Degeneracy is a poorly understood process, essential to natural selection. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the concept of degeneracy was commandeered by the colonial imagination. A rigid understanding of species, race, and culture grew to dominate the normative thinking that persisted well into the burgeoning new industrial age. A 20th-century reconfiguration of the concept by George Gamow highlighted a form of intraorganismic variation that is still underexplored. Degeneracy exists in a population of variants where structurally different components perform a (...) similar, but not necessarily identical, function with respect to context. The presence of degeneracy increases a system’s complexity and robustness against perturbations. The loss of a genetic component in biological systems, for example, can be compensated by redundant elements , or by degenerate elements . A historical survey of the use of the term “degeneracy” reveals how and why the processes it once designated, and the mechanisms it now represents, have largely escaped the purview of contemporary science. Despite confusion and general oversight, degeneracy has been characterized by select researchers at the molecular, genetic, and neuronal levels. The concept is a potent analytical tool to understand selection, variation, and transmission. (shrink)

Emotionality is a basic feature of behavior. The argument over whether the expression of emotions is based primarily on culture (constructivism, nurture) or biology (natural forms, nature) will never be resolved because both alternatives are untenable. The evidence is overwhelming that at all ages and all levels of organization, the development of emotionality is epigenetic: The organism is an active participant in its own development. To ascribe these effects to “experience” was the best that could be done for many years. (...) With the rapid acceleration of information on how changes in organization are actually brought about, it is a good time to review, update, and revitalize our views of experience in relation to the concept of basic emotion. (shrink)

This commentary criticizes Wilkins & Wakefield's thesis that the neurological precursors of language provide a cognitive Rubicon to linguistically divide human from nonhuman primates. A causal model of their theory is presented, followed by a discussion of the relationship between brain expansion and tool use, Broca's area and the parietaloccipital-temporal junction (POT).

Is the human tendency toward musicality better thought of as the product of a specific, evolved instinct or an acquired skill? Developmental and evolutionary arguments are considered, along with issues of domain‐specificity. The article also considers the question of why humans might be consistently and intensely drawn to music if musicality is not in fact the product of a specifically evolved instinct.

Since the discovery of the double helical structure of DNA, the standard account of the inheritance of features has been in terms of DNA-copying and DNA-transmission. This theory is just a version of the old theory according to which the inheritance of features is explained by the transfer at conception of some developmentally privileged material from parents to offspring. This paper does the following things: (1) it explains what the inheritance of features is; (2) it explains how the DNA-centric theory (...) emerged; (3) it clarifies the relation between the DNA-centric theory and the ‘unfolding’ theory of development; (4) it argues that (given what we now know about developmental processes and genetic activity) the DNA-centric theory should be abandoned in favour of a pluralistic (but not holistic) theory of the inheritance of features. According to this pluralistic theory, the reliable reoccurrence of phenotypes must be explained by appealing not only to processes responsible for the reliable reoccurrence of genetic developmental factors but also to processes responsible for the reliable reoccurrence (or persistence) of nongenetic developmental factors. (shrink)

The concept of innateness is a part of folk wisdom but is also used by biologists and cognitive scientists. This concept has a legitimate role to play in science only if the colloquial usage relates to a coherent body of evidence. We examine many different candidates for the post of scientific successor of the folk concept of innateness. We argue that none of these candidates is entirely satisfactory. Some of the candidates are more interesting and useful than others, but the (...) interesting candidates are not equivalent to each other and the empirical and evidential relations between them are far from clear. Researchers have treated the various scientific notions that capture some aspect of the folk concept of innateness as equivalent to each other or at least as tracking properties that are strongly correlated with each other. But whether these correlations exist is an empirical issue. This empirical issue has not been thoroughly investigated because in the attempt to create a bridge between the folk view and their theories, researchers have often assumed that the properties must somehow cluster. Rather than making further attempts to import the folk concept of innateness into the sciences, efforts should now be made to focus on the empirical questions raised by the debates and pave the way to a better way of studying the development of living organisms. Such empirical questions must be answered before it can be decided whether a good scientific successor – in the form of a concept that refers to a collection of biologically significant properties that tend to co-occur – can be identified or whether the concept of innateness deserves no place in science. (shrink)

Historians and philosophers of science agree that Darwin had an understanding of species which led to a workable theory of their origins. To Darwin species did not differ essentially from ‘varieties’ within species, but were distinguishable in that they had developed gaps in formerly continuous morphological variation. Similar ideas can be defended today after updating them with modern population genetics. Why then, in the 1930s and 1940s, did Dobzhansky, Mayr and others argue that Darwin failed to understand species and speciation? (...) Mayr and Dobzhansky argued that reproductively isolated species were more distinct and ‘real’ than Darwin had proposed. Believing species to be inherently cohesive, Mayr inferred that speciation normally required geographic isolation, an argument that he believed, incorrectly, Darwin had failed to appreciate. Also, before the sociobiology revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, biologists often argued that traits beneficial to whole populations would spread. Reproductive isolation was thus seen as an adaptive trait to prevent disintegration of species. Finally, molecular genetic markers did not exist, and so a presumed biological function of species, reproductive isolation, seemed to delimit cryptic species better than character-based criteria like Darwin’s. Today, abundant genetic markers are available and widely used to delimit species, for example using assignment tests: genetics has replaced a Darwinian reliance on morphology for detecting gaps between species. In the 150th anniversary of The Origin of Species , we appear to be returning to more Darwinian views on species, and to a fuller appreciation of what Darwin meant. (shrink)

I agree with Vaesen that it is a mistake to discard tool use as a hallmark of human cognition. I contend, nonetheless, that tools are not simply external markers of a distinctive human mental architecture. Rather, they actively and meaningfully participate in the process by which hominin brains and bodies make up their sapient minds.

Shame is a painful emotion concerned with failure to live up to certain standards, norms, or ideals. The subject feels that she falls in the regard of others; she feels watched and exposed. As a result, she feels bad about the person that she is. The most popular view of shame is that someone only feels ashamed if she fails to live up to standards, norms, or ideals that she, herself, accepts. In this paper, I provide support for a different (...) view, according to which shame is about failure to live up to public expectations. Such a view of shame has difficulties explaining why an audience is central to shame, why shame concerns the self as a whole, and why the social rank of someone affects their ability to shame others. These features, I argue, are best explained by reference to the descent of shame in the emotion connected with submission in nonhuman animals. The function of submission—to appease relevant social others—also throws light on the sort of emotion that shame is. From the point of view of other people, a subject who experiences shame at her own failing is someone who is committed to living together with others in a socially sanctioned way. The argument is not that we must understand the nature of shame in terms of what it evolved for, but that its heritage is important to understanding the emotion that shame has become. (shrink)

The mechanisms proposed in the target article are quite general and do not address variables specific for music. I argue that reactions to music include motivational mechanisms related to functions of music. To further the field, as the authors envision, consideration of internal mechanisms must be paired with specific hypotheses that include musical and musically relevant variables.

The extinct human relatives known as Neanderthals have long been described as brutish and dumb. This conception is often traced to paleontologist Marcellin Boule, who published a detailed analysis on a Neanderthal skeleton in the early twentieth century. The conventional historical narrative claims that Boule made an error in his analysis, causing the Neanderthals to be considered brutish. This essay challenges the narrative of “Boule’s error,” arguing instead that the brutish Neanderthal concept originated much earlier in the history of Neanderthal (...) research and was, in fact, an invention of the earliest analyses of the first specimen recognized as a Neanderthal in the mid-nineteenth century. I argue that temporally relocating this conception of Neanderthals allows for a better understanding of the interconnected nature of the study of fossil humans and the science of living human races during the nineteenth century. This new view of the brutish Neanderthal sheds light on the earliest phases of the science that became paleoanthropology, while examining the racial, cultural, and political attitudes about race and extinction that accompanied the science at that time. By inspecting the ways in which the Neanderthals’ image was a product of a particular time and place, we gain a perspective that provides a new basis for thinking about the conceptions of hominin fossil species. (shrink)

When Władysław Tatarkiewicz wrote that there are only two things that can be said about art: that it is a human activity, not a product of nature, and that it is a conscious activity (or its product), adding that every statement about art different from the ones mentioned above was always finally overthrown (Tatarkiewicz, 1980, p. 37), he probably did not think that the first claim could be questioned by anyone. In the following paper, I will trace the history of (...) observations of “artistic behaviors” that were made by animal ethologists and then processed by evolutionary art philosophers who may lead to the hypothesis about the validity of assigning artistic abilities to animals. In respect to this article is aimed at a wide audience. I will also demonstrate that the question: whether, and in what sense, animals create art is in fact a question about a definition of art that could include this type of intentional animal acts. (shrink)

Despite its importance, the linkage between genetic and cultural evolution has until now been little explored. An understanding of this linkage is needed to extend evolutionary theory so that it can deal for the first time with the phenomena of mind and human social history. We characterize the process of gene-culture coevolution, in which culture is shaped by biological imperatives while biological traits are simultaneously altered by genetic evolution in response to cultural history. A case is made from both theory (...) and evidence that genetic and cultural evolution are inseverable, and that the human mind has tended to evolve so as to bias individuals toward certain patterns of cognition and choice rather than others. With the aid of mathematical models we trace the coevolutionary circuit: The genes prescribe structure in developmental pathways that lay down endocrine and neural systems, imposing regularities in the development of cognition and behavior; these regularities translate upward into holistic patterns of culture, which can be predicted in the form of probability density distributions ; natural selection acts within human history to favor certain epigenetic rules over others; and the selection alters the frequencies of the underlying genes. The effects of genetic and cultural changes reverberate throughout the circuit and are consequently tested with the passage of each life cycle. In addition to modeling gene-culture coevolution, we apply methods from island biogeography and information theory to examine the cultural capacity of the genes, the factors determining the magnitude of cultural diversity, and the possible reasons for the uniqueness of the human achievement. (shrink)

Despite its importance, the linkage between genetic and cultural evolution has until now been little explored. An understanding of this linkage is needed to extend evolutionary theory so that it can deal for the first time with the phenomena of mind and human social history. We characterize the process of gene-culture coevolution, in which culture is shaped by biological imperatives while biological traits are simultaneously altered by genetic evolution in response to cultural history. A case is made from both theory (...) and evidence that genetic and cultural evolution are inseverable, and that the human mind has tended to evolve so as to bias individuals toward certain patterns of cognition and choice rather than others. With the aid of mathematical models we trace the coevolutionary circuit: The genes prescribe structure in developmental pathways that lay down endocrine and neural systems, imposing regularities in the development of cognition and behavior; these regularities translate upward into holistic patterns of culture, which can be predicted in the form of probability density distributions ; natural selection acts within human history to favor certain epigenetic rules over others; and the selection alters the frequencies of the underlying genes. The effects of genetic and cultural changes reverberate throughout the circuit and are consequently tested with the passage of each life cycle. In addition to modeling gene-culture coevolution, we apply methods from island biogeography and information theory to examine the cultural capacity of the genes, the factors determining the magnitude of cultural diversity, and the possible reasons for the uniqueness of the human achievement. (shrink)

Modern scientific theories of emotional behavior, almost without exception, trace their origin to Charles Darwin, and his publications On the Origin of Species (1859) and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). The most famous evolutionary dilemma Darwin acknowledged as a challenge to his theory of natural selection was the incomplete sub Cambrian fossil record. However, Darwin struggled with two other rarely referenced theoretical and scientific dilemmas that confounded his theories about emotional behavior. These included (1) the (...) origin of social instincts (e.g., altruism, empathy, reciprocity and cooperation) and the reasons for their conservation in evolution and (2) the peripheral control of heart rate vis-a-vis emotional behavior outside of consciousness. Darwin acknowledged that social instincts are critical to the survival of some species, but had difficulty aligning them with his theory of natural selection in humans. Darwin eventually proposed that heart rate and emotions are controlled via one’s intellect and cortical mechanisms, and that instinctive behavior is genetically-programmed and inherited. Despite ongoing efforts, these two theoretical dilemmas are debated to this day. Simple testable hypotheses have yet to emerge for the biological mechanisms underlying instinctive behavior or the way heart rate is controlled in infants. In this paper, we review attempts to resolve ¬these issues over the past 160 years. We posit that research and theories that supported Darwin’s individualistic brain-centric and genetic model have become an “orthodox” Western view of emotional behavior, one that produced the prevailing behavioral construct of attachment as developed by John Bowlby. We trace research and theories that challenged this orthodoxy at various times, and show how these challenges were repeatedly overlooked, rejected, or misinterpreted. We review two new testable theories, emotional connection theory and calming cycle theory, which we argue resolve the two dilemmas We show emerging scientific evidence from physiology and a wide variety of other fields, as well from clinical trials among prematurely born infants, that supports the two theories. Clinical implications of the new theories and possible new ways to assess risk and intervene in emotional, behavioral and developmental disorders are discussed. (shrink)

The paper discusses the scope and influence of eugenics in defining the scientific programme of statistics and the impact of the evolution of biology on social scientists. It argues that eugenics was instrumental in providing a bridge between sciences, and therefore created both the impulse and the institutions necessary for the birth of modern statistics in its applications first to biology and then to the social sciences. Looking at the question from the point of view of the history of statistics (...) and the social sciences, and mostly concentrating on evidence from the British debates, the paper discusses how these disciplines became emancipated from eugenics precisely because of the inspiration of biology. It also relates how social scientists were fascinated and perplexed by the innovations taking place in statistical theory and practice. (shrink)

The paper discusses the scope and influence of eugenics in defining the scientific programme of statistics and the impact of the evolution of biology on social scientists. It argues that eugenics was instrumental in providing a bridge between sciences, and therefore created both the impulse and the institutions necessary for the birth of modern statistics in its applications first to biology and then to the social sciences. Looking at the question from the point of view of the history of statistics (...) and the social sciences, and mostly concentrating on evidence from the British debates, the paper discusses how these disciplines became emancipated from eugenics precisely because of the inspiration of biology. It also relates how social scientists were fascinated and perplexed by the innovations taking place in statistical theory and practice. (shrink)

This article analyzes the evolution of the land ethic re-presented by J. Baird Callicott over the last two decades under pressure from the charge of misanthropy and ecofascism. It also traces the development of Callicott?s own ethical system, and examines its most current phase both in itself and in relation to his other theoretical commitments, including his particular version of moral monism, and his communitarian critique of egalitarianism. It concludes that Callicott?s communitarianism is by itself insufficient to fund an adequate (...) environmental ethic, and that for the sake of self-consistency he should either discard his moral monism or else further revise his ethical system. (shrink)

Male-male competition is involved in inter- and intrasexual selection, with both endocrine and psychological factors presumably contributing to reproductive success in human males. We examined relationships among men’s naturally occurring testosterone, their self-perceived mate value, self-esteem, sociosexuality, and expected likelihood of approaching attractive women versus situations leading to child involvement. We then monitored changes in these measures in male rowers from Cambridge, UK, following a manipulated “win” or “loss” as a result of an indoor rowing contest. Baseline results revealed that (...) men with heightened testosterone and SPMV values typically had greater inclinations toward engaging in casual sexual relationships and a higher likelihood of approaching attractive women in a hypothetical social situation. As anticipated, both testosterone and SPMV increased following a manipulated “victory” and were associated with heightened sociosexuality, and increased expectations toward approaching attractive women versus individuals who would involve them in interacting with children after the race. SPMV and self-esteem appeared to mediate some of the effects of testosterone on post-race values. These findings are considered in the broader context of individual trade-offs between mating and parental effort and a model of the concurrent and dynamic androgenic and psychological influences contributing to male reproductive effort and success. (shrink)

The article analyzes and criticizes the political use of hive psychology proposed by Jonathan Haidt who appeals to the “nudges” of libertarian paternalism. The article introduces paternalism and discusses the nudge theory, and on the basis of that discussion examines the political use of hive psychology and holds that (i) nudges do not respect people as autonomous beings, and that (ii) hive politics are dangerous. Instead, a cosmopolitan perspective would be well worth pursuing.

Although all natural languages are spoken, there is no accepted account of the evolution of a skill prerequisite to language—control of the movements of speech. If selection applied at sexual maturity, individuals achieving some command of articulate vocal behavior in previous stages would have enjoyed unusual advantages in adulthood. I offer a parental selection hypothesis, according to which hominin parents apportioned care, in part, on the basis of their infants’ vocal behavior. Specifically, it is suggested that persistent or noxious crying (...) reduced care to individuals who would have had difficulty learning complex behaviors, and that cooing and babbling increased social interaction and care as well as control over complex oralmotor activity of the sort required by spoken language. Several different tests of the hypothesis are suggested. (shrink)

I admire Wilson & Sober's (W & S's) aim, to alert social scientists that group selection has risen from the ashqs, and to explicate its relevance to the behavioral sciences. Group selection has beenwidely misunderstood; furthermore, both authors have been instrumental in illuminating conceptual problems surrounding higher-level selection. Still, I find that this target article muddies the waters, primarily through its shifting and confused definition of a "vehicle" of selection. The fundamental problem is an ambiguity in the definition of "adaptation." (...) On the one hand, any evolutionary change that results from a selection process could be called an adaptation, by definition; I call this the "weak" view of adaptation. A "strong" view of adaptation, on the other hand, includes some notion of design - the evolution of a specific complex trait understood, in an engineering sense, to provide a mechanism favoring its owner's success in contributing to the evolutionary lineage. (shrink)

This commentary confronts one of the central tenets advanced in Wilkins & Wakefield's target article: By adopting a very narrow perspective on language, the authors have effectively limited discussion of earlier linguistic capabilities thought to be at least facilitative of, if not prerequisite to language defined as a An alternative conceptualization for describing semiogenesis is offered.

Adaptation by means of natural selection depends on the ability of populations to maintain variation in heritable traits. According to the Modern Synthesis this variation is sustained by mutations and genetic drift. Epigenetics, evodevo, niche construction and cultural factors have more recently been shown to contribute to heritable variation, however, leading an increasing number of biologists to call for an extended view of speciation and evolution. An additional common feature across the animal kingdom is learning, defined as the ability to (...) change behavior according to novel experiences or skills. Learning constitutes an additional source for phenotypic variation, and change in behavior may induce long lasting shifts in fitness, and hence favor evolutionary novelties. Based on published studies, I demonstrate how learning about food, mate choice and habitats has contributed substantially to speciation in the canonical story of Darwin’s finches on the Galapagos Islands. Learning cannot be reduced to genetics, because it demands decisions, which requires a subject. Evolutionary novelties may hence emerge both from shifts in allelic frequencies and from shifts in learned, subject driven behavior. The existence of two principally different sources of variation also prevents the Modern Synthesis from self-referring explanations. (shrink)

Bipedalism is one of the criteria that paleoanthropologists use in order to interpret the fossil record and to determine if a specimen belongs to the human lineage. In the context of such interpretations, bipedalism is considered to be a unique characteristic of this lineage that also marks its origin. This conception has largely remained unchallenged over the last decades, in spite of fossil discoveries that led to the emergence of bipedalism in the human lineage being shifted back by several millions (...) of years. In this paper, I analyze the uses of this criterion in paleoanthropology and demonstrate that interpretative biases are at play in interpretations of hominin remains. By discussing Darwin’s hypotheses about the evolution of bipedalism, I identify major theoretical issues that need to be addressed in the current debates on hominin evolution. First, the assumption that “man alone has become a biped” is analyzed in the light of recent empirical data. Three major issues are discussed: the definition of “man”, i.e. “human”, the uniqueness of human bipedalism, and the equivocal meaning of being a “biped”. Then, I highlight some of Darwin’s remarks that may be helpful for current debates in paleoanthropology, regarding natural selection in locomotor evolution, as well as taxonomic and phylogenetic significance of functional features. Finally, I analyze two examples of how fossil discoverers referred to Darwin in the recent years and discuss his role as an intellectual support. (shrink)

Tension and suspense are powerful emotional experiences that occur in a wide variety of contexts (e.g., in music, film, literature, and everyday life). The omnipresence of tension experiences suggests that they build on very basic cognitive and affective mechanisms. However, the psychological underpinnings of tension experiences remain largely unexplained, and tension and suspense are rarely discussed from a general, domain-independent perspective. In this paper, we argue that tension experiences in different contexts (e.g., musical tension or suspense in a movie) build (...) on the same underlying psychological processes. We discuss key components of tension experiences and propose a domain-independent model of tension and suspense. According to this model, tension experiences originate from states of conflict, instability, dissonance, or uncertainty that trigger predictive processes directed at future events of emotional significance. We also discuss possible neural mechanisms underlying experiences of tension. The model provides a theoretical framework that can inform future empirical research on tension phenomena. (shrink)

The question of cognitive endowment in animals has been fiercely debated in the scientific community during the last couple of decades (for example, in cognitive ethology and behaviourism), and indeed, all throughout the long history of natural philosophy (from Plato and Aristotle, via Descartes, to Darwin). The scientific quest for an empirical, evolutionary account of the development and emergence of cognition has met with many philosophical objections, blind alleys and epistemological quandaries. I will argue that we are dealing with conflicting (...) philosophical world views as well as conflicting empirical paradigms of research. After looking at some examples from the relevant literature of animal studies to elucidate the nature of the conflicts that arise, I propose, in strict Darwinian orthodoxy, that cognitive endowments in nature are subject to the sort of continuum and gradation that natural selection of fit variant forms tends to generate. Somewhere between the myth of “free” humans and the myth of “behaviourally conditioned” animals lies the reality of animal behaviour and cognition. In the end, I hope to have softened up some of those deep-seated philosophical problems (and many quasi-problems) that puzzle and dazzle laymen, scientists and philosophers alike in their quest for knowledge about the natural world. (shrink)

In the literature investigating the long history of appeals to ‘nature’, in its multiple meanings, for rules of conduct or justification of social order, little attention has been paid to a long-standing tradition in which medical and physiological arguments merged into moral and social ones. A host of medical authors, biologists, social writers and philosophers assumed that nature spoke its moral language not only in its general economy, but also within and through the body. This is why, for instance, many (...) critics of Malthus argued that physiological self-regulating mechanisms ensured a spontaneous adaptation of fertility to the circumstances. Beliefs in a beneficent economy of nature persisted when Providence was replaced by evolution. To some, they provided reasons for hope even when others worried about ‘unfit’ members of society increasing at a quicker rate than ‘fit’ ones. The nerves gradually replaced food and blood as moral mediators between society and the body. When faith in bio-social progress was shaken by degeneration theories, and fin de siècle anxiety concerned underpopulation rather than overpopulation, not an insignificant proportion of those who emphasised the bad effects of modern civilisation resorted to ideas and arguments based on a view of the body in which physiology and morality worked together. A common language and common assumptions linked the Kulturpessimisten to their optimistic eighteenth-century colleagues, in spite of their different forecasts. The present paper traces continuities and discontinuities in the operation of a persistent set of interrelated ideas and assumptions on the coalescence of the physiological and the moral across disciplines and contexts. (shrink)