The Altruistic Gene - Revisited:

The Altruistic Gene - Revisited:
Author: S.T. Evensen
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 444
Release: 2018-12-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1984566563

This book replaces a fiction (2005) in the Altruistic Gene trilogy and covers what really happened to an industrial family in 2005–2018. It signals faith in the power of collaboration to attain social impact by effective altruism, a. o. setting new standards benefiting others. The book offers perspectives on business, institutional, as well as societal development. It also relates historic values of peripheral isles and coastal areas in Northern Europe, namely, gender parity and the right to resist by freedom of speech in a direct democracy protected by common law. Telling about the actuality of these values, that is the purpose and rationale of the book. Part 1 of the book follows the elders of the family from 2005 until 2011. The elders foresaw structural changes, as well as crises of trust caused by elite circulation/collusion and fragmentation of decision-making benefiting special interests. They chose to carry through a transition of power to their children whom had become stepparents of two nephews—victims of their biological parents’ high and deadly profiles. A primary objective of the transition was to protect the family and reduce its profile in the media and markets by divesting holdings in traditional industries. The elders wanted the stepparents to prepare the next generation for an early transition of power, and they involved the family’s confidants as mentors. They also financed a task force for security and intelligence with a hidden agenda. Part 2 and 3 of the book follow the endeavors of the next generation during 2012–2018. The family’s values made the next generation take on responsibilities with a strong sense of duty. The two adopted sons sought innovation and experiences in both the south and north of Europe, where they were faced with the causes and later repercussions of economic crises in 2007–2009. The collusion resulted in crises of trust and debt. Their findings on deliberative, transparent pluralism: Good governance requires agility, enterprise, and ethics, as well as collaboration, fair play, and predictability. They pursued ideas benefiting the atomist (the individual without influence alone) by impartiality, coresponsibility, empowerment, and collaboration. They saw the need to reinvent activities of trustees/fiduciaries and facilitate effective basic infrastructure, benefiting also small- and midsized enterprises (SMEs) without names in the markets and media. Therefore, they decided to promote and participate in a social enterprise for impact investing, organized as an innovative collaborative value network (CVN). A CVN can reach into the real economies of maritime regions where needs of owners/enterprisers and investors are similar everywhere. The book draws a circle with an unexpected end: one of the adopted sons encounters a young woman with a surprise connection to the death of his biological parents. An early transition starts, and a CVN approach for impact investing is set in motion. New ways are commenced, e.g., efforts to stop favoring of special interests, as well as to draft a pact on altruism* against obscurantism. Telling about these endeavors ends the author’s book series** on pluralism, ethics, and enterprise. *The draft pact on altruism is not important, but the idea of such a draft is, when spread in growing circles. **This book and Nordic Model Analyses (2016) invite readers to participate in an anthology for building alternative visions of Nordic and similar societal models by combining pluralism, ethics, enterprise, and welfare, as well as gender parity, secularity, diversity, and ecumenism. Cf. www.bankier.co

The Major Transitions in Evolution Revisited

The Major Transitions in Evolution Revisited
Author: Brett Calcott
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2011-04-22
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0262294532

Drawing on recent advances in evolutionary biology, prominent scholars return to the question posed in a pathbreaking book: how evolution itself evolved. In 1995, John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry published their influential book The Major Transitions in Evolution. The "transitions" that Maynard Smith and Szathmáry chose to describe all constituted major changes in the kinds of organisms that existed but, most important, these events also transformed the evolutionary process itself. The evolution of new levels of biological organization, such as chromosomes, cells, multicelled organisms, and complex social groups radically changed the kinds of individuals natural selection could act upon. Many of these events also produced revolutionary changes in the process of inheritance, by expanding the range and fidelity of transmission, establishing new inheritance channels, and developing more open-ended sources of variation. Maynard Smith and Szathmáry had planned a major revision of their work, but the death of Maynard Smith in 2004 prevented this. In this volume, prominent scholars (including Szathmáry himself) reconsider and extend the earlier book's themes in light of recent developments in evolutionary biology. The contributors discuss different frameworks for understanding macroevolution, prokaryote evolution (the study of which has been aided by developments in molecular biology), and the complex evolution of multicellularity.

Origin of Species Revisited

Origin of Species Revisited
Author: Donald Forsdyke
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2001
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780773522596

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.

Multicellularity

Multicellularity
Author: Karl J. Niklas
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2022-06-07
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0262545853

Scholars consider the origins and consequences of the evolution of multicellularity, addressing a range of organisms, experimental protocols, theoretical concepts, and philosophical issues. The evolution of multicellularity raises questions regarding genomic and developmental commonalities and discordances, selective advantages and disadvantages, physical determinants of development, and the origins of morphological novelties. It also represents a change in the definition of individuality, because a new organism emerges from interactions among single cells. This volume considers these and other questions, with contributions that explore the origins and consequences of the evolution of multicellularity, addressing a range of topics, organisms, and experimental protocols. Each section focuses on selected topics or particular lineages that present a significant insight or challenge. The contributors consider the fossil record of the paleontological circumstances in which animal multicellularity evolved; cooptation, recurrent patterns, modularity, and plausible pathways for multicellular evolution in plants; theoretical approaches to the amoebozoa and fungi (cellular slime molds having long provided a robust model system for exploring the evolution of multicellularity), plants, and animals; genomic toolkits of metazoan multicellularity; and philosophical aspects of the meaning of individuality in light of multicellular evolution. Contributors Maja Adamska, Argyris Arnellos, Juan A. Arias, Eugenio Azpeitia, Mariana Benítez, Adriano Bonforti, John Tyler Bonner, Peter L. Conlin, A. Keith Dunker, Salva Duran-Nebreda, Ana E. Escalante, Valeria Hernández-Hernández, Kunihiko Kaneko, Andrew H. Knoll, Stephan G. König, Daniel J. G. Lahr, Ottoline Leyser, Alan C. Love, Raul Montañez, Emilio Mora van Cauwelaert, Alvaro Moreno, Vidyanand Nanjundiah, Aurora M. Nedelcu, Stuart A. Newman, Karl J. Niklas, William C. Ratcliff, Iñaki Ruiz-Trillo, Ricard Solé

Evolution and Human Behavior

Evolution and Human Behavior
Author: John Cartwright
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 406
Release: 2000
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780262531702

The book covers fundamental issues such as the origins and function of sexual reproduction, mating behavior, human mate choice, patterns of violence in families, altruistic behavior, the evolution of brain size and the origins of language, the modular mind, and the relationship between genes and culture.

The Genetics of Political Behavior

The Genetics of Political Behavior
Author: Michael Ryan
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2020-11-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 100026226X

In this unique amalgam of neuroscience, genetics, and evolutionary psychology, Ryan argues that leftists and rightists are biologically distinct versions of the human species that came into being at different moments in human evolution. The book argues that the varying requirements of survival at different points in history explain why leftists and rightists have anatomically different brains as well as radically distinct behavioral traits. Rightist traits such as callousness and fearfulness emerged early in evolution when violence was pervasive in human life and survival depended on the fearful anticipation of danger. Leftist traits such as pro-sociality and empathy emerged later as environmental adversity made it necessary for humans to live in larger social groups that required new adaptive behavior. The book also explores new evolutionary theories that emphasize the role of the environment in shaping not only human political behavior but also humans' genetic architecture. With implications for the future of politics, the book explores how the niche worlds we build for ourselves through political action can have consequences for the evolution of the species. Proposing a new way of understanding human politics, this is fascinating reading for students and academics in psychology, the social sciences, and humanities, as well as general readers interested in political behavior.

The Selfish Gene

The Selfish Gene
Author: Richard Dawkins
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 372
Release: 1989
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9780192860927

Science need not be dull and bogged down by jargon, as Richard Dawkins proves in this entertaining look at evolution. The themes he takes up are the concepts of altruistic and selfish behaviour; the genetical definition of selfish interest; the evolution of aggressive behaviour; kinshiptheory; sex ratio theory; reciprocal altruism; deceit; and the natural selection of sex differences. 'Should be read, can be read by almost anyone. It describes with great skill a new face of the theory of evolution.' W.D. Hamilton, Science

The Anarchist Imagination

The Anarchist Imagination
Author: Carl Levy
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2019-04-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317435508

This is a broad ranging introduction to twenty-first-century anarchism which includes a wide array of theoretical approaches as well as a variety of empirical and geographical perspectives. The book demonstrates how the anarchist imagination has influenced the humanities and social sciences including anthropology, art, feminism, geography, international relations, political science, postcolonialism, and sociology. Drawing on a long historical narrative that encompasses the 'waves' of anarchist movements from the classical anarchists (1840s to 1940s), post-war wave of student, counter-cultural and workers' control anarchism of the 1960s and 1970s to the DIY politics and Temporary Autonomous Zones of the 1990s right up to the Occupy! Movement and beyond, the aim of this volume is to cover the humanities and the social sciences in an era of anarchist revival in academia. Anarchist philosophy and anarchistic methodologies have re-emerged in a range of disciplines from Organization Studies, to Law, to Political Economy to Political Theory and International Relations, and Anthropology to Cultural Studies. Anarchist approaches to freedom, democracy, ethics, violence, authority, punishment, homelessness, and the arbitration of justice have spawned a broad array of academic publications and research projects. But this volume remembers an older story, in other words, the continuous role of the anarchist imagination as muse, provocateur, goading adversary, and catalyst in the stimulation of research and creative activity in the humanities and social sciences from the middle of the nineteenth century to today. This work will be essential reading for scholars and students of anarchism, the humanities, and the social sciences.

The Gene's-Eye View of Evolution

The Gene's-Eye View of Evolution
Author: J. Arvid Ågren
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2021-07-21
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0198862261

"To many evolutionary biologists, the central challenge of their discipline is to explain adaptation, the appearance of design in the living world. With the theory of evolution by natural selection, Charles Darwin elegantly showed how a purely mechanistic process can achieve this striking feature of nature. Since then, the way many biologists have thought about evolution and natural selection is as a theory about individual organisms. Over a century later, a subtle but radical shift in perspective emerged with the gene's-eye view of evolution in which natural selection was conceptualized as a struggle between genes for replication and transmission to the next generation. This viewpoint culminated with the publication of The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (Oxford University Press, 1976) and is now commonly referred to as selfish gene thinking. The gene's-eye view has subsequently played a central role in evolutionary biology, although it continues to attract controversy. The central aim of this accessible book is to show how the gene's-eye view differs from the traditional organismal account of evolution, trace its historical origins, clarify typical misunderstandings and, by using examples from contemporary experimental work, show why so many evolutionary biologists still consider it an indispensable heuristic. The book concludes by discussing how selfish gene thinking fits into ongoing debates in evolutionary biology, and what they tell us about the future of the gene's-eye view of evolution."--