Evolutionary Theory

If you accept evolutionary theory, can you also believe in God? Are human beings superior to other animals, or is this just a human prejudice? Does Darwin have implications for heated issues like euthanasia and animal rights? Does evolution tell us the purpose of life, or does it imply that life has no ultimate purpose? Does evolution tell us what is morally right and wrong, or does it imply that ultimately 'nothing' is right or wrong? In this fascinating and intriguing book, Steve Stewart-Williams addresses these and other fundamental philosophical questions raised by evolutionary theory and the exciting new field of evolutionary psychology. Drawing on biology, psychology and philosophy, he argues that Darwinian science supports a view of a godless universe devoid of ultimate purpose or moral structure, but that we can still live a good life and a happy life within the confines of this view.

The Rise of Chance in Evolutionary Theory: A Pompous Parade of Arithmetic examines the statistical tools and concepts of chance which underlie their applications in natural selection and game theory. The book analyzes the newly recognized relationship between our theoretical apparatus for understanding biological populations and the biological world itself. Over the history of evolutionary biology, including the period from Darwin's early notebooks in 1830 and the publication of R. A. Fisher's Genetical Theory of Natural Selection in 1930, the basis of evolutionary theory has transformed to require considerations of mathematics, statistics and chance. This book charts the development of evolutionary theory from its beginnings to today's advanced knowledge of the primary role of chance in biological processes, making it an ideal resource for evolutionary biologists, researchers and academics in evolution and biological statistics.

In this Element, we extend our earlier treatment of biology's first law. The law says that in any evolutionary system in which there is variation and heredity, there is a tendency for diversity and complexity to increase. The law plays the same role in biology that Newton's first law plays in physics, explaining what biological systems are expected to do when no forces act, in other words, what happens when nothing happens. Here we offer a deeper explanation of certain features of the law, develop a quantitative version of it, and explore its consequences for our understanding of diversity and complexity.

The central role of mathematical modeling in modern evolutionary theory has raised a concern as to why and how abstract formulae can say anything about empirical phenomena of evolution. This Element introduces existing philosophical approaches to this problem and proposes a new account according to which evolutionary models are based on causal, and not just mathematical, assumptions. The novel account features causal models both as the Humean 'uniform nature' underlying evolutionary induction and as the organizing framework that integrates mathematical and empirical assumptions into a cohesive network of beliefs that functions together to achieve epistemic goals of evolutionary biology.

Engages with the post-Darwinian biology central to Deleuze and Guattari's ecological form of thoughtDeleuze and Evolutionary Theory gathers together contributions by many of the central theorists in D

This book implements a multidisciplinary approach in describing language both in its ontogenetic development and in its close interrelationship with other human subsystems such as thought, memory, and

This book presents an introduction to Evolutionary Game Theory (EGT) which is an emerging field in the area of complex systems attracting the attention of researchers from disparate scientific communi

The study of literature has expanded to include an evolutionary perspective. Its premise is that the literary text and literature as an overarching institution came into existence as a product of the

Darwin, Dharma, and the Divine is the first book in English on the history of evolutionary theory in Japan. Bringing to life more than a century of ideas, G. Clinton Godart examines how and why Japane

The natural world is infinitely complex and hierarchically structured, with smaller units forming the components of progressively larger systems: molecules make up cells, cells comprise tissues and or

An international group of distinguished scientists presents an up-to-date survey of quantitative problems at the forefront of modern evolutionary theory. Their articles illustrate results from the lat

Numerous functions, cognitive skills, and behaviors are associated with intelligence, yet decades of research has yielded little consensus on its definition. Emerging from often conflicting studies is

?This book both summarizes the basic theory of evolutionary games and explains their developing applications, giving special attention to the 2-player, 2-strategy game. This game, usually termed a &am

Hunter-gatherer research has played a historically central role in the development of anthropological and evolutionary theory. Today, research in this traditional and enduringly vital field blurs line