You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Analyzes the reasons why biologists have referred to and continue to refer to plasticity. Plasticity has become an important topic in biology, with some even wondering if it has now acquired the theoretical importance in biology that the concept of the gene enjoyed at the beginning of the last century. In this historical and epistemological study, philosopher Antonine Nicoglou shows how the recurrence of the general idea of plasticity—throughout the history of the life sciences—indicates its essential role in the way we think about life processes. Although plasticity has become a key element in new evolutionary thinking, she argues, its role in contemporary biology is also not insignific...
This book demonstrates that Mary Midgley's philosophy of evolution points the way towards considering the earth as our only true home, since we are products of this planet and its evolving and complex life along with every other organism. From the knowledge of ourselves as knowing animals with a biological as well as a cultural history, Midgley proposes the elaboration of an evolutionary epistemology that situates us firmly on the earth together with other creatures, while at the same time helping us to build knowledge of the world from the complexity of the human experience. I like to call this approach by a known theological analogy, a view "from below," that is, from the underside of the world, from the realms of nature and history. Such an approach does not begin by assuming conceptions of design or order in nature, a view that we term "from above," although it does not rule out the possibility of teleological or metaphysical constructions of reality in the long run. This "down-to-earth" approach I consider essential for any philosophy or theology that wants to take evolutionary theory seriously while committed to a proper and non-dismissive assessment of religious views.
Drawing on recent advances in evolutionary biology, prominent scholars return to the question posed in a pathbreaking book: how evolution itself evolved. In 1995, John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry published their influential book The Major Transitions in Evolution. The "transitions" that Maynard Smith and Szathmáry chose to describe all constituted major changes in the kinds of organisms that existed but, most important, these events also transformed the evolutionary process itself. The evolution of new levels of biological organization, such as chromosomes, cells, multicelled organisms, and complex social groups radically changed the kinds of individuals natural selection could act u...
Cullman County was established in 1877 in large part from the west side of Blount and the east side of Winston counties. Today, the few old cemeteries which existed in those counties in the early days are found within the borders of Cullman. The cemetery listings in this four volume set were conducted by the author beginning in 2003 and ending in early 2006. An attempt was made to personally visit every cemetery in Cullman County and record information from each readable monument. Volume 3 of this series covers alphabetically cemeteries G through M, beginning with the Good Hope Baptist Church Cemetery and concluding with the Mt. Vernon (West) Baptist Church Cemetery. The volumes are filled with photos of many of the old cemetery sites and notes describing the company and unit of most of the old Civil War era veterans. This set of books is vital to any serious student of Cullman County genealogy and history.
This book presents the first unified conceptual and statistical framework for understanding the evolution of reproductive strategies. Using the concept of the opportunity for sexual selection, the authors illustrate how and why sexual selection, though restricted to one sex and opposed in the other, is one of the strongest and fastest of all evolutionary forces. They offer a statistical framework for studying mating system evolution and apply it to patterns of alternative mating strategies. In doing so, they provide a method for quantifying how the strength of sexual selection is affected by the ecological and life history processes that influence females' spatial and temporal clustering and...
The Proceedings of an International Workshop sponsored by the UBC Botanical Garden and Centre for Plant Research held December 11-13, 2002 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
In The Limits and Lies of Human Genetic Research, Jonathan Kaplan weighs in on the controversial subject of the roles genes play in determining aspects of physical and behavioral human variation. Limits and Lies makes the case that neither the information we have on genes, nor on the environment, is sufficient to explain the complex variations among humans.
After volume 33, this book series was replaced by the journal "Evolutionary Biology." Please visit www.springer.com/11692 for further information. This volume continues bringing to readers the findings of eminent evolutionary biologists and paleobiologists. Among the topics discussed in this book are the origin of the dermal skeleton in conodont chordates, patterns of nucleotide substitution and codon usage in plasmid DNA evolution, a model to explain phenotype stability in functional systems, and inter-island speciation of Hawaiian biota.
What determines the direction of evolutionary change? This book provides a revolutionary answer to this question. Many biologists, from Darwin's day to our own, have been satisfied with the answer 'natural selection'. Professor Wallace Arthur is not. He takes the controversial view that biases in the ways that embryos can be altered are just as important as natural selection in determining the directions that evolution has taken, including the one that led to the origin of humans. This argument forms the core of the book. However, in addition, the book summarizes other important issues relating to how embryonic (and post-embryonic) development evolves. Written in an easy, conversational style, this is the first book for students and the general reader that provides an account of the exciting new field of Evolutionary Developmental Biology ('Evo-Devo' to its proponents).