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Evolution On Purpose
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Book Synopsis Evolution's Purpose by : Steve McIntosh
Download or read book Evolution's Purpose written by Steve McIntosh and published by SelectBooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2012-10 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Presents the author's view of the scientific story of our evolutionary origins to show how evolution's progressive generation of emergent value reveals a larger purpose within the process. He demonstrates how this purpose can be felt within each of us as the evolutionary impulse to make things better--to grow toward ever-widening realizations of beauty, truth, and goodness"--Provided by publisher
Download or read book Unfit for Purpose written by Adam Hart and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-06-11 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A gripping and sobering reminder of how much we are all governed by our genetic inheritance. So much for free will.' The Mail on Sunday Stress, obesity, poor mental health, drug addiction, bowel diseases, violence and fake news; a stark checklist of modern world problems and every one of them is an echo of our evolutionary past. In Unfit for Purpose, biologist and broadcaster Adam Hart explores the mismatch between our fundamental biology and the modern world we have created. In each chapter Adam reveals the many ways in which biological adaptations that evolved to help us survive and thrive now work against us. For example, in the modern world stress is a killer but how did 'fight or flight' instincts turn from life-savers to life-takers? Obesity is a disease now but is it also just a side-effect of our evolutionary past? Whether it's the derailing of microbes in our gut, the rise of gluten and lactose intolerance, problems of social media or drug addiction, we always seem to have one foot in the modern world and the other firmly in our evolutionary past. Adam explores science, archaeology, medicine, genetics, sociology and more, to show how, in a modern world of our own making, we find ourselves 'unfit for purpose'. But all is not lost! In unpicking the causes of our current woes, he unearths some secrets of evolutionarily informed treatments that will change the way we think about ourselves and our future.
Book Synopsis Chance or Purpose? by : Christoph Schoenborn
Download or read book Chance or Purpose? written by Christoph Schoenborn and published by Ignatius Press. This book was released on 2009-09-03 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cardinal Christoph Schönborn's article on evolution and creation in The New York Times launched an international controversy. Critics charged him with biblical literalism and 'creationism'. In this book, Cardinal Schönborn responds to his critics by tackling the hard questions with a carefully reasoned "theology of creation". Can we still speak intelligently of the world as 'creation' and affirm the existence of the Creator, or is God a 'delusion'? How should an informed believer read Genesis? If God exists, why is there so much injustice and suffering? Are human beings a part of nature or elevated above it? What is man's destiny? Is everything a matter of chance or can we discern purpose in human existence? In his treatment of evolution, Cardinal Schönborn distinguishes the biological theory from 'evolutionism', the ideology that tries to reduce all of reality to mindless, meaningless processes. He argues that science and a rationally grounded faith are not at odds and that what many people represent as 'science' is really a set of philosophical positions that will not withstand critical scrutiny. Chance or Purpose? directly raises the philosophical and theological issues many scientists today overlook or ignore. The result is a vigorous, frank dialogue that acknowledges the respective insights of the philosopher, the theologian and the scientist, but which calls on them to listen and to learn from each another.
Book Synopsis Agents and Goals in Evolution by : Samir Okasha
Download or read book Agents and Goals in Evolution written by Samir Okasha and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-12 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Samir Okasha approaches evolutionary biology from a philosophical perspective in Agents and Goals in Evolution, analysing a mode of thinking in biology called agential thinking. He considers how the paradigm case involves treating an evolved organism as if it were an agent pursuing a goal, such as survival or reproduction, and seeing its phenotypic traits as strategies for achieving that goal or furthering its biological interests. As agential thinking deliberately transposes a set of concepts--goals, interests, strategies--from rational human agents and to the biological world more generally, Okasha's enquiry firstly looks at the justification for this: is it mere anthropomorphism, or does it play a genuine intellectual role in the science? From this central question, key points are considered such as: how do we identify the 'goal' that evolved organisms will behave as if they are trying to achieve? Can agential thinking ever be applied to groups rather than to individual organisms? And how does agential thinking relate to the controversies over fitness-maximization in evolutionary biology? In addition, Okasha examines the relation between the adaptive and the rational by considering whether organisms can validly be treated as agent-like. Should we expect their evolved behaviour to correspond with that of rational agents as codified in the theory of rational choice? If so, does this mean that the fitness-maximizing paradigm of the evolutionary biologist can be mapped directly to the utility-maximizing paradigm of the rational choice theorist? All of these important questions are engagingly raised and discussed at length.
Download or read book Darwin and Design written by Michael Ruse and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In clear, non-technical language, Ruse offers a full and fair assessment of the status of the argument from design in light of both the advances of modern evolutionary biology and the thinking of today’s philosophers—with special attention given to the supporters and critics of “intelligent design.”
Book Synopsis Evolution "On Purpose" by : Peter A. Corning
Download or read book Evolution "On Purpose" written by Peter A. Corning and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2023-08-22 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique exploration of teleonomy—also known as “evolved purposiveness”—as a major influence in evolution by a broad range of specialists in biology and the philosophy of science. The evolved purposiveness of living systems, termed “teleonomy” by chronobiologist Colin Pittendrigh, has been both a major outcome and causal factor in the history of life on Earth. Many theorists have appreciated this over the years, going back to Lamarck and even Darwin in the nineteenth century. In the mid-twentieth century, however, the complex, dynamic process of evolution was simplified into the one-way, bottom-up, single gene-centered paradigm widely known as the modern synthesis. In Evolution “On Purpose,” edited by Peter A. Corning, Stuart A. Kauffman, Denis Noble, James A. Shapiro, Richard I. Vane-Wright, and Addy Pross, some twenty theorists attempt to modify this reductive approach by exploring in depth the different ways in which living systems have themselves shaped the course of evolution. Evolution “On Purpose” puts forward a more inclusive theoretical synthesis that goes far beyond the underlying principles and assumptions of the modern synthesis to accommodate work since the 1950s in molecular genetics, developmental biology, epigenetic inheritance, genomics, multilevel selection, niche construction, physiology, behavior, biosemiotics, chemical reaction theory, and other fields. In the view of the authors, active biological processes are responsible for the direction and the rate of evolution. Essays in this collection grapple with topics from the two-way “read-write” genome to cognition and decision-making in plants to the niche-construction activities of many organisms to the self-making evolution of humankind. As this collection compellingly shows, and as bacterial geneticist James Shapiro emphasizes, “The capacity of living organisms to alter their own heredity is undeniable.”
Book Synopsis The Evolution of Everything by : Matt Ridley
Download or read book The Evolution of Everything written by Matt Ridley and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2015-10-27 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Mr. Ridley’s best and most important work to date…there is something profoundly democratic and egalitarian—even anti-elitist—in this bottom-up approach: Everyone can have a role in bringing about change.” —Wall Street Journal The New York Times bestselling author of The Rational Optimist and Genome returns with a fascinating argument for evolution that definitively dispels a dangerous, widespread myth: that we can command and control our world Human society evolves. Change in technology, language, morality, and society is incremental, inexorable, gradual, and spontaneous. It follows a narrative, going from one stage to the next, and it largely happens by trial and error—a version of natural selection. Much of the human world is the result of human action but not of human design: it emerges from the interactions of millions, not from the plans of a few. Drawing on fascinating evidence from science, economics, history, politics, and philosophy, Matt Ridley demolishes conventional assumptions that the great events and trends of our day are dictated by those on high. On the contrary, our most important achievements develop from the bottom up. The Industrial Revolution, cell phones, the rise of Asia, and the Internet were never planned; they happened. Languages emerged and evolved by a form of natural selection, as did common law. Torture, racism, slavery, and pedophilia—all once widely regarded as acceptable—are now seen as immoral despite the decline of religion in recent decades. In this wide-ranging, erudite book, Ridley brilliantly makes the case for evolution, rather than design, as the force that has shaped much of our culture, our technology, our minds, and that even now is shaping our future.
Book Synopsis Why Evolution is True by : Jerry A. Coyne
Download or read book Why Evolution is True written by Jerry A. Coyne and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-01-14 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For all the discussion in the media about creationism and 'Intelligent Design', virtually nothing has been said about the evidence in question - the evidence for evolution by natural selection. Yet, as this succinct and important book shows, that evidence is vast, varied, and magnificent, and drawn from many disparate fields of science. The very latest research is uncovering a stream of evidence revealing evolution in action - from the actual observation of a species splitting into two, to new fossil discoveries, to the deciphering of the evidence stored in our genome. Why Evolution is True weaves together the many threads of modern work in genetics, palaeontology, geology, molecular biology, anatomy, and development to demonstrate the 'indelible stamp' of the processes first proposed by Darwin. It is a crisp, lucid, and accessible statement that will leave no one with an open mind in any doubt about the truth of evolution.
Download or read book Why Think? written by Ronald de Sousa and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007-06-25 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this short and accessible book, Ronald de Sousa shows us that in order to understand what is truly important about our reasoning capacity, we need to change our thinking about what rationality actually is.
Book Synopsis Purpose in the Living World? by : Jacob Klapwijk
Download or read book Purpose in the Living World? written by Jacob Klapwijk and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-12-04 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jacob Klapwijk considers the stark choice many believers and non-believers face between religious notions concerning the origins of life and the contemporary findings of evolutionary science. He offers an alternative to both and an attempt to bridge the gap between them, via the idea of 'emergent evolution'.
Download or read book Evolution written by James Alan Shapiro and published by Pearson Education. This book was released on 2011 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book proposes an important new paradigm for understanding biological evolution. Shapiro demonstrates why traditional views of evolution are inadequate to explain the latest evidence, and presents an alternative. His information- and systems-based approach integrates advances in symbiogenesis, epigenetics, and saltationism, and points toward an emerging synthesis of physical, information, and biological sciences.
Book Synopsis The Evolution of Cooperation by : Robert Axelrod
Download or read book The Evolution of Cooperation written by Robert Axelrod and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2009-04-29 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A famed political scientist's classic argument for a more cooperative world We assume that, in a world ruled by natural selection, selfishness pays. So why cooperate? In The Evolution of Cooperation, political scientist Robert Axelrod seeks to answer this question. In 1980, he organized the famed Computer Prisoners Dilemma Tournament, which sought to find the optimal strategy for survival in a particular game. Over and over, the simplest strategy, a cooperative program called Tit for Tat, shut out the competition. In other words, cooperation, not unfettered competition, turns out to be our best chance for survival. A vital book for leaders and decision makers, The Evolution of Cooperation reveals how cooperative principles help us think better about everything from military strategy, to political elections, to family dynamics.
Book Synopsis Human Purpose and Transhuman Potential by : Ted Chu
Download or read book Human Purpose and Transhuman Potential written by Ted Chu and published by Red Wheel/Weiser. This book was released on 2014-03-01 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For millennia, great thinkers have contemplated the meaning and purpose of human existence; but while most assumed that humanity was the end point of creation or the pinnacle of evolution, Ted Chu makes the provocative claim that the human race may in fact be a means rather than an end—that humankind will give rise to evolutionary successors. In this wide-ranging and authoritative work, Chu reexamines the question of human purpose in light of the extraordinary developments of science and technology. Arguing that a deep understanding of our place in the universe is required to navigate the magnitude of the choices that lie ahead, he surveys human wisdom from both East and West, traces the evolutionary trajectory that has led to this point, and explores the potentials emerging on the scientific frontier. The book addresses the legitimate fears and concerns of “playing God” but embraces the possibility of transcending biological forms and becoming or creating entirely new life-forms.
Book Synopsis Mutation-Driven Evolution by : Masatoshi Nei
Download or read book Mutation-Driven Evolution written by Masatoshi Nei and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The purpose of this book is to present a new theory of mutation-driven evolution, which is based on recent advances in genomics and evolutionary developmental biology. This theory asserts that the driving force of evolution is mutation and natural selection is of secondary importance.
Book Synopsis Randomness in Evolution by : John Tyler Bonner
Download or read book Randomness in Evolution written by John Tyler Bonner and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-24 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Tyler Bonner here challenges a central tenet of evolutionary biology.
Book Synopsis Evolution for Everyone by : David Sloan Wilson
Download or read book Evolution for Everyone written by David Sloan Wilson and published by Delacorte Press. This book was released on 2007-03-27 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With stories that entertain as much as they inform, renowned evolutionist David Sloan Wilson outlines the basic principles of evolution and shows how, when properly understood, they can illuminate the length and breadth of creation, from the origin of life to the nature of religion. What is the biological reason for gossip? For laughter? For the creation of art? Why do dogs have curly tails? What can microbes tell us about morality? These and many other questions are tackled by Wilson in this witty and groundbreaking new book. Now everyone can move beyond the sterile debates about creationism and intelligent design to share Darwin’s panoramic view of animal and human life, seamlessly connected to each other. Evolution, as Wilson explains, is not just about dinosaurs and human origins, but about why all species behave as they do—from beetles that devour their own young, to bees that function as a collective brain, to dogs that are smarter in some respects than our closest ape relatives. And basic evolutionary principles are also the foundation for humanity’s capacity for symbolic thought, culture, and morality. In example after example, Wilson sheds new light on Darwin’ s grand theory and how it can be applied to daily life. By turns thoughtful, provocative, and daringly funny, Evolution for Everyone addresses some of the deepest philosophical and social issues of this or any age. In helping us come to a deeper understanding of human beings and our place in the world, it might also help us to improve that world.
Book Synopsis 2012: A Clarion Call by : Nicolya Christi
Download or read book 2012: A Clarion Call written by Nicolya Christi and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-02-23 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A step-by-step guide to creating a sustainable global shift in consciousness starting with an inner-world shift at the personal level • Provides psychological and spiritual exercises to heal deep trauma imprints, raise your vibration, and realign with your soul’s higher purpose • Identifies the signs and symptoms of the 12 stages of ascension as we approach the global spiritual awakening of 2012 • Offers an in-depth overview of 2012 prophecies foretelling of humanity’s arrival at a point of no return on the Winter Solstice of 2012 as well as guidance in preparing for the New World prophesied to emerge in 2013 According to ancient Mayan prophecy, December 21, 2012, marks the moment of humanity’s rise or fall. Our “rise” depends on higher consciousness and raised vibration as well as the expanded awareness of a critical mass of people. As humanity enters the evolutionary transition from Homo sapiens to Homo luminous--from 3rd-dimensional human beings to 5th-dimensional beings of light--we are being called to fully participate in the dawn of a New World built upon unconditional love, co-support, cooperation, equality, unity, peace, justice, and sustainability. Sounding the clarion call for a global shift in consciousness starting at a personal level, Nicolya Christi presents a step-by-step guide to healing and transforming your inner world--an essential step toward co-creating a world shift as we head toward the tipping point of 2012. She offers core psychological insights and exercises, spiritual teachings, guided visualizations, and a concise overview of the spiritual and astronomical events surrounding 2012, as well as identifying the signs and symptoms of the 12 different stages of ascension, a process that millions are currently experiencing as we approach the global spiritual awakening of 2012. She explains how to clear past-life, ancestral, and current trauma imprints lodged within your energy field to accelerate the process of conscious evolution and ascension. Revealing that many people chose to reincarnate in this lifetime as “midwives” to help birth the New World, this book provides a way to rediscover your soul’s higher purpose, thus serving your own evolutionary journey as well as that of the Earth.
