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Evolutionary Catastrophes
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Book Synopsis Evolutionary Catastrophes by : V. Courtillot
Download or read book Evolutionary Catastrophes written by V. Courtillot and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-03-07 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mass extinction and cataclysmic volcanic activity: will fascinate everyone interested in the history of life and death on our planet.
Book Synopsis Catastrophes and Lesser Calamities by : Tony Hallam
Download or read book Catastrophes and Lesser Calamities written by Tony Hallam and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2005-07-14 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a book about the dramatic periods in the Earth's history called mass extinctions - short periods (by geological standards) when life nearly died out on Earth. The most famous is the mass extinction that happened about 65 million years ago, and that caused the death of the dinosaurs. But that was not the worst mass extinction: that honour goes to the extinction at the end of the Permian Period, about 250 million years ago, when over 90% of life is thought to have become extinct. What caused these catastrophes? Was it the effects of a massive meteorite impact? There is evidence for such an impact about 65 million years ago. Or was it a period of massive volcanic activity? There is evidence in the rocks of huge lava flows at periods that match several of the mass extinctions. Was it something to do with climate change and sea level? Or was it a combination of some or all of these? The question has been haunting geologists for a number of years, and it forms one of the most exciting areas of research in geology today. In this book, Tony Hallam, a distinguished geologist and writer, looks at all the different theories and also what the study of mass extinctions might tell us about the future. If climate change is a key factor, we may well, as some scientists have suggested, be in a period of mass extinction of our own making.
Book Synopsis Controversy Catastrophism and Evolution by : Trevor Palmer
Download or read book Controversy Catastrophism and Evolution written by Trevor Palmer and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Controversy, Trevor Palmer fully documents how traditional gradualistic views of biological and geographic evolution are giving way to a catastrophism that credits cataclysmic events, such as meteorite impacts, for the rapid bursts and abrupt transitions observed in the fossil record. According to the catastrophists, new species do not evolve gradually; they proliferate following sudden mass extinctions. Placing this major change of perspective within the context of a range of ancient debates, Palmer discusses such topics as the history of the solar system, present-day extraterrestrial threats to earth, hominid evolution, and the fossil record.
Book Synopsis Evolutionary Geology and the New Catastrophism by : George McCready Price
Download or read book Evolutionary Geology and the New Catastrophism written by George McCready Price and published by . This book was released on 1926 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Evolution written by Michael Ruse and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-28 with total page 1020 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spanning evolutionary science from its inception to its latest findings, from discoveries and data to philosophy and history, this book is the most complete, authoritative, and inviting one-volume introduction to evolutionary biology available. Clear, informative, and comprehensive in scope, Evolution opens with a series of major essays dealing with the history and philosophy of evolutionary biology, with major empirical and theoretical questions in the science, from speciation to adaptation, from paleontology to evolutionary development (evo devo), and concluding with essays on the social and political significance of evolutionary biology today. A second encyclopedic section travels the spectrum of topics in evolution with concise, informative, and accessible entries on individuals from Aristotle and Linneaus to Louis Leakey and Jean Lamarck; from T. H. Huxley and E. O. Wilson to Joseph Felsenstein and Motoo Kimura; and on subjects from altruism and amphibians to evolutionary psychology and Piltdown Man to the Scopes trial and social Darwinism. Readers will find the latest word on the history and philosophy of evolution, the nuances of the science itself, and the intricate interplay among evolutionary study, religion, philosophy, and society. Appearing at the beginning of the Darwin Year of 2009—the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species—this volume is a fitting tribute to the science Darwin set in motion.
Book Synopsis Catastrophes and Lesser Calamities by : Anthony Hallam
Download or read book Catastrophes and Lesser Calamities written by Anthony Hallam and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2005-07-14 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a book about the dramatic periods in the Earth's history called mass extinctions - short periods (by geological standards) when life nearly died out on Earth. The most famous is the mass extinction that happened about 65 million years ago, and that caused the death of the dinosaurs. But that was not the worst mass extinction: that honour goes to the extinction at the end of the Permian Period, about 250 million years ago, when over 90% of life is thought to have becomeextinct.What caused these catastrophes? Was it the effects of a massive meteorite impact? There is evidence for such an impact about 65 million years ago. Or was it a period of massive volcanic activity? There is evidence in the rocks of huge lava flows at periods that match several of the mass extinctions. Was it something to do with climate change and sea level? Or was it a combination of some or all of these?The question has been haunting geologists for a number of years, and it forms one of the most exciting areas of research in geology today. In this book, Tony Hallam, a distinguished geologist and writer, looks at all the different theories and also what the study of mass extinctions might tell us about the future. If climate change is a key factor, we may well, as some scientists have suggested, be in a period of mass extinction of our own making.
Download or read book EVOLUTION written by Leonid E. Grinin and published by ООО "Издательство "Учитель". This book was released on with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every time we work on this Yearbook, we are focused on making at least a small step forward to gradual elaboration of a megaevolutionary paradigm which is designed to create a united scientific field for cross-disciplinary studies. The present volume is the seventh issue of the ‘Evolution’ Yearbook series. Our Yearbooks are designed to present to its readers the widest possible spectrum of subjects and issues: from universal evolutionism to the analysis of particular evolutionary regularities in the development of biological, abiotic, and social systems, culture, cognition, language, etc. The main objective of our Yearbook is the creation of a unified interdisciplinary field of research, within which scientists specializing in different disciplines could work within the framework of unified or similar paradigms, using common terminology and searching for common rules, tendencies and regularities. Global evolution (in connection with the Big History) becomes the main subject of our Yearbook. We strive to arrange each issue in such a way that the line from cosmic evolution to the human future is evident. The title of this issue Evolutionary Aspects: Stars, Primates, and Religion is fully justified. The volume consists of three sections: ‘Megaevolution and Cosmic Evolution’; ‘Biosocial and Social Evolution’; ‘Reviews and Notes’. This Yearbook will be useful both for those who study interdisciplinary macroproblems and for specialists working in focused directions, as well as for those who are interested in evolutionary issues of Cosmology, Biology, History, Anthropology, Economics and other areas of study. More than that, this edition will challenge and excite your vision of your own life and the new discoveries going on around us.
Book Synopsis Artificial Life IX by : Jordan B. Pollack
Download or read book Artificial Life IX written by Jordan B. Pollack and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Proceedings from the ninth International Conference on Artificial Life; papers by scientists of many disciplines focusing on the principles of organization and applications of complex, life-like systems. Artificial Life is an interdisciplinary effort to investigate the fundamental properties of living systems through the simulation and synthesis of life-like processes. The young field brings a powerful set of tools to the study of how high-level behavior can arise in systems governed by simple rules of interaction. Some of the fundamental questions include: What are the principles of evolution, learning, and growth that can be understood well enough to simulate as an information process? Can robots be built faster and more cheaply by mimicking biology than by the product design process used for automobiles and airplanes? How can we unify theories from dynamical systems, game theory, evolution, computing, geophysics, and cognition? The field has contributed fundamentally to our understanding of life itself through computer models, and has led to novel solutions to complex real-world problems across high technology and human society. This elite biennial meeting has grown from a small workshop in Santa Fe to a major international conference. This ninth volume of the proceedings of the international A-life conference reflects the growing quality and impact of this interdisciplinary scientific community.
Book Synopsis Evolutionary Conservation Biology by : Régis Ferrière
Download or read book Evolutionary Conservation Biology written by Régis Ferrière and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-06-10 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As anthropogenic environmental changes spread and intensify across the planet, conservation biologists have to analyze dynamics at large spatial and temporal scales. Ecological and evolutionary processes are then closely intertwined. In particular, evolutionary responses to anthropogenic environmental change can be so fast and pronounced that conservation biology can no longer afford to ignore them. To tackle this challenge, areas of conservation biology that are disparate ought to be integrated into a unified framework. Bringing together conservation genetics, demography, and ecology, this book introduces evolutionary conservation biology as an integrative approach to managing species in conjunction with ecological interactions and evolutionary processes. Which characteristics of species and which features of environmental change foster or hinder evolutionary responses in ecological systems? How do such responses affect population viability, community dynamics, and ecosystem functioning? Under which conditions will evolutionary responses ameliorate, rather than worsen, the impact of environmental change?
Book Synopsis Complex Evolutionary Dynamics in Urban-Regional and Ecologic-Economic Systems by : J. Barkley Rosser
Download or read book Complex Evolutionary Dynamics in Urban-Regional and Ecologic-Economic Systems written by J. Barkley Rosser and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-06-22 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on the middle chapters from the first edition of J. Barkley Rosser's seminal work, From Catastrophe to Chaos, this book presents an unusual perspective on economics and economic analysis. Current economic theory largely depends upon assuming that the world is fundamentally continuous. However, an increasing amount of economic research has been done using approaches that allow for discontinuities such as catastrophe theory, chaos theory, synergetics, and fractal geometry. The spread of such approaches across a variety of disciplines of thought has constituted a virtual intellectual revolution in recent years. This book reviews the applications of these approaches in various subdisciplines of economics and draws upon past economic thinkers to develop an integrated view of economics as a whole from the perspective of inherent discontinuity.
Book Synopsis The Structure of Evolutionary Theory by : Stephen Jay Gould
Download or read book The Structure of Evolutionary Theory written by Stephen Jay Gould and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2002-03-21 with total page 1099 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world's most revered and eloquent interpreter of evolutionary ideas offers here a work of explanatory force unprecedented in our time--a landmark publication, both for its historical sweep and for its scientific vision. With characteristic attention to detail, Stephen Jay Gould first describes the content and discusses the history and origins of the three core commitments of classical Darwinism: that natural selection works on organisms, not genes or species; that it is almost exclusively the mechanism of adaptive evolutionary change; and that these changes are incremental, not drastic. Next, he examines the three critiques that currently challenge this classic Darwinian edifice: that selection operates on multiple levels, from the gene to the group; that evolution proceeds by a variety of mechanisms, not just natural selection; and that causes operating at broader scales, including catastrophes, have figured prominently in the course of evolution. Then, in a stunning tour de force that will likely stimulate discussion and debate for decades, Gould proposes his own system for integrating these classical commitments and contemporary critiques into a new structure of evolutionary thought. In 2001 the Library of Congress named Stephen Jay Gould one of America's eighty-three Living Legends--people who embody the "quintessentially American ideal of individual creativity, conviction, dedication, and exuberance." Each of these qualities finds full expression in this peerless work, the likes of which the scientific world has not seen--and may not see again--for well over a century.
Book Synopsis Habitability and Cosmic Catastrophes by : Arnold Hanslmeier
Download or read book Habitability and Cosmic Catastrophes written by Arnold Hanslmeier and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-11-14 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The search for life in the universe is one of the most challenging topics of science. It is not a modern topic at all, since more than 100 years ago, it was speculated that on the Moon, there are oceans and seas; on Venus, there are swamps and also Mars is inhabitated. However, now we have the scienti?c background and the scienti?c tools to answer this question and it is also certain that the answer would have deep imp- cations for our culture, philosophy, and religions. If we ?nd that life has developed on other planets or satellites of giant planets, then this would be the ?nal breakdown of our central position in the universe. But is life a widespread phenomenon? How vulnerable is it to changing conditions and even catastrophic events? These topics will be discussed in this book. If life is in the extreme case a unique phenomenon found only on planet Earth, which seems to be highly unrealistic, then also it is important to discuss how it is adaptable to changing external conditions. Can we survive a cosmic catastrophe? How do these catastrophes change habitability? Which forms of life are more v- nerable? It was mentioned that now science has made great progress to answer such qu- tions. Let us give some examples. In modern biology, in connection with organic chemistry, the origin of life is studied.
Book Synopsis Agile Actors on Complex Terrains by : Graham Room
Download or read book Agile Actors on Complex Terrains written by Graham Room and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-06-17 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book assesses the value and relevance of the literature on complex systems to policy-making, contributing to both social theory and policy analysis. For this purpose it develops two key ideas: agile action and transformative realism. The book takes some major themes from complexity science, presents them in a clear and accessible manner and applies them to core problems in sociological theory and policy analysis. Combining complexity science with perspectives from institutionalism and political economy, this book is the first to integrate these fields conceptually, methodologically and in terms of the implications for policy analysis and practice. Room shows how the models and methods of social and complexity science can be jointly deployed and applied to empirical areas of public policy. He demonstrates how complexity science can provide insight into the nonlinear dynamics of the social world, but why these need to be understood by reference to the unequal distribution of power and advantage. Among the sociological debates with which the book engages are those concerned with causation and explanation, rational action and positional competition, and the place of evolutionary concepts in accounts of social change. Among the policy debates are those concerned with evidence and policy, the dynamics of inequality, and libertarian paternalism. The book will appeal to final year undergraduates and postgraduate students in social sciences; scholars in social and policy studies broadly defined; policy-makers who want to go beyond conventional discussions of evidence-based policy-making and cross-national lesson-drawing, and consider how to approach complex and turbulent policy terrains; and a wider range of scholars in other disciplines where complexity science is already well developed.
Book Synopsis From Evolutionary Biology to Economics and Back by : Jean-Baptiste André
Download or read book From Evolutionary Biology to Economics and Back written by Jean-Baptiste André and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-01-12 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a comprehensive exploration of the major key concepts common to economics and evolutionary biology. Written by a group of philosophers of science, biologists and economists, it proposes analyses of the meaning of twenty-five concepts from the viewpoint respectively of economics and of evolutionary biology –each followed by a short synthesis emphasizing major discrepancies and commonalities. This analysis is surrounded by chapters exploring the nature of the analogy that connects evolution and economics, and chapters that summarize the major teachings of the analyses of the keywords. Most scholars in biology and in economics know that their science has something in common with the other one, for instance the notions of competition and resources. Textbooks regularly acknowledge that the two fields share some history – Darwin borrowing from Malthus the insistence on scarcity of resources, and then behavioral ecologists adapting and transforming game theory into evolutionary game theory in the 1980s, while Friedman famously alluded to a Darwinian process yielding the extant firms. However, the real extent of the similarities, the reasons why they are so close, and the limits and even the nature of the analogy connecting economics and biological evolution, remain inexplicit. This book proposes basis analyses that can sustain such explication. It is intended for researchers, grad students and master students in evolutionary and in economics, as well as in philosophy of science.
Book Synopsis Catastrophism by : Richard J. Huggett
Download or read book Catastrophism written by Richard J. Huggett and published by Verso. This book was released on 1997 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most dramatic intellectual events of the last decade has been the stunning re-emergence of the catastrophist paradigm in the biological and earth sciences From killer asteroids to emergent viruses, it has become evident that the history of life on earth has been shaped—far more than previous orthodoxies would allow ... by extreme events and non-linear processes. The old "uniformitarian" dogma of steady-rate evolution has been decisively challenged by the research of contemporary neo-catastrophists like Stephen Jay Gould, David Raup, Stuart Ross Taylor, Ursula Marvin and Kenneth Hsu. Whether debating the origin of the moon or the current human impact on the biosphere, they urge us to recognize the radically event- or chance-driven structure of natural history. Surveying these various theories of uniformitarian and neo-catastrophist thought in a clear and accessible fashion, and seeking a path towards a new and workable synthesis, Richard Hugget provides a superb introduction to the ideas which have defined the way we look at the world.
Download or read book Systems Science written by Yi Lin and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2012-11-26 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By making use of the principles of systems science, the scientific community can explain many complicated matters of the world and shed new light on unsettled problems. Each real science has its own particular methodology for not only qualitative but also quantitative analyses, so it is important to understand the organic whole of systems research
Book Synopsis The Earth as a Cradle for Life by : Frank D Stacey
Download or read book The Earth as a Cradle for Life written by Frank D Stacey and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2013-06-21 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Earth as a Cradle for Life aims to fill the gap between readers who have a strong and informed scientific interest in the environment (but no access to the journal literature), and their desire for a basic understanding of the environment. It provides a comprehensive account, and requires no advanced mathematical skills. It will also satisfy a need for a textbook on fundamental science for students in tertiary environmental science courses that may otherwise neglect the underlying basis of their subject. The Earth as a Cradle takes a step back from common perceptions of the environment, and presents a new fundamental perspective. It draws attention to observations that have been neglected or discounted for reasons the authors found invalid, and which allow a more coherent account of the environment than is possible without them. Misunderstandings about the environment are common, even in the scientific community. They arise in part from the multi-disciplinary nature of the subject and the difficulty in keeping all relevant observations in mind and assessing their validity. These misunderstandings are often consequences of the band-wagon effect: when an idea is reinforced by repeated quotation and becomes difficult to contradict even when it is in obvious conflict with observations. This is especially so in a subject with strong media interest and conflicting commercial interests — and Cradle sweeps these considerations aside and presents a new environmental scenario. This book draws on several decades of research by the authors on fundamental Earth science, and presents probing insights on environmental questions that are not widely recognized — even in the professional community. For this reason it will become a landmark in the environmental science and Earth science literature. Contents:Physical and Astronomical Foundations:“The Age of the Earth as an Abode Fitted for Life” (Lord Kelvin, 1899)Rotation, Tides and the MoonThe Variable Sun and Other Astronomical EffectsThe Magnetic FieldThe Evolving Earth:Internal Heat and the Evolution of the EarthThe OceansPlanetary Atmospheres and the Appearance of Free OxygenThermal Balance, the Greenhouse Effect and Sea LevelEnvironmental Crises and Mass Extinctions of SpeciesStability of the EnvironmentInorganic Mineral Deposits as Products of an Evolving EnvironmentFossil Fuels, Buried Carbon and Photosynthetic OxygenHuman Influences:Effects of Fossil Fuel UseA Comparison of Human Energy Use with Natural DissipationsThe Cradle is RockingA Summary of Salient Conclusions Readership: General public, students, professionals, and researchers in the fields of environmental science, geology, geophysics, climatology, meteorology, oceanography, and environmental education. Keywords:Alternative Energy;Atmosphere;Carbon Dioxide;Earth Evolution;Fossil Fuels;Global Warming;Greenhouse Effect;Ice Ages;Impacts;Moon;Oceans;Oxygen;Solar Radiation;VolcanismKey Features:This is one of the very few books that present the fundamental aspects of the environment, the underlying reasons why it is the way it is and the processes that led to it. Available rivals generally present conventional and, in some cases, outdated ideas that lack the insight of this bookAttention is focused on some of the observations that throw new light on the environment, such as the temperature dependence of CO2 solubility in sea water and the rate at which natural processes remove it from the atmosphere, the inadequacy of photosynthesis to explain atmospheric oxygen, the hydrothermal origin of ocean salt, the capacity of the oceans as stores of heat, and fundamental limitations on possible ‘alternative’ energy sourcesThis book draws attention to two aspects of the environmental inertia of the oceans that have not previously been distinguished: the thermal effect of greenhouse warming — which has already been initiated and will become fully apparent on a hundred year time scale — and that the natural CO2 balance will be restored only in millions of yearsReviews: "The sense of seeking to convince the reader, however, lends the book a clear, decisive and ultimately highly readable tone. This book straddles the line between a textbook and a general-interest volume quite comfortably, making it suitable for anyone with a basic understanding of science that wants to place modern climate change in the context of the Earth's history." European Geosciences Union “This enjoyable book takes a long-term view of Earth's development as a habitable planet, this is a good initiation to a broad and important topic nevertheless, accessible to readers with a general science education.” chemistryworld Royal Society of Chemistry "This interesting book is a history of Earth's physical and chemical evolution, with implications for life at almost every stage. It is replete with original thinking and probing insight (and occasional important oversights). Throughout, one is not allowed to forget that Earth is a special place in the family of planets we call the Solar System." Henry Pollack Emeritus Professor of Geophysics University of Michigan “By itemizing the most important points at the end, the deliberate simplification serves for emphasis and as a useful starting point for discussion about the very gradual response by the Earth system to the rapid changes made by humans. Their abridged discussion and appraisal of planet Earth and of its resilience reveal some still unanswered questions about our environment. The book targets undergraduate students from all areas of study and anyone interested in the future of the planet.” Environmental Earth Sciences
