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Interpreting Darwin's theory - Science Show - 14 February 2009
Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould at Oxford in 1987, arguments about the Darwinian heritage still going on, all to wish Charles Darwin a very happy or at least significant 200th birthday.
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New Scientist Breaking News - Brain's 'cheat detector' is revealed
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d to detecting cheats, say evolutionary psychologists, after a study with a brain-damaged man.
"We think it develops in all normal individuals, and that it develops in part because our brains were selected to develop this competence," says John Tooby at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Tooby and his colleagues studied a man who suffered accidental damage to the limbic system, a brain region involved in processing emotional and social information. RM, as he is referred to, performed as well as other people on one set of reasoning problems, did much worse on problems specifically designed to test reasoning about social exchanges.
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SCIENCE AND THE HUMANITIES IN THE UNDERSTANDING OF HUMAN NATURE
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SCIENCE AND THE HUMANITIES IN THE UNDERSTANDING OF HUMAN NATURE
by Robert M. Young
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Benjamin Dickins reviews Cycles of Contingency: Developmental Systems and Evolution. Edited by Susan Oyama, Paul E. Griffiths and Russell D. Gray.
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Cycles of Contingency: Developmental Systems and Evolution. Edited by Susan Oyama, Paul E. Griffiths and Russell D. Gray. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-165063-0.
Benjamin J. A. Dickins, Department of Developmental Genetics, The Babraham Institute, Babraham, Cambridge, CB2 4AT, United Kingdom.
Introduction
Genetics is a hugely successful science in its own right, and statistical approaches to genetics are credited with the revival of Darwinism in the modern evolutionary synthesis (Depew and Weber, 1995). But the nature of the basic entity in genetics, the gene, and the role it plays in development are becoming less clear. This is a consequence of the understanding that molecular biology has given us of the complexity of gene structure and action. Alongside this contribution from molecular biology, new conceptual work has been ongoing and some of this is collected in this volume.
Cycles of Contingency (CC) describes, extends and criticizes a body of ideas referred to as developmental systems theory (DST). DST aims to provide a holistic and epigenetic view of development. In epigenesis, the developing organism begins in an undifferentiated state and gradually changes to a more complex state through multiple interactions (after Waddington, 1940). This view was originally contrasted with classical preformationism (sensu Aristotle), which held that development proceeded simply by the enlargement of pre-differentiated structures. The contemporary picture of development incorporates elements of both views, but epigenesis dominates. For example, the imaginal disc gives rise to an insect limb or wing largely by growth and unfolding of a pre-patterned epithelial layer, but, during early development the disc is created by means of multiple, complex interactions.
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If you have a simple idea, state it simply
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Fisher saw there was a difficulty about the evolution of distasÂtefulness in insects, as also in the further matter of the insects becoming brightly coloured in order to advertise their distastefulness. He realized that if the insect is actually eaten by the predator in the course of learning to avoid them, then whatever made that insect conspicuous to the predator is obviÂously disadvanÂtageous. So he reasoned that the only way in which you could see that kind of selection getting started would be if firstly, the insects were gregariÂous, secondly, the group was a group of siblings, and thirdly, having tasted one and found it awful, the predator would then leave the rest of the group alone. The genes of the one eaten would then be promoted. Fisher also realised that this was not such a strong form of selecÂtion, not as if it were the individual itself that had a form of protecÂtion. He made some remark about the selection going ahead at half the speed than it would have if it were direct selection. And that was one key early statement of the selection principle concerning the closeÂness of relaÂtedÂness that I later came to develop.
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