"Evolutionary ideas"

"Genetics of behavior," or "Neurogenetics," is based on the evolutionary ideas of T. Dobzhansky on brain development and behavior. It continues with the "experimental genetics of higher nervous activity" of I. Pavlov and uses a comparative approach in the study of heredity and variation in behavioral manifestations, from Protozoa to humans. The study of the classical Pavlovian conditioned reflex in mutant Drosophila helped to identify the main types of memory and their evolutionary conservatism. Long-term memory defects are caused by mutations of the same genes as in mental, retardation in humans, when signaling cascades intersecting with the cAMP-dependent pathway are damaged...

Understanding the dialogue between museums and their visitors enables museums to subsist, undergo transformations and become consolidated as socially valued cultural venues. The Museo de La Plata (Argentina) was created in the late nineteenth century as a natural history museum, and this study shows that currently the museum is valued socially as a venue for family leisure and education, at which people make sense to the objects exhibited through characteristics conferred upon them by both the institution and the visitor...

Does evolutionary theorizing have a role in psychology? This is a more contentious issue than one might imagine, given that, as evolved creatures, the answer must surely be yes. The contested nature of evolutionary psychology lies not in our status as evolved beings, but in the extent to which evolutionary ideas add value to studies of human behavior, and the rigor with which these ideas are tested. This, in turn, is linked to the framework in which particular evolutionary ideas are situated. While the framing of the current research topic places the brain-as-computer metaphor in opposition to evolutionary psychology, the most prominent school of thought in this field (born out of cognitive psychology, and often known as the Santa Barbara school) is entirely wedded to the computational theory of mind as an explanatory framework...

This article revisits the left-wing response to sociobiology in the 1970s and 1980s by examining the sociobiology debate in Finland in a larger European context. It argues that the Finnish academic left's response to sociobiology represents a "third way" alongside the purely negative, often Marxist denial of biology's relevance, which characterized the left's response to sociobiology in many European countries such as Hungary and Sweden, and alongside the disregard that sociobiology confronted in most parts of Eastern Europe, as well as in Germany...

CONSPECTUS: All living organisms and soft matter are intrinsically responsive and adaptive to external stimuli. Inspired by this fact, tremendous effort aiming to emulate subtle responsive features exhibited by nature has spurred the invention of a diverse range of responsive polymeric materials. Conventional stimuli-responsive polymers are constructed via covalent bonds and can undergo reversible or irreversible changes in chemical structures, physicochemical properties, or both in response to a variety of external stimuli...

Darwin's theory of natural selection is among the most powerful ideas in science, yet evolutionary ideas remain challenged to this day. This is in part because evolution often cannot be directly observed. Simple experiments with microbes can change that by enabling direct observation of evolutionary processes.

Mindful of the new evolutionary ideas related to an emerging scientific focus known as omics, we propose that spiritual, social, and political behaviors may be tied in part to inheritable reward gene polymorphisms, as has been demonstrated for the addictions. If so, analyses of gene polymorphisms may assist in predicting liberalism or conservatism in partisan attachments. For example, both drinking (alcohol) and obesity seem to cluster in large social networks and are influenced by friends having the same genotype, in particular the DRD2 A1 allele...

T cells bearing receptors made up of α and β chains (TCRs) usually react with peptides bound to major histocompatibility complex proteins (MHC). This bias could be imposed by positive selection, the phenomenon that selects thymocytes to mature into T cells only if the TCRs they bear react with low but appreciable affinity with MHC + peptide combinations in the thymus cortex. However, it is also possible that the polypeptides of TCRs themselves do not have random specificities but rather are biased toward reaction with MHC...

The theory of evolution is poorly understood in the population at large, even by those with some science education. The recurrent misunderstandings can be partly attributed to failure to distinguish between processes which individual organisms undergo and those which populations undergo. They may be so pervasive because we usually explain evolutionary ideas with examples from non-human animals, and our everyday cognition about animals does not track individuals as distinct from the species to which they belong...

Charles Darwin hoped that a large body of working naturalists would embrace evolution after the Origin of Species appeared in late 1859. He was disappointed. His evolutionary ideas at first made painfully little progress in the scientific community. But by 1863 the tide had turned dramatically, and within five years evolution became scientific orthodoxy in Britain. The Origin's reception followed this peculiar trajectory because Darwin had not initially tied its theory to productive original scientific investigation, which left him vulnerable to charges of reckless speculation...

The aim of this paper is to conduct a historical analysis of the research-oriented studies related to dental anthropology in Argentina, evaluate its current state and discuss future expectations and perspectives. In this country, anthropological studies based on analysis of dentition have been scarce and even temporarily discontinued, since they began in the late nineteenth century, simply following the course of the predominant theoretical and methodological approaches over time. Early papers, guided mainly by evolutionary ideas, were oriented towards establishing the taxonomic position of humans through the description and comparison of morphological and morphometric aspects of the dental crown and root...

Ever since they began to be widely discussed during the early nineteenth century, evolutionary ideas have played a controversial role in debates about politics and social reform. Understanding the political commitments of those who have sought to integrate politics and evolution is a complex challenge, though; not least because memories of mid-twentieth-century eugenic policies have frequently shaped how we talk about biosocial science. However, as the case of the Scottish biologist-turned-town-planner Patrick Geddes highlights, while we need to be aware of the broad appeal that biosocial science has historically held, we also need to recognise that current political categories can be misleading when thinking about those of who have put evolution and politics together...

When new entities are formed by the integration of individual organisms, these new entities possess characteristics which go beyond the sum of the individual properties of each element of the association, resulting in the development of new attributes and capacities as an integrated whole. In this process, these new entities also agglutinate and dynamize synergies not present in the individual organisms. In this sense, evolution is a dynamic process that evolves not in the way of perfection or progress, but in the way of adaptation to new conditions...

In 1877, only about three Americans knew anything of the new psychology then emerging in central Europe. But only 40 years later, this new psychology and its practitioners played a major role in the U.S. effort during the Great War. This article traces the origins and early evolution of this new science in the United States. It opens with a review of the American social, cultural and intellectual setting ca. 1880. It thus addresses such forces: as demographic, industrial, and religious change; the declining status of the long-influential Scottish Common-Sense Realist philosophy; the continuing impact of Baconian thought, of phrenology, and of spiritualism; the growing influence of Comtean and evolutionary ideas; and the rise of American universities...

Abstract: A philosopher and teacher, F. M. (Ladimir) Klacel (1808-1882), educated in what is now the Czech Republic, developed his own explanation for the origin and interaction of living organisms. Klácel, a member of the Augustinian Monastery in Brno, influenced his younger colleague, Friar Gregor Mendel, who went on to formulate concepts in heredity that are still recognized for their profound insight. A mutual interest in the natural sciences of these two friends provided a basis for their discussions of the relationship between religion, evolution, and society...

Anorexia nervosa (AN) has proven difficult to explain and is especially so from an evolutionary perspective. It is widespread, has probably existed for centuries and includes a genetic component but leads to starvation, infertility and sometimes death. An attempt to explain AN will be made using a synthesis of evolutionary ideas about responses to threat. Dietary restriction is described as a response to perceived threats of exclusion from the group, which would once have been dangerous. This can develop into AN only where the weight loss sets off an ancient adaptive response to the threat of famine...

The aim of this article was to present the development of ideas about the provenience of parasitic helminths and the phylogenetical relationships within this taxon, since the publication of the "cercomer theory" just to nowadays. The following essentials of the Janicki theory are outlined: main differences between free-living Turbellaria and parasitic platyhelminths (ciliated epithelium in Turbellaria versus unciliated surface in the others); universality of the cercomer presence in Monogenea, Digenea and Cestoda; evolutionary changes in the morphology and function of the cercomer; homology of the caudal appendices of all parasitic helminths; the subsequent evolution of parasitic platyhelminthes from the ancestor to Monogena, Digenea and Cestoda; proposition to establish a new common taxon--Cercomerophora--for these three groups...

The modern age of species concepts began in 1942, when Ernst Mayr gave concept names to several different approaches to species identification. A long list of species concepts then followed, as well as a complex literature on their merits, motivations and uses. Some of these complexities arose as a consequence of the semantic shift that Mayr introduced, in which procedures for identifying species were elevated to concepts. Much of the debate in recent decades over concepts, and over pluralism versus monism, can be seen as an unnecessary consequence of treating species identification criteria as if they were more fundamental concepts...

Mathias Duval (1844-1907) was one of the pioneers in elucidating the intricate placental histology of different mammalian groups, notably the rodents. Using a well-dated series of mouse conceptuses, he described in detail the successive steps in placental development, and for confirmation he included observations on a (undated) collection of rat specimens. Not only was he able to identify correctly the different extra-embryonic cell layers, but he was also the first to recognize trophoblast invasion in rodents...

The Victorian Age was the culmination of changes in the political, social, scientific, theological and cultural spheres throughout Europe. Darwin's newly elaborated evolutionary idea was the pivot for social Darwinism, a theory based on the gradual movement of the species toward greater self-awareness and strength. Shaw described this process in his play Man and Superman. Freud also utilized the concept in his libido theory. Horney interpreted the process as a psychic response to the intense societal pressures to succeed...