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Natural Selection Theory In Non Majors Biology
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Book Synopsis Natural Selection Theory in Non-majors' Biology by : Dianne Leigh Anderson
Download or read book Natural Selection Theory in Non-majors' Biology written by Dianne Leigh Anderson and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evolution by natural selection is the dominant and unifying theme in biology, yet many college students hold alternative conceptions about the topic even after completing general biology. To develop effective instructional strategies and track conceptual understanding, it is useful to have a detailed assessment tool easily used with large classes. This study presents the Conceptual Inventory of Natural Selection (CINS), a distractor-driven twenty item multiple-choice test that assesses understanding of ten concepts related to natural selection: biotic potential, stable populations, limited natural resources, limited survival, variation within a population, variation inherited, differential survival, change in populations, origin of variation, and origin of species. Development, refinement, and field-testing of individual CINS items are presented, and validity, readability, reliability and factor analysis of the CINS are described. There was significant correlation between student performance on the posttest CINS and end-of-semester interviews suggesting that the CINS is a useful classroom tool. The CINS was used as both a pretest and posttest to determine relative difficulty of the concepts among college students. The three most challenging concepts were random origin of variation, how populations change over time due to changing proportions of alleles, and how new species originate. Many students chose distractors including "need" as a driving force. Results support the use of non-traditional methods, as only students in such classes demonstrated any improvement on the CINS posttest. Pre and posttesting with the CINS was also used to assess relative effectiveness of using two types of supplemental reading materials (selections from narrative, non-textbook sources or from other general biology textbooks) in a general biology course. These results suggest that specific content of readings was more important than style of the readings. Implications for teaching both students and pre-service teachers are described
Book Synopsis Natural Selection and Tropical Nature by : Alfred Russel Wallace
Download or read book Natural Selection and Tropical Nature written by Alfred Russel Wallace and published by . This book was released on 1891 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Concepts, Theories, and Rationality in the Biological Sciences by : Gereon Wolters
Download or read book Concepts, Theories, and Rationality in the Biological Sciences written by Gereon Wolters and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2022-05-31 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading biologists and philosophers of biology discuss the basic theories and concepts of biology and their connections with ethics, economics, and psychology, providing a remarkably unified report on the "state of the art" in the philosophy of biology.
Book Synopsis Natural Selection Theory by : Carl Jay Bajema
Download or read book Natural Selection Theory written by Carl Jay Bajema and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Creative Evolution by : Henri Bergson
Download or read book Creative Evolution written by Henri Bergson and published by . This book was released on 1911 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection by : Peter Godfrey-Smith
Download or read book Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection written by Peter Godfrey-Smith and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2009-03-26 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1859 Darwin described a deceptively simple mechanism that he called "natural selection," a combination of variation, inheritance, and reproductive success. He argued that this mechanism was the key to explaining the most puzzling features of the natural world, and science and philosophy were changed forever as a result. The exact nature of the Darwinian process has been controversial ever since, however. Godfrey-Smith draws on new developments in biology, philosophy of science, and other fields to give a new analysis and extension of Darwin's idea. The central concept used is that of a "Darwinian population," a collection of things with the capacity to undergo change by natural selection. From this starting point, new analyses of the role of genes in evolution, the application of Darwinian ideas to cultural change, and "evolutionary transitions" that produce complex organisms and societies are developed. Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection will be essential reading for anyone interested in evolutionary theory
Book Synopsis Natural Selection by : Richard G. Delisle
Download or read book Natural Selection written by Richard G. Delisle and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-02-27 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contests the general view that natural selection constitutes the explanatory core of evolutionary biology. It invites the reader to consider an alternative view which favors a more complete and multidimensional interpretation. It is common to present the 1930-1960 period as characterized by the rise of the Modern Synthesis, an event structured around two main explanatory commitments: (1) Gradual evolution is explained by small genetic changes (variations) oriented by natural selection, a process leading to adaptation; (2) Evolutionary trends and speciational events are macroevolutionary phenomena that can be accounted for solely in terms of the extension of processes and mechanisms occurring at the previous microevolutionary level. On this view, natural selection holds a central explanatory role in evolutionary theory - one that presumably reaches back to Charles Darwin's Origin of Species - a view also accompanied by the belief that the field of evolutionary biology is organized around a profound divide: theories relying on strong selective factors and those appealing only to weak ones. If one reads the new analyses presented in this volume by biologists, historians and philosophers, this divide seems to be collapsing at a rapid pace, opening an era dedicated to the search for a new paradigm for the development of evolutionary biology. Contrary to popular belief, scholars' position on natural selection is not in itself a significant discriminatory factor between most evolutionists. In fact, the intellectual space is quite limited, if not non-existent, between, on the one hand, "Darwinists", who play down the central role of natural selection in evolutionary explanations, and, on the other hand, "non-Darwinists", who use it in a list of other evolutionary mechanisms. The "mechanism-centered" approach to evolutionary biology is too incomplete to fully make sense of its development. In this book the labels created under the traditional historiography - "Darwinian Revolution", "Eclipse of Darwinism", "Modern Synthesis", "Post-Synthetic Developments" - are thus re-evaluated. This book will not only appeal to researchers working in evolutionary biology, but also to historians and philosophers."
Book Synopsis What Darwin Got Wrong by : Jerry Fodor
Download or read book What Darwin Got Wrong written by Jerry Fodor and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2011-02-24 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini, a distinguished philosopher and scientist working in tandem, reveal major flaws at the heart of Darwinian evolutionary theory. They do not deny Darwin's status as an outstanding scientist but question the inferences he drew from his observations. Combining the results of cutting-edge work in experimental biology with crystal-clear philosophical argument they mount a devastating critique of the central tenets of Darwin's account of the origin of species. The logic underlying natural selection is the survival of the fittest under changing environmental pressure. This logic, they argue, is mistaken. They back up the claim with evidence of what actually happens in nature. This is a rare achievement - the short book that is likely to make a great deal of difference to a very large subject. What Darwin Got Wrong will be controversial. The authors' arguments will reverberate through the scientific world. At the very least they will transform the debate about evolution.
Book Synopsis Philosophy of Science, Cognitive Psychology, and Educational Theory and Practice by : Richard A. Duschl
Download or read book Philosophy of Science, Cognitive Psychology, and Educational Theory and Practice written by Richard A. Duschl and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1992-08-17 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume extends existing discussions among philosophers of science, cognitive psychologists, and educational researchers on the the restructuring of scientific knowledge and the domain of science education. This exchange of ideas across disciplinary fields raises fundamental issues and provides frameworks that help to focus educational research programs, curriculum development efforts, and teacher training programs.
Book Synopsis Natural Selection and Social Theory by : Robert Trivers
Download or read book Natural Selection and Social Theory written by Robert Trivers and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2002-09-05 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert Trivers is a pioneering figure in the field of sociobiology. For Natural Selection and Social Theory, he has selected eleven of his most influential papers, including several classic papers from the early 1970s on the evolution of reciprocal altruism, parent-offspring conflicts, and asymmetry in sexual selection, which helped to establish the centrality of sociobiology, as well as some of his later work on deceit in signalling, sex antagonistic genes, and imprinting. Trivers introduces each paper, setting them in their contemporary context, and critically evaluating them in the light of subsequent work and further developments. The result is a unique portrait of the intellectual development of sociobiology, with valuable insights for evolutionary biology, anthropology, and psychology.
Book Synopsis Adaptation and Natural Selection by : George Christopher Williams
Download or read book Adaptation and Natural Selection written by George Christopher Williams and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-30 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biological evolution is a fact—but the many conflicting theories of evolution remain controversial even today. When Adaptation and Natural Selection was first published in 1966, it struck a powerful blow against those who argued for the concept of group selection—the idea that evolution acts to select entire species rather than individuals. Williams’s famous work in favor of simple Darwinism over group selection has become a classic of science literature, valued for its thorough and convincing argument and its relevance to many fields outside of biology. Now with a new foreword by Richard Dawkins, Adaptation and Natural Selection is an essential text for understanding the nature of scientific debate.
Book Synopsis Facts, Conventions, and the Levels of Selection by : Pierrick Bourrat
Download or read book Facts, Conventions, and the Levels of Selection written by Pierrick Bourrat and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-23 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Debates concerning the units and levels of selection have persisted for over fifty years. One major question in this literature is whether units and levels of selection are genuine, in the sense that they are objective features of the world, or merely reflect the interests and goals of an observer. Scientists and philosophers have proposed a range of answers to this question. This Element introduces this literature and proposes a novel contribution. It defends a realist stance and offers a way of delineating genuine levels of selection by invoking the notion of a functional unit.
Book Synopsis Evolutionary Game Theory, Natural Selection, and Darwinian Dynamics by : Thomas L. Vincent
Download or read book Evolutionary Game Theory, Natural Selection, and Darwinian Dynamics written by Thomas L. Vincent and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-05-23 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All of life is a game, and evolution by natural selection is no exception. The evolutionary game theory developed in this 2005 book provides the tools necessary for understanding many of nature's mysteries, including co-evolution, speciation, extinction and the major biological questions regarding fit of form and function, diversity, procession, and the distribution and abundance of life. Mathematics for the evolutionary game are developed based on Darwin's postulates leading to the concept of a fitness generating function (G-function). G-function is a tool that simplifies notation and plays an important role developing Darwinian dynamics that drive natural selection. Natural selection may result in special outcomes such as the evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS). An ESS maximum principle is formulated and its graphical representation as an adaptive landscape illuminates concepts such as adaptation, Fisher's Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection, and the nature of life's evolutionary game.
Book Synopsis The Structure of Biological Theories by : Paul Thompson
Download or read book The Structure of Biological Theories written by Paul Thompson and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1989-03-16 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The central thesis of this book is that the semantic conception is a logical methodologically and heuristically richer and more accurate account of scientific theorizing, and in particular of theorizing in evolutionary biology, than the more widely adhered to syntactic conception. In this book, the author outlines both the conceptions indicating the significant problems with the syntactic conception; explains and criticizes two influential syntactic-conception accounts of the structure of evolutionary theorizing. Thompson also argues that the semantic conception provides a richer and more accurate understanding than the syntactic conception of sociobiological explanation, of the testability of sociobiology, and of the role of culture and cognition in evolutionary explanations of human behavior.
Book Synopsis Origin of Species Revisited by : Donald Forsdyke
Download or read book Origin of Species Revisited written by Donald Forsdyke and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2001 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Major inconsistencies in Darwin's theory of the origin of species by natural selection remained unresolved for over a century until the results of recent research in various genome projects led to the theory's reinterpretation. Reviewing this new information, Donald Forsdyke, a laboratory scientist involved in genome research, wondered whether similar discoveries could have been made a century earlier, by one of Darwin's contemporaries. The Origin of Species Revisited describes his investigation into the history of evolutionary biology and its startling conclusion. The trail led first to Joseph Hooker and Thomas Huxley, who had been both the theory's strongest supporters and its most penetrating critics, and eventually to the Victorian George Romanes and Darwin's young research associate William Bateson. Although these men were well-known, their resolution of the origin of species paradox has either been ignored (Romanes), or ignored and reviled (Bateson). Four years after Darwin's death, Romanes published a theory of the origin of species by means of "physiological selection" that resolved the inconsistencies in Darwin's theory and introduced the idea of a "peculiarity" of the reproductive system that allowed selective fertility between "physiological complements." Forsdyke argues that the chemical basis of the origin of species by physiological selection is actually the species-dependent component of the base composition of DNA, showing that Romanes thus anticipated modern biochemistry. Using this new perspective Forsdyke considers some of the outstanding problems in biology and medicine, including the question of how "self" is distinguished from "not-self" by members of different species. Finally he examines the political and ideological forces that led to Romanes' contribution to evolutionary biology remaining unappreciated until now.
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 1460 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 Theory of Natural Selection and Population Growth by : Lev R. Ginzburg
Download or read book Theory of Natural Selection and Population Growth written by Lev R. Ginzburg and published by Benjamin-Cummings Publishing Company. This book was released on 1983 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
