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Darwin machines and the nature of knowledge

Cambridge: Harvard University Press (1994)

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  1. Towards a unified science of cultural evolution.Alex Mesoudi, Andrew Whiten & Kevin N. Laland - 2006 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29 (4):329-347.
    We suggest that human culture exhibits key Darwinian evolutionary properties, and argue that the structure of a science of cultural evolution should share fundamental features with the structure of the science of biological evolution. This latter claim is tested by outlining the methods and approaches employed by the principal subdisciplines of evolutionary biology and assessing whether there is an existing or potential corresponding approach to the study of cultural evolution. Existing approaches within anthropology and archaeology demonstrate a good match with (...)
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  • More on how and why: cause and effect in biology revisited.Kevin N. Laland, John Odling-Smee, William Hoppitt & Tobias Uller - 2012 - Biology and Philosophy 28 (5):719-745.
    In 1961, Ernst Mayr published a highly influential article on the nature of causation in biology, in which he distinguished between proximate and ultimate causes. Mayr argued that proximate causes (e.g. physiological factors) and ultimate causes (e.g. natural selection) addressed distinct ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions and were not competing alternatives. That distinction retains explanatory value today. However, the adoption of Mayr’s heuristic led to the widespread belief that ontogenetic processes are irrelevant to evolutionary questions, a belief that has (1) hindered (...)
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  • Agential Teleosemantics.Tiago Rama - 2022 - Dissertation, Autonomous University of Barcelona
    The field of the philosophy of biology is flourishing in its aim to evaluate and rethink the view inherited from the previous century ---the Modern Synthesis. Different research areas and theories have come to the fore in the last decades in order to account for different biological phenomena that, in the first instance, fall beyond the explanatory scope of the Modern Synthesis. This thesis is anchored and motivated by this revolt in the philosophy of biology. -/- The central target in (...)
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  • Cultural Niche Construction: An Introduction.Kevin N. Laland & Michael J. O’Brien - 2011 - Biological Theory 6 (3):191-202.
    Niche construction is the process whereby organisms, through their activities and choices, modify their own and each other’s niches. By transforming natural-selection pressures, niche construction generates feedback in evolution at various different levels. Niche-constructing species play important ecological roles by creating habitats and resources used by other species and thereby affecting the flow of energy and matter through ecosystems—a process often referred to as “ecosystem engineering.” An important emphasis of niche construction theory (NCT) is that acquired characters play an evolutionary (...)
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  • A framework for the unification of the behavioral sciences.Herbert Gintis - 2007 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 30 (1):1-16.
    The various behavioral disciplines model human behavior in distinct and incompatible ways. Yet, recent theoretical and empirical developments have created the conditions for rendering coherent the areas of overlap of the various behavioral disciplines. The analytical tools deployed in this task incorporate core principles from several behavioral disciplines. The proposed framework recognizes evolutionary theory, covering both genetic and cultural evolution, as the integrating principle of behavioral science. Moreover, if decision theory and game theory are broadened to encompass other-regarding preferences, they (...)
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  • Evolution, Choice, and Scaffolding: Semiosis is Changing Its Own Building.Kalevi Kull - 2015 - Biosemiotics 8 (2):223-234.
    We develop here a semiotic model of evolution. We point out the role of confusion and choice as a condition for semiosis, which is a precondition for semiotic learning and semiotic adaptation. Semiosis itself as interpretation and decision-making between options requires phenomenal present. The body structure of the organism is largely a product of former semiosis. The organism’s body together with the structure of the ecosystem serves also as a scaffolding for the sign processes that carry on the ontogenetic cycle (...)
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  • Acquiring knowledge on species-specific biorealities: The applied evolutionary epistemological approach.Nathalie Gontier & Michael Bradie - 2016 - In Richard Joyce (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Evolution and Philosophy. New York: Routledge.
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  • Searching for Darwinism in Generalized Darwinism.Thomas A. C. Reydon & Markus Scholz - 2015 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66 (3):561-589.
    While evolutionary thinking is increasingly becoming popular in fields of investigation outside the biological sciences, it remains unclear how helpful it is there and whether it actually yields good explanations of the phenomena under study. Here we examine the ontology of a recent approach to applying evolutionary thinking outside biology, the generalized Darwinism approach proposed by Geoffrey Hodgson and Thorbjørn Knudsen. We examine the ontology of populations in biology and in GD, and argue that biological evolutionary theory sets ontological criteria (...)
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  • Evolutionary epistemology as a scientific method: a new look upon the units and levels of evolution debate.Nathalie Gontier - 2010 - Theory in Biosciences 2 (129):167-182.
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  • The Transition to Experiencing: I. Limited Learning and Limited Experiencing.Simona Ginsburg & Eva Jablonka - 2007 - Biological Theory 2 (3):218-230.
    This is the first of two papers in which we propose an evolutionary route for the transition from sensory processing to unlimited experiencing, or basic consciousness. We argue that although an evolutionary analysis does not provide a formal definition and set of sufficient conditions for consciousness, it can identify crucial factors and suggest what evolutionary changes enabled the transition. We believe that the raw material from which feelings were molded by natural selection was a global sensory state that we call (...)
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  • Applied Evolutionary Epistemology: A new methodology to enhance interdisciplinary research between the human and natural sciences.Nathalie Gontier - 2012 - Kairos 1 (4):7-49.
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  • Universal darwinism and evolutionary social science.Richard R. Nelson - 2007 - Biology and Philosophy 22 (1):73-94.
    Save for Anthropologists, few social scientists have been among the participants in the discussions about the appropriate structure of a ‘Universal Darwinism’. Yet evolutionary theorizing about cultural, social, and economic phenomena has a long tradition, going back well before Darwin. And over the past quarter century significant literatures have grown up concerned with the processes of change operating on science, technology, business organization and practice, and economic change more broadly, that are explicitly evolutionary in theoretical orientation. In each of these (...)
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  • Attachment and time preference.James S. Chisholm - 1999 - Human Nature 10 (1):51-83.
    This paper investigates hypotheses drawn from two sources: (1) Belsky, Steinberg, and Draper’s (1991) attachment theory model of the development of reproductive strategies, and (2) recent life history models and comparative data suggesting that environmental risk and uncertainty may be potent determinants of the optimal tradeoff between current and future reproduction. A retrospective, self-report study of 136 American university women aged 19–25 showed that current recollections of early stress (environmental risk and uncertainty) were related to individual differences in adult time (...)
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  • Interdisciplinary modeling: a case study of evolutionary economics.Collin Rice & Joshua Smart - 2011 - Biology and Philosophy 26 (5):655-675.
    Biologists and economists use models to study complex systems. This similarity between these disciplines has led to an interesting development: the borrowing of various components of model-based theorizing between the two domains. A major recent example of this strategy is economists’ utilization of the resources of evolutionary biology in order to construct models of economic systems. This general strategy has come to be called evolutionary economics and has been a source of much debate among economists. Although philosophers have developed literatures (...)
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  • Foresight in cultural evolution.Alex Mesoudi - 2008 - Biology and Philosophy 23 (2):243-255.
    Critics of Darwinian cultural evolution frequently assert that whereas biological evolution is blind and undirected, cultural change is directed or guided by people who possess foresight, thereby invalidating any Darwinian analysis of culture. Here I show this argument to be erroneous and unsupported in several respects. First, critics commonly conflate human foresight with supernatural clairvoyance, resulting in the premature rejection of Darwinian cultural evolution on false logical grounds. Second, the presence of foresight is perfectly consistent with Darwinian evolution, and is (...)
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  • Selection without replicators: the origin of genes, and the replicator/interactor distinction in etiobiology.John S. Wilkins, Ian Musgrave & Clem Stanyon - 2012 - Biology and Philosophy 27 (2):215-239.
    Genes are thought to have evolved from long-lived and multiply-interactive molecules in the early stages of the origins of life. However, at that stage there were no replicators, and the distinction between interactors and replicators did not yet apply. Nevertheless, the process of evolution that proceeded from initial autocatalytic hypercycles to full organisms was a Darwinian process of selection of favourable variants. We distinguish therefore between Neo-Darwinian evolution and the related Weismannian and Central Dogma divisions, on the one hand, and (...)
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  • Sustainable Stakeholder Capitalism: A Moral Vision of Responsible Global Financial Risk Management.Joseph A. Petrick - 2011 - Journal of Business Ethics 99 (S1):93-109.
    The author identifies the major micro-, meso-, and macro-level financial risk shifting factors that contributed to the Great Global Recession and how the absence of a compelling moral vision of responsible financial risk management perpetuated the economic crisis and undermined the recovery by blind reliance upon insufficiently accountable bailouts. The author offers a new theoretical model of Sustainable Stakeholder Capitalism by exercising moral imagination which inclusively and moderately balances four multi-level factors: types of capitalism, moral theories, human nature drives, and (...)
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  • Formalizing Darwinism, Naturalizing Mathematics.Fabio Sterpetti - 2015 - Paradigmi. Rivista di Critica Filosofica 33 (2):133-160.
    In the last decades two different and apparently unrelated lines of research have increasingly connected mathematics and evolutionism. Indeed, on the one hand different attempts to formalize darwinism have been made, while, on the other hand, different attempts to naturalize logic and mathematics have been put forward. Those researches may appear either to be completely distinct or at least in some way convergent. They may in fact both be seen as supporting a naturalistic stance. Evolutionism is indeed crucial for a (...)
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  • The ghosts in the meme machine.Gustav Jahoda - 2002 - History of the Human Sciences 15 (2):55-68.
    The notion of `memes' as replicators similar to genes, but concerned with cultural units, was put forward by Dawkins (1976). Blackmore (1999) used this notion to elaborate an ambitious theory designed to account for numerous aspects of human evolution and psychology. Her theory is based on the human capacity for imitation, and although the operation of the `memes' is said to be purely mechanical, the figurative language used implies that their `actions' are purposive. This article will show that imitation had (...)
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  • Renewable resources and the idea of nature – what has biotechnology got to do with it?Nicole C. Karafyllis - 2003 - Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 16 (1):3-28.
    The notion that the idea of nature isnot quite the unbiased rule to designsustainable futures is obvious. But,nevertheless, questions about nature, how itfunctions and what it might aim at, is leadingthe controversial debates about bothsustainability and biotechnology. These tworesearch areas hardly have the same theorybackground. Whereas in the first concept, theidea of eternal cyclical processes is basic,the latter focuses on optimization. However,both concepts can work together, but only undera narrow range of public acceptance in Europe.The plausibility of arguments for usingbiotechnology (...)
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  • Mathematical Knowledge, the Analytic Method, and Naturalism.Fabio Sterpetti - 2018 - In Sorin Bangu (ed.), Naturalizing Logico-Mathematical Knowledge: Approaches From Psychology and Cognitive Science. New York: Routledge. pp. 268-293.
    This chapter tries to answer the following question: How should we conceive of the method of mathematics, if we take a naturalist stance? The problem arises since mathematical knowledge is regarded as the paradigm of certain knowledge, because mathematics is based on the axiomatic method. Moreover, natural science is deeply mathematized, and science is crucial for any naturalist perspective. But mathematics seems to provide a counterexample both to methodological and ontological naturalism. To face this problem, some authors tried to naturalize (...)
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  • Memetics does provide a useful way of understanding cultural evolution.Susan Blackmore - 2009 - In Francisco José Ayala & Robert Arp (eds.), Contemporary debates in philosophy of biology. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 255--272.
    This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Origins of the Meme Meme Do Memes Exist? Trouble with Analogies and Units What is a Meme? A New Replicator or Culture on a Leash? Do Memes have Memotypes? Old Genes, New Memes Religions, Cults, and Viral Information Human Evolution Consciousness, Creativity, and the Nature of Self Conclusion Postscript: Counterpoint References.
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  • Evolutionary change and epistemology.Trevor Hussey - 1999 - Biology and Philosophy 14 (4):561-584.
    This paper is concerned with the debate in evolutionary epistemology about the nature of the evolutionary process at work in the development of science: whether it is Darwinian or Lamarckian. It is claimed that if we are to make progress through the many arguments that have grown up around this issue, we must return to an examination of the concepts of change and evolution, and examine the basic kinds of mechanism capable of bringing evolution about. This examination results in two (...)
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  • Biological structure and embodied human agency: The problem of instinctivism.Charles R. Varela - 2003 - Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 33 (1):95–122.
    Hebb's conception of instinctive behavior permits the conclusion that it is just not human nature to be instinctive: while the ant brain is built for instinctive behavior, the human brain is built for intelligent behavior. Since drives cannot be instincts, even when a human driver becomes driven, human motives are not instincts either. This understanding allows us to dismiss the determinism of the old instinctivism found in Freud's bio-psychological unconscious, and of the new instinctivism, exemplified by Wilson's sociobiology. The latter (...)
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  • Toward a Theory of Culture as Shared Cognitive Structures.A. Kimball Romney & Carmella C. Moore - 1998 - Ethos: Journal of the Society for Psychological Anthropology 26 (3):314-337.
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  • Muscles, Morals and Mind: Craft Apprenticeship and the Formation of Person.Trevor H. J. Marchand - 2008 - British Journal of Educational Studies 56 (3):245-271.
    The paper considers apprenticeship as a model of education that both teaches technical skills and provides the grounding for personal formation. The research presented is based on long-term anthropological fieldwork with minaret builders in Yemen, mud masons in Mali and fine-woodwork trainees in London. These case studies of on-site learning and practice support an expanded notion of knowledge that exceeds propositional thinking and language and centrally includes the body and skilled performance. Crafts -- like sport, dance and other skilled physical (...)
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  • A Pluralist Account of Knowledge as a Natural Kind.Andreas Stephens - 2016 - Philosophia 44 (3):885-903.
    In an attempt to address some long-standing issues of epistemology, Hilary Kornblith proposes that knowledge is a natural kind the identification of which is the unique responsibility of one particular science: cognitive ethology. As Kornblith sees it, the natural kind thus picked out is knowledge as construed by reliabilism. Yet the claim that cognitive ethology has this special role has not convinced all critics. The present article argues that knowledge plays a causal and explanatory role within many of our more (...)
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  • Why some Apes became Humans, Competition, consciousness, and culture.Pouwel Slurink - 2002 - Dissertation, Radboud University
    Chapter 1 (To know in order to survive) & Chapter 2 (A critique of evolved reason) explain human knowledge and its limits from an evolutionary point of view. Chapter 3 (Captured in our Cockpits) explains the evolution of consciousness, using value driven decision theory. Chapter 4-6 (Chapter 4 Sociobiology, Chapter 5 Culture: the Human Arena), Chapter 6, Genes, Memes, and the Environment) show that to understand culture you have at least to deal with 4 levels: genes, brains, the environment, culture. (...)
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  • Biosemiotics and Applied Evolutionary Epistemology: A Comparison.Nathalie Gontier & M. Facoetti - 2021 - In Nathalie Gontier & M. Facoetti (eds.), In: Pagni E., Theisen Simanke R. (eds) Biosemiotics and Evolution. Interdisciplinary Evolution Research, vol 6. Springer, Cham. Cham: pp. 175-199.
    Both biosemiotics and evolutionary epistemology are concerned with how knowledge evolves. (Applied) Evolutionary Epistemology thereby focuses on identifying the units, levels, and mechanisms or processes that underlie the evolutionary development of knowing and knowledge, while biosemiotics places emphasis on the study of how signs underlie the development of meaning. We compare the two schools of thought and analyze how in delineating their research program, biosemiotics runs into several problems that are overcome by evolutionary epistemologists. For one, by emphasizing signs, biosemiotics (...)
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  • Creative thought as a non-Darwinian evolutionary process.Dr Liane M. Gabora - 2005 - [Journal (Paginated)] (in Press).
    Selection theory requires multiple, distinct, simultaneously-actualized states. In cognition, each thought or cognitive state changes the 'selection pressure' against which the next is evaluated; they are not simultaneously selected amongst. Creative thought is more a matter of honing in a vague idea through redescribing successive iterations of it from different real or imagined perspectives; in other words, actualizing potential through exposure to different contexts. It has been proven that the mathematical description of contextual change of state introduces a non-Kolmogorovian probability (...)
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  • Adaptations for nothing in particular.Simon J. Hampton - 2004 - Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 34 (1):35–53.
    An element of the contemporary dispute amongst evolution minded psychologists and social scientists hinges on the conception of mind as being adapted as opposed to adaptive. This dispute is not trivial. The possibility that human minds are both adapted and adaptive courtesy of selection pressures that were social in nature is of particular interest to a putative evolutionary social psychology. I suggest that the notion of an evolved psychological adaptation in social psychology can be retained only if it is accepted (...)
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  • Imitation Makes Us Human.Susan Blackmore - 2007 - In Charles Pasternak (ed.), What Makes Us Human? ONEWorld Publications. pp. 1-16.
    To be human is to imitate. This is a strong claim, and a contentious one. It implies that the turning point in hominid evolution was when our ancestors first began to copy each other’s sounds and actions, and that this new ability was responsible for transforming an ordinary ape into one with a big brain, language, a curious penchant for music and art, and complex cumulative culture. The argument, briefly, is this. All evolutionary processes depend on information being copied with (...)
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  • False beliefs and naive beliefs: They can be good for you.Roberto Casati & Marco Bertamini - 2009 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32 (6):512-513.
    Naive physics beliefs can be systematically mistaken. They provide a useful test-bed because they are common, and also because their existence must rely on some adaptive advantage, within a given context. In the second part of the commentary we also ask questions about when a whole family of misbeliefs should be considered together as a single phenomenon.
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  • Pointing and the Evolution of Language: An Applied Evolutionary Epistemological Approach.Nathalie Gontier - 2013 - Humana Mente 6 (24).
    Numerous evolutionary linguists have indicated that human pointing behaviour might be associated with the evolution of language. At an ontogenetic level, and in normal individuals, pointing develops spontaneously and the onset of human pointing precedes as well as facilitates phases in speech and language development. Phylogenetically, pointing behaviour might have preceded and facilitated the evolutionary origin of both gestural and vocal language. Contrary to wild non-human primates, captive and human-reared nonhuman primates also demonstrate pointing behaviour. In this article, we analyse (...)
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  • Emergence and human uniqueness: Limiting or delimiting evolutionary explanation?J. Wentzel van Huyssteen - 2006 - Zygon 41 (3):649-664.
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  • Sociobiological and Social Constructionist Accounts of Altruism: a Phenomenological Critique.Edwin E. Gantt & Jeffrey S. Reber - 1999 - Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 30 (2):14-38.
    Much theorizing about altruism has been undertaken within a naturalistic and deterministic sociobiological framework that has sought to explain altruistic action in terms of underlying genetic selfishness. Recently, however, social constructionist thinkers have developed an alternative to such theorizing which suggests that human action arises out of fundamentally open-ended and malleable social relationships. This paper intends to show, however, that a reductive egoism is nonetheless still at work in such accounts, typically taking the form of an underlying concern for matters (...)
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  • Philosophy of Behavioral Biology (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science).Kathryn S. Plaisance & Thomas A. C. Reydon (eds.) - 2012 - Springer.
    This volume provides a broad overview of issues in the philosophy of behavioral biology, covering four main themes: genetic, developmental, evolutionary, and neurobiological explanations of behavior. It is both interdisciplinary and empirically informed in its approach, addressing philosophical issues that arise from recent scientific findings in biological research on human and non-human animal behavior. Accordingly, it includes papers by professional philosophers and philosophers of science, as well as practicing scientists. Much of the work in this volume builds on presentations given (...)
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  • On the adaptive advantage of always being right (even when one is not).Nathalia L. Gjersoe & Bruce M. Hood - 2009 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32 (6):521-522.
    We propose another positive illusion – overconfidence in the generalisability of one's theory – that fits with McKay & Dennett's (M&D's) criteria for adaptive misbeliefs. This illusion is pervasive in adult reasoning but we focus on its prevalence in children's developing theories. It is a strongly held conviction arising from normal functioning of the doxastic system that confers adaptive advantage on the individual.
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  • (1 other version)Why the economic conception of human behaviour might lack a biological basis.Jack Vromen - 2010 - Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 18 (3):297-323.
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  • Darwinism, Memes, and Creativity: A Critique of Darwinian Analogical Reasoning from Nature to Culture.Maria Kronfeldner - 2007 - Dissertation, University of Regensburg
    The dissertation criticizes two analogical applications of Darwinism to the spheres of mind and culture: the Darwinian approach to creativity and memetics. These theories rely on three basic analogies: the ontological analogy states that the basic ontological units of culture are so-called memes, which are replicators like genes; the origination analogy states that novelty in human creativity emerges in a "blind" Darwinian manner; and the explanatory units of selection analogy states that memes are "egoistic" and that they can spread independently (...)
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  • Theory and practice of evolutionary civilization.John A. Broadbent - 2006 - World Futures 62 (8):610 – 632.
    Societal collapse has been a perennial concern of humanity, at least since the early Greeks. Recent publication of Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed and Ervin Laszlo's The Chaos Window: The World at the Crossroads renew this concern. Despite the urgency in these and many similar calls to action, no consensus theory and practice of evolutionary civilization exists. This article calls for collaborative action by the evolutionary systems community and related disciplines to provide insight into what (...)
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  • Teaching & Researching Big History: Exploring a New Scholarly Field.Leonid Grinin, David Baker, Esther Quaedackers & Andrey Korotayev - 2014 - Volgograd: "Uchitel" Publishing House.
    According to the working definition of the International Big History Association, ‘Big History seeks to understand the integrated history of the Cosmos, Earth, Life and Humanity, using the best available empirical evidence and scholarly methods’. In recent years Big History has been developing very fast indeed. Big History courses are taught in the schools and universities of several dozen countries. Hundreds of researchers are involved in studying and teaching Big History. The unique approach of Big History, the interdisciplinary genre of (...)
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  • The Symbiotic Phenomenon in the Evolutive Context.Francisco Carrapiço - 2012 - In Torres Juan, Pombo Olga, Symons John & Rahman Shahid (eds.), Special sciences and the Unity of Science. Springer. pp. 113--119.
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  • Can there ever be a non-specific adaptation? A response to Simon J. Hampton.Thomas E. Dickins - 2005 - Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 35 (3):329–340.
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  • Animal consciousness as a test case of cognitive science.Manuel Bremer - 2005 - In Bewusstsein: Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven.
    In our dealings with animals at least most of us see them as conscious beings. On the other hand the employment of human categories to animals seems to be problematic. Reflecting on the details of human beliefs, for example, casts serious doubt on whether the cat is able to believe anything at all. These theses try to reflect on methodological issues when investigating animal minds. Developing a theory of animal mentality seems to be a test case of the interdisciplinary research (...)
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  • Aesthetics and the Problem of Evil.Charles Nussbaum - 2003 - Metaphilosophy 34 (3):250-283.
    Abstract:Much of Western speculative metaphysics has subscribed to what has been called “explanatory rationalism,” which holds that there is a reason for everything that is and for the way everything is. Theodicies, or metaphysical attempts to solve the problem of evil, have relied on a special application of this principle of explanatory rationalism, namely, the principle of plenitude, which holds that the evil in the world is a necessary ingredient in the world's overall perfection or degree of reality. This essay (...)
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  • Evolutionary theory in the administrative sciences: Introduction.Martin De Jong & Haiko Van der Voort - 2004 - Knowledge, Technology & Policy 16 (4):16-29.
    The term “evolution” is often used in the administrative sciences to designate dynamic processes of change in general. In biology, evolution has a very specific meaning, namely the application of a generative variation-selective retention scheme to change. Applying this to the administrative sciences is more exacting: describing what the variation consists of, how replication of the generated variation occurs and delineating the population from which the selection is made are far from easy. While it is the intention of this special (...)
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  • Evolution and nursing.Trevor Hussey - 2002 - Nursing Philosophy 3 (3):240-251.
    Evolutionary theory has been a very popular topic in recent years and it has been claimed that it can make a major contribution to the advance of several sciences such as medicine, psychology, psychopathology and sociology: even providing them with new paradigms. This paper explores the possibility that nursing could benefit similarly by adopting an evolutionary perspective. After sketching the scientific and philosophical background to the recent developments concerning evolution, and briefly mentioning the chief features of evolutionary theory, the paper (...)
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  • Contemplating an evolutionary approach to entrepreneurship.Colin Jones - 2006 - World Futures 62 (8):576 – 594.
    This artical explores that application of evolutionary approaches to the study of entrepreneurship. It is argued an evolutionary theory of entrepreneurship must give as much concern to the foundations of evolutionary thought as it does the nature of entrepreneurship. The central point being that we must move beyond a debate or preference of the natural selection and adaptationist viewpoints. Only then can the interrelationships between individuals, firms, populations and the environments within which they interact be better appreciated.
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  • Are Plants Rational?Elias L. Khalil - 2010 - Biological Theory 5 (1):53-66.
    Organisms change their shape and behavior during ontogenesis in response to incentives—what biologists call “phenotypic plasticity” or what is called here more specifically “behavioral plasticity.” Such plasticity is usually in the direction of enhancing welfare or fitness. In light of basic concepts in economics, such behavioral plasticity is nothing but rationality. Such rationality is not limited to organisms with neural systems. It also characterizes brainless organisms such as plants, fungi, and unicellular organisms. The gist of the article is the distinction (...)
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