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Author: Daniel R. Brooks
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226075891
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 698
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Book Description
All living things on earth—from individual species to entire ecosystems—have evolved through time, and evolution is the acknowledged framework of modern biology. Yet many areas of biology have moved from a focus on evolution to much narrower perspectives. Daniel R. Brooks and Deborah A. McLennan argue that it is impossible to comprehend the nature of life on earth unless evolution—the history of organisms—is restored to a central position in research. They demonstrate how the phylogenetic approach can be integrated with ecological and behavioral studies to produce a richer and more complete picture of evolution. Clearly setting out the conceptual, methodological, and empirical foundations of their research program, Brooks and McLennan show how scientists can use it to unravel the evolutionary history of virtually any characteristic of any living thing, from behaviors to ecosystems. They illustrate and test their approach with examples drawn from a wide variety of species and habitats. The Nature of Diversity provides a powerful new tool for understanding, documenting, and preserving the world's biodiversity. It is an essential book for biologists working in evolution, ecology, behavior, conservation, and systematics. The argument in The Nature of Diversity greatly expands upon and refines the arguments made in the authors' previous book Phylogeny, Ecology, and Behavior.
Author: Daniel R. Brooks
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226075891
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 698
Get Book Here
Book Description
All living things on earth—from individual species to entire ecosystems—have evolved through time, and evolution is the acknowledged framework of modern biology. Yet many areas of biology have moved from a focus on evolution to much narrower perspectives. Daniel R. Brooks and Deborah A. McLennan argue that it is impossible to comprehend the nature of life on earth unless evolution—the history of organisms—is restored to a central position in research. They demonstrate how the phylogenetic approach can be integrated with ecological and behavioral studies to produce a richer and more complete picture of evolution. Clearly setting out the conceptual, methodological, and empirical foundations of their research program, Brooks and McLennan show how scientists can use it to unravel the evolutionary history of virtually any characteristic of any living thing, from behaviors to ecosystems. They illustrate and test their approach with examples drawn from a wide variety of species and habitats. The Nature of Diversity provides a powerful new tool for understanding, documenting, and preserving the world's biodiversity. It is an essential book for biologists working in evolution, ecology, behavior, conservation, and systematics. The argument in The Nature of Diversity greatly expands upon and refines the arguments made in the authors' previous book Phylogeny, Ecology, and Behavior.
Author: Yvonne Baskin
Publisher: Shearwater Books
ISBN:
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
The lavish array of organisms known as "biodiversity" is an intricately linked web that makes the Earth a uniquely habitable plane. In this book, a noted science writer examines the threats posed to humans by the loss of biodiversity and explains key findings from the ecological sciences. It is the first book of its kind to clearly explains the practical consequences of declining biodiversity of ecosystem hjealth and function and, consequently, on human society.
Author: Paul R. Ehrlich
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0142000531
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 545
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Book Description
Why do we behave the way we do? Biologist Paul Ehrlich suggests that although people share a common genetic code, these genes "do not shout commands at us...at the very most, they whisper suggestions." He argues that human nature is not so much result of genetic coding; rather, it is heavily influenced by cultural conditioning and environmental factors. With personal anecdotes, a well-written narrative, and clear examples, Human Natures is a major work of synthesis and scholarship as well as a valuable primer on genetics and evolution that makes complex scientific concepts accessible to lay readers.
Author: Daniel W. McShea
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226562271
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 186
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Book Description
Life on earth is characterized by three striking phenomena that demand explanation: adaptation—the marvelous fit between organism and environment; diversity—the great variety of organisms; and complexity—the enormous intricacy of their internal structure. Natural selection explains adaptation. But what explains diversity and complexity? Daniel W. McShea and Robert N. Brandon argue that there exists in evolution a spontaneous tendency toward increased diversity and complexity, one that acts whether natural selection is present or not. They call this tendency a biological law—the Zero-Force Evolutionary Law, or ZFEL. This law unifies the principles and data of biology under a single framework and invites a reconceptualization of the field of the same sort that Newton’s First Law brought to physics. Biology’s First Law shows how the ZFEL can be applied to the study of diversity and complexity and examines its wider implications for biology. Intended for evolutionary biologists, paleontologists, and other scientists studying complex systems, and written in a concise and engaging format that speaks to students and interdisciplinary practitioners alike, this book will also find an appreciative audience in the philosophy of science.
Author: Henry Vyverberg
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 019505864X
Category : Enlightenment
Languages : en
Pages : 236
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Book Description
In this work, Henry Vyverberg traces the evolution and consequences of a crucial idea in French Enlightenment thought--the idea of human nature. Human nature was commonly seen as a broadly universal, unchanging entity, though perhaps modifiable by geographical, social, and historical factors. Enlightenment empiricism suggested a degree of cultural diversity that has often been underestimated in studies of the age. Evidence here is drawn from Diderot's celebrated Encyclopedia and from a vast range of writing by such Enlightenment notables as Voltaire, Rousseau, and d'Holbach. Vyverberg explains not only the age's undoubted fascination with uniformity in human nature, but also its acknowledgment of significant limitations on that uniformity. He shows that although the Enlightenment's historical sense was often blinkered by its notions of a uniform human nature, there were also cracks in this concept that developed during the Enlightenment itself.
Author: Joan Roughgarden
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520957970
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 491
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Book Description
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.
Author: Audrey J. Murrell
Publisher: IAP
ISBN: 1641139218
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 351
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Book Description
Diversity research and scholarship has evolved over the past several decades and is now reaching a critical juncture. While the scholarship on diversity and inclusion has advanced within various disciplines and subdisciplines, there have been limited conversations and collaborations across distinct areas of research. Theories, paradigms, research models and methodologies have evolved but continue to remain locked within specific area, disciplines, or theoretical canons. This collaborative edited volume examines diversity across disciplines in higher education. Our book brings together contributions from the arts, sciences, and professional fields. In order to advance diversity and inclusion across campuses, multiple disciplinary perspectives need to be acknowledged and considered broadly. The current higher education climate necessitates multicultural and interdisciplinary collaboration. Global partnerships and technological advances require faculty, administrators, and graduate students to reach beyond their disciplinary focus to achieve successful programs and research projects. We need to become more familiar discussing diversity across disciplines. Our book investigates diversity across disciplines with attention to people, process, policies, and paradigms. The four thematic categories of people, process, policies, and paradigms describe the multidisciplinary nature of diversity and topics relevant to faculty, administrators, and students in higher education. The framework provides a structure to understand the ways in which people are impacted by diversity and the complicated process of engaging with diversity in a variety of contexts. Policies draw attention to the dynamic nature of diversity across disciplines and paradigms presents models of diversity in research and education.
Author: Daniel R. Brooks
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226075716
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 456
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Book Description
"The merits of this work are many. A rigorous integration of phylogenetic hypotheses into studies of adaptation, adaptive radiation, and coevolution is absolutely necessary and can change dramatically our collective 'gestalt' about much in evolutionary biology. The authors advance and illustrate this thesis beautifully. The writing is often lucid, the examples are plentiful and diverse, and the juxtaposition of examples from different biological systems argues forcefully for the validity of the thesis. Many new insights are offered here, and the work is usually accessible to both the practiced phylogeneticist and the naive ecologist."—Joseph Travis, Florida State University "[Phylogeny, Ecology, and Behavior] presents its arguments forcefully and cogently, with ample . . .support. Brooks and McLennan conclude as they began, with the comment that evolution is a result, not a process, and that it is the result of an interaction of a variety of processes, environmental and historical. Evolutionary explanations must consider all these components, else they are incomplete. As Darwin's explanations of descent with modification integrated genealogical and ecological information, so must workers now incorporate historical and nonhistorical, and biological and nonbiological, processes in their evolutionary perspective."—Marvalee H. Wake, Bioscience "This book is well-written and thought-provoking, and should be read by those of us who do not routinely turn to phylogenetic analysis when investigating adaptation, evolutionary ecology and co-evolution."—Mark R. MacNair, Journal of Natural History
Author: Byron M. Roth
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780998845906
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
This is the abridged and revised edition of Dr. Byron Roth's popular book, Perils of Diversity: Immigration and Human Nature, improved with more frequent chapter divisions, concise language and narrowed focus. During the past four decades, Europe and the United States have undergone and continue to undergo demographic changes of unprecedented proportions. The public debate on immigration (if one takes place at all) is between "assimilation" and "multiculturalism," in other words, between encouraging immigrants to adopt host cultures or maintain ethnic loyalties and boundaries. But is the assimilation of different races and cultures into Western societies possible or desirable? Moreover, can any multicultural or multiracial nation-state achieve lasting social harmony? Such questions are critical and consequential, and yet they have become increasingly unspeakable. In The Perils of Diversity, Byron M. Roth brings a much-need perspective to the immigration debate the science of human nature. Any policy of mass immigration, Roth argues, will be profoundly constrained by the fundamental features of human psychology. Prominent among these are heritable differences in intelligence and behavior, as well as the natural tendency toward trusting one s own extended kin group and being suspicious of and sometimes hostile towards others. Roth explores the history of immigration into Europe and the United States and addresses the disturbingly undemocratic nature of the regime of mass immigration, which is imposed on the citizens of Western nations in defiance of their clearly expressed wishes. The chasm between elite views and public opinion is so stark that current policies can only be maintained by an increasingly totalitarian suppression of dissent, one that undermines the foundations and identities of Western societies.
Author: Scott E. Page
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400835143
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
This book provides an introduction to the role of diversity in complex adaptive systems. A complex system--such as an economy or a tropical ecosystem--consists of interacting adaptive entities that produce dynamic patterns and structures. Diversity plays a different role in a complex system than it does in an equilibrium system, where it often merely produces variation around the mean for performance measures. In complex adaptive systems, diversity makes fundamental contributions to system performance. Scott Page gives a concise primer on how diversity happens, how it is maintained, and how it affects complex systems. He explains how diversity underpins system level robustness, allowing for multiple responses to external shocks and internal adaptations; how it provides the seeds for large events by creating outliers that fuel tipping points; and how it drives novelty and innovation. Page looks at the different kinds of diversity--variations within and across types, and distinct community compositions and interaction structures--and covers the evolution of diversity within complex systems and the factors that determine the amount of maintained diversity within a system. Provides a concise and accessible introduction Shows how diversity underpins robustness and fuels tipping points Covers all types of diversity The essential primer on diversity in complex adaptive systems
