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The informational nature of biological organization, at levels from the genetic and epigenetic to the cognitive and linguistic. Information shapes biological organization in fundamental ways and at every organizational level. Because organisms use information—including DNA codes, gene expression, and chemical signaling—to construct, maintain, repair, and replicate themselves, it would seem only natural to use information-related ideas in our attempts to understand the general nature of living systems, the causality by which they operate, the difference between living and inanimate matter, and the emergence, in some biological species, of cognition, emotion, and language. And yet philosop...
A lively, up-to-date overview of the newest research in biosocial criminology What is the relationship between criminality and biology? Nineteenth-century phrenologists insisted that criminality was innate, inherent in the offender’s brain matter. While they were eventually repudiated as pseudo-scientists, today the pendulum has swung back. Both criminologists and biologists have begun to speak of a tantalizing but disturbing possibility: that criminality may be inherited as a set of genetic deficits that place one at risk to commit theft, violence, or acts of sexual deviance. But what do these new theories really assert? Are they as dangerous as their forerunners, which the Nazis and othe...
First published in 2001. This is Volume 7 in a series of ten on the Science of Mental Health. One of the most challenging areas of behavioral research is the study of personality and personality disorders. The main challenge can be stated directly: it is difficult to know with certainty which personality traits are fundamental and which are complex elaborations of fundamental traits. This is a collection of works under the sections of Description, Epidemiology, Genes and Environment, Peers and Neighborhoods, Neurobiology and Behavior and Treatment.
Crime in the United States has fluctuated considerably over the past thirty years, as have the policy approaches to deal with it. During this time criminologists and other scholars have helped to shed light on the role of incarceration, prevention, drugs, guns, policing, and numerous other aspects to crime control. Yet the latest research is rarely heard in public discussions and is often missing from the desks of policymakers. This book accessibly summarizes the latest scientific information on the causes of crime and evidence about what does and does not work to control it. Thoroughly revised and updated, this new version of Crime and Public Policy will include twenty chapters and five new...
What circumstances or behaviors turn poverty into a cycle that perpetuates across generations? The answer to this question carries especially important implications for the design and evaluation of policies and projects intended to reduce poverty. Yet a major challenge analysts and policymakers face in understanding poverty traps is the sheer number of mechanisms—not just financial, but also environmental, physical, and psychological—that may contribute to the persistence of poverty all over the world. The research in this volume explores the hypothesis that poverty is self-reinforcing because the equilibrium behaviors of the poor perpetuate low standards of living. Contributions explore...
This handbook presents a series of essays that captures not the past of criminology, but where theoretical explanation is headed. The volume is replete with ideas, discussions of substantive topics with salient theoretical implications, and reviews of literatures that illuminate avenues along which theory and research evolve.