Author: Richard Evan Jones
Publisher: Outskirts Press
ISBN: 9781977203946
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 460
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Book Description
This new book emphasizes how our modern cultures have changed or suppressed the expression of some of our "Stone Age" and genetic sexual and reproductive adaptations. These biological adaptations often can still be found in modern humans, in their original Stone Age form---- or modified to some degree---- In the DNA of our present hunter-gatherer populations. For example, I'll review----with up-to-date research input----- how our maladaptive cultural choices have changed natural breast-feeding into artificial bottle-feeding by many modern women, and the effects of this choice or necessity on child and maternal health. Certainly, most present-day people would not be able to----and probably wouldn't want to----return completely to our hunter-gatherer ways; all I am saying is that we can choose to return to the more natural expression of SOME of our Stone Age reproductive and sexual adaptations. Please Note: a few of the chapters of this new book will contain UPDATED AND MUCH REVISED versions of portions of the "Boxes" in Human Reproductive Biology (2014), by Richard E. Jones and Kristin H. Lopez, with permission previously obtained from Academic Press/Elsevier.
Author: Filomena de Sousa
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317321642
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 279
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Book Description
This collection of essays looks at sexuality and reproduction from an evolutionary perspective. Covering experimental discoveries as well as theoretical investigations, the volume explores the relationship between evolution and other areas of human behaviour.
Author: Richard O. Prum
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385537220
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 436
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Book Description
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.
Author: Marlene Zuk
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520240759
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260
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Book Description
In this book the author gives an eye-opening tour of some of the latest developments in our knowledge of animal sexuality and evolutionary biology. It exposes the anthropomorphism and gender politics that have colored our understanding of the natural world and shows how feminism can help move us away from our ideological biases. As she tells many amazing stories about animal behavior--whether of birds and apes or of rats and cockroaches--the author takes us to the places where our ideas about nature, gender, and culture collide. (Midwest).
Author: Kimberly A. Hamlin
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022613475X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 247
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Book Description
From Eve to Evolution provides the first full-length study of American women’s responses to evolutionary theory and illuminates the role science played in the nineteenth-century women’s rights movement. Kimberly A. Hamlin reveals how a number of nineteenth-century women, raised on the idea that Eve’s sin forever fixed women’s subordinate status, embraced Darwinian evolution—especially sexual selection theory as explained in The Descent of Man—as an alternative to the creation story in Genesis. Hamlin chronicles the lives and writings of the women who combined their enthusiasm for evolutionary science with their commitment to women’s rights, including Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Eliza Burt Gamble, Helen Hamilton Gardener, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. These Darwinian feminists believed evolutionary science proved that women were not inferior to men, that it was natural for mothers to work outside the home, and that women should control reproduction. The practical applications of this evolutionary feminism came to fruition, Hamlin shows, in the early thinking and writing of the American birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger. Much scholarship has been dedicated to analyzing what Darwin and other male evolutionists had to say about women, but very little has been written regarding what women themselves had to say about evolution. From Eve to Evolution adds much-needed female voices to the vast literature on Darwin in America.
Author: Jeroen C. J. M. van den Bergh
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108470971
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 575
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Book Description
A complete account of evolutionary thought in the social, environmental and policy sciences, creating bridges with biology.
Author: L. Morris Gosling
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521665391
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 454
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Book Description
Shows how an understanding of behaviour is essential in the conservation of animals.
Author: Laura L. Betzig
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 0202364534
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 185
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Book Description
In the first century after the book's publication, virtually no one tested Darwin's theory against the evidence of human history. Now that tide has changed. Laura Betig challenges the proposition that the evolved end of human life is its reproduction by presenting the literature on conflict resolution from over a hundred societies. The research results presented in Despotism and Differential Reproduction convincingly uphold Darwin's prophecy. A basic premise behind research has always been that understanding the way things are should contribute to our ability to change them to the way we would like them to be. This idea forms the basis for Betig's research--she sets out to explain how things really are by leading the reader through the historical and natural conditions that have promoted despotism in the hopes that this might eventually eradicate it. She begins with the idea that reproduction is the end of human life, and that all forms of power and strength are exploited in reaching this end. In this way, Betig shows with startling clarity how power corrupts and how despotic governments continue to exist in the world today. Engaging--even at times railing against--existing literature on human and social evolution, such as that of Rousseau and Marx, Betig asserts herself as a formidable and undeniable voice in this debate. Since Darwin's monumental work, more has been said about why questions regarding how human history has been shaped by natural history should not even be asked, than has been said in an effort to answer them. This work puts a stop to that by testing the Darwinian hypothesis and finding that he was right: light has in fact been shed on human political and reproductive history. Controversial and creative, this book makes no apologies for its bold messages and interdisciplinary boundary blending and addresses a topic of continuing interest and importance.
Author: Sir Charles Lyell
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Evolution
Languages : en
Pages : 546
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Book Description
Author: National Academy of Sciences
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 388
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Book Description
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.
