and complex interactions in multileveled developmental systems. The Ontogeny of Information challenges specialists in the fields of developmental biology, philosophy of biology, psychology, and sociology, and even nonspecialists, to reexamine the existing nature-nurture dichotomy as it relates to the history and formation of organisms.
