共查询到20条相似文献,搜索用时 31 毫秒
1.
T. Ryan Gregory 《Evolution》2008,1(2):121-137
Charles Darwin sketched his first evolutionary tree in 1837, and trees have remained a central metaphor in evolutionary biology
up to the present. Today, phylogenetics—the science of constructing and evaluating hypotheses about historical patterns of
descent in the form of evolutionary trees—has become pervasive within and increasingly outside evolutionary biology. Fostering
skills in “tree thinking” is therefore a critical component of biological education. Conversely, misconceptions about evolutionary
trees can be very detrimental to one’s understanding of the patterns and processes that have occurred in the history of life.
This paper provides a basic introduction to evolutionary trees, including some guidelines for how and how not to read them.
Ten of the most common misconceptions about evolutionary trees and their implications for understanding evolution are addressed.
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T. Ryan GregoryEmail: |
2.
T. Ryan Gregory 《Evolution》2008,1(3):259-273
The occurrence, generality, and causes of large-scale evolutionary trends—directional changes over long periods of time—have
been the subject of intensive study and debate in evolutionary science. Large-scale patterns in the history of life have also
been of considerable interest to nonspecialists, although misinterpretations and misunderstandings of this important issue
are common and can have significant implications for an overall understanding of evolution. This paper provides an overview
of how trends are identified, categorized, and explained in evolutionary biology. Rather than reviewing any particular trend
in detail, the intent is to provide a framework for understanding large-scale evolutionary patterns in general and to highlight
the fact that both the patterns and their underlying causes are usually quite complex.
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T. Ryan GregoryEmail: |
3.
Niles Eldredge 《Evolution》2008,1(1):10-15
Evolutionary biology presents a bewildering array of phenomena to scientists and students alike—ranging from molecules to
species and ecosystems; and embracing 3.8 billion years of life’s history on earth. Biological systems are arranged hierarchically,
with smaller units forming the components of larger systems. The evolutionary hierarchy, based on replication of genetic information
and reproduction, is a complex of genes/organisms/demes/species and higher taxa. The ecological hierarchy, based on patterns
of matter–energy transfer, is a complex of proteins/organisms/avatars/local ecosystems/regional ecosystems. All organisms
are simultaneously parts of both hierarchical systems. Darwin’s original formulation of natural selection maps smoothly onto
a diagram where the two hierarchical systems are placed side-by-side. The “sloshing bucket” theory of evolution emerges from
empirical cases in biological history mapped onto this dual hierarchy scheme: little phenotypically discernible evolution
occurs with minor ecological disturbance; conversely, greatest concentrations of change in evolutionary history follow mass
extinctions, themselves based on physical perturbations of global extent. Most evolution occurs in intermediate-level regional
“turnovers,” when species extinction leads to rapid evolution of new species. Hierarchy theory provides a way of integrating
all fields of evolutionary biology into an easily understood—and taught—rubric.
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Niles EldredgeEmail: |
4.
Debates over adaptationism can be clarified and partially resolved by careful consideration of the ‘grain’ at which evolutionary
processes are described. The framework of ‘adaptive landscapes’ can be used to illustrate and facilitate this investigation.
We argue that natural selection may have special status at an intermediate grain of analysis of evolutionary processes. The
cases of sickle-cell disease and genomic imprinting are used as case studies.
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Peter Godfrey-SmithEmail: |
5.
Peter Godfrey-Smith 《Biology & philosophy》2007,22(3):429-437
Jablonka and Lamb's claim that evolutionary biology is undergoing a ‘revolution’ is queried. But the very concept of revolutionary
change has uncertain application to a field organized in the manner of contemporary biology. The explanatory primacy of sequence
properties is also discussed.
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Peter Godfrey-SmithEmail: |
6.
Abhijeet Bardapurkar 《Evolution》2008,1(3):299-305
This paper critically reviews and characterizes the student's causal-explanatory understanding; this is done as a step toward
explicating the problematic of evolution education as it concerns the cognitive difficulties in understanding Darwin's theory of natural selection. The review concludes that the student's understanding is fundamentally different from Darwin's, for
the student understands evolutionary change as necessary individual transformation caused by the transformative action of
various physical and behavioral factors. This is in complete contrast to Darwin's (and even the Darwinian's, for that matter)
understanding of evolutionary change as a change caused by accumulative selection. Hence, to understand natural selection,
the student has to learn to “see” how the accumulative selection causes evolutionary change.
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Abhijeet BardapurkarEmail: |
7.
Stavros Ioannidis 《Biology & philosophy》2008,23(4):567-578
Evolutionary developmental biology (Evo-Devo) is a new and rapidly developing field of biology which focuses on questions
in the intersection of evolution and development and has been seen by many as a potential synthesis of these two fields. This
synthesis is the topic of the books reviewed here. Integrating Evolution and Development (edited by Roger Sansom and Robert
Brandon), is a collection of papers on conceptual issues in Evo-Devo, while From Embryology to Evo-Devo (edited by Manfred
Laubichler and Jane Maienschein) is a history of the problem of the relations between ontogeny and phylogeny.
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Stavros IoannidisEmail: |
8.
Patrick Forber 《Biology & philosophy》2009,24(2):247-266
Evolutionary biology, indeed any science that attempts to reconstruct prehistory, faces practical limitations on available
data. These limitations create the problem of contrast failure: specific observations may fail to discriminate between rival evolutionary hypotheses. Assessing the risk of contrast failure
provides a way to evaluate testing protocols in evolutionary science. Here I will argue that part of the methodological critique
in the Spandrels paper involves diagnosing contrast failure problems. I then distinguish the problem of contrast failure from the more familiar
philosophical problem of underdetermination, and demonstrate how contrast failure arises in scientific practice with an investigation
into Lewontin and White’s (Evolution 14:116–129, 1960) estimation of an adaptive landscape.
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Patrick ForberEmail: |
9.
Adam M. Goldstein 《Evolution》2009,2(3):548-559
A weblog (“blog”) is an publication on the WorldWideWeb in which brief entries are displayed in date order, much like a diary
or journal. I describe the general characteristics of blogs, contrasting blogs with other of WWW formats for self-publishing.
I describe four categories for blogs about evolutionary biology: “professional,” “amateur,” “apostolic,” and “imaginative.”
I also discuss blog networks. I identify paradigms of each category. Throughout, I aim to illuminate blogs about evolutionary
biology from the point of view of a user looking for information about the topic. I conclude that blogs are not the best type
of source for systematic and authoritative information about evolution, and that they are best used by the information-seeker
as a way of identifying what issues are of interest in the community of evolutionists and for generating research leads or
fresh insights on one’s own work.
相似文献
Adam M. GoldsteinEmail: |
10.
Chris Haufe 《Biology & philosophy》2008,23(1):115-128
The importance of mate choice and sexual selection has been emphasized by the majority of evolutionary psychologists. This
paper assesses three cases of work on mate choice and sexual selection in evolutionary psychology: David Buss on cross-cultural
human mate preferences, Randy Thornhill and Steve Gangestad on the link between mate preferences and fluctuating asymmetry,
and Geoffrey Miller on the role of Fisher’s runaway process in human evolution. A mixture of conceptual and empirical problems
in each case highlights the general weakness of work in evolutionary psychology on these issues.
相似文献
Chris HaufeEmail: |
11.
Massimo Pigliucci 《Biology & philosophy》2008,23(5):591-603
Sewall Wright introduced the metaphor of evolution on “adaptive landscapes” in a pair of papers published in 1931 and 1932.
The metaphor has been one of the most influential in modern evolutionary biology, although recent theoretical advancements
show that it is deeply flawed and may have actually created research questions that are not, in fact, fecund. In this paper
I examine in detail what Wright actually said in the 1932 paper, as well as what he thought of the matter at the very end
of his career, in 1988. While the metaphor is flawed, some of the problems which Wright was attempting to address are still
with us today, and are in the process of being reformulated as part of a forthcoming Extended Evolutionary Synthesis.
相似文献
Massimo PigliucciEmail: |
12.
Gillian Barker 《Biology & philosophy》2008,23(1):1-25
Two critiques of simple adaptationism are distinguished: anti-adaptationism and extended adaptationism. Adaptationists and
anti-adaptationists share the presumption that an evolutionary explanation should identify the dominant simple cause of the
evolutionary outcome to be explained. A consideration of extended-adaptationist models such as coevolution, niche construction
and extended phenotypes reveals the inappropriateness of this presumption in explaining the evolution of certain important
kinds of features—those that play particular roles in the regulation of organic processes, especially behavior. These biological
or behavioral ‘levers’ are distinctively available for adaptation and exaptation by their possessors and for co-optation by
other organisms. As a result they are likely to result from a distinctive and complex type of evolutionary process that conforms
neither to simple adaptationist nor to anti-adaptationist styles of explanation. Many of the human features whose evolutionary
explanation is most controversial belong to this category, including the female orgasm.
相似文献
Gillian BarkerEmail: |
13.
Hanno Sandvik 《Biology & philosophy》2009,24(4):425-440
Both written and graphic accounts of history can be biased by the perspective of the historian. O’Hara (Biol Philos 7:135–160,
1992) has demonstrated that this also applies to evolutionary history and its historians, and identified four narrative devices
that introduce anthropocentricisms into accounts of phylogeny. In the current paper, I identify a fifth such narrative device,
viz. the left–right ordering of the taxa at the tips of cladograms. I define two measures that make it possible to quantify
the degree of anthropocentricism of cladograms, the human attention score and human rightness score. I then carry out an analysis
of the presence of the different distorting mechanisms in phylogenetic textbooks. I deliberately chose two textbooks that
adopted a cladistic perspective, since their authors can be assumed to be more conscious about the aim of avoiding anthropocentricisms.
Three of the narrative devices are thus absent from cladistic works. However, there is a weak tendency that the resolution
of cladogram branches is biased in favour of Homo sapiens. Furthermore, the human perspective is clear and highly significant in the positioning of taxa along the left–right axis
of cladograms. I discuss the reasons for and implications of these biased presentations.
相似文献
Hanno SandvikEmail: |
14.
Tim Lewens 《Biology & philosophy》2009,24(2):161-182
Godfrey-Smith (2001) has distinguished three types of adaptationism. This article builds on his analysis, and revises it in places, by distinguishing
seven varieties of adaptationism. This taxonomy allows us to clarify what is at stake in debates over adaptationism, and it
also helps to cement the importance of Gould and Lewontin’s ‘Spandrels’ essay. Some adaptationists have suggested that their
essay does not offer any coherent alternative to the adaptationist programme: it consists only in an exhortation to test adaptationist
hypotheses more thoroughly than was usual in the 1970s. Here it is argued that the ‘Spandrels’ paper points towards a genuinely
non-adaptationist methodology implicit in much evolutionary developmental biology. This conclusion helps to expose the links
between older debates over adaptationism and more recent questions about the property of evolvability.
相似文献
Tim LewensEmail: Email: |
15.
T. Ryan Gregory 《Evolution》2009,2(2):156-175
Natural selection is one of the central mechanisms of evolutionary change and is the process responsible for the evolution
of adaptive features. Without a working knowledge of natural selection, it is impossible to understand how or why living things
have come to exhibit their diversity and complexity. An understanding of natural selection also is becoming increasingly relevant
in practical contexts, including medicine, agriculture, and resource management. Unfortunately, studies indicate that natural
selection is generally very poorly understood, even among many individuals with postsecondary biological education. This paper
provides an overview of the basic process of natural selection, discusses the extent and possible causes of misunderstandings
of the process, and presents a review of the most common misconceptions that must be corrected before a functional understanding
of natural selection and adaptive evolution can be achieved.
相似文献
T. Ryan GregoryEmail: |
16.
Alejandro Rosas 《Biology & philosophy》2008,23(4):555-566
Recent developments in evolutionary game theory argue the superiority of punishment over reciprocity as accounts of large-scale
human cooperation. I introduce a distinction between a behavioral and a psychological perspective on reciprocity and punishment
to question this view. I examine a narrow and a wide version of a psychological mechanism for reciprocity and conclude that a narrow version is clearly distinguishable from punishment, but inadequate for
humans; whereas a wide version is applicable to humans but indistinguishable from punishment. The mechanism for reciprocity
in humans emerges as a meta-norm that governs both retaliation and punishment. I make predictions open to empirical investigation
to confirm or disconfirm this view.
相似文献
Alejandro RosasEmail: |
17.
Recent work in the fields of evolutionary ethics and moral psychology appears to be converging on a single empirically- and
evolutionary-based science of morality or ethics. To date, however, these fields have failed to provide an adequate conceptualisation
of how culture affects the content and distribution of moral norms. This is particularly important for a large class of moral
norms relating to rapidly changing technological or social environments, such as norms regarding the acceptability of genetically
modified organisms. Here we suggest that a science of morality/ethics can benefit from adopting a cultural evolution or gene-culture
coevolution approach, which treats culture as a second, separate evolutionary system that acts in parallel to biological/genetic
evolution. This cultural evolution approach brings with it a set of established theoretical concepts (e.g. different cultural
transmission mechanisms) and empirical methods (e.g. evolutionary game theory) that can significantly improve our understanding
of human morality.
相似文献
Alex MesoudiEmail: |
18.
It is common to portray conservative and liberal Protestant denominations as “strong” and “weak” on the basis of indices such
as church attendance. Alternatively, they can be regarded as qualitatively different cultural systems that coexist in a multiple-niche
environment. We integrate these two perspectives with a study of American teenagers based on both one-time survey information
and the experience sampling method (ESM), which records individual experience on a moment-by-moment basis. Conservative Protestant
youth were found to be more satisfied, family-oriented, and sociable than liberal Protestant youth, but also more dependent
on their social environment, which is reflected in a deterioration of their mood when they are alone. Liberal Protestant youth
appear to have internalized values that remain constant whether in the presence or absence of others. We relate these results
to the social scientific literature on liberalism and conservatism and to evolutionary theory as a framework for explaining
cultural systems as adaptations to multiple-niche environments.
相似文献
David Sloan WilsonEmail: |
19.
Hanno Sandvik 《Theorie in den Biowissenschaften》2008,127(1):45-51
Tree thinking is an integral part of modern evolutionary biology, and a necessary precondition for phylogenetics and comparative
analyses. Tree thinking has during the 20th century largely replaced group thinking, developmental thinking and anthropocentricism
in biology. Unfortunately, however, this does not imply that tree thinking can be taken for granted. The findings reported
here indicate that tree thinking is very much an acquired ability which needs extensive training. I tested a sample of undergraduate
and graduate students of biology by means of questionnaires. Not a single student was able to correctly interpret a simple
tree drawing. Several other findings demonstrate that tree thinking is virtually absent in students unless they are explicitly
taught how to read evolutionary trees. Possible causes and implications of this mental bias are discussed. It seems that biological
textbooks can be an important source of confusion for students. While group and developmental thinking have disappeared from
most textual representations of evolution, they have survived in the evolutionary tree drawings of many textbooks. It is quite
common for students to encounter anthropocentric trees and even trees containing stem groups and paraphyla. While these biases
originate from the unconscious philosophical assumptions made by authors, the findings suggest that presenting unbiased evolutionary
trees in biological publications is not merely a philosophical virtue but has also clear practical implications.
相似文献
Hanno SandvikEmail: |
20.
Claes Andersson 《Biology & philosophy》2008,23(2):229-242
Human knowledge is a phenomenon whose roots extend from the cultural, through the neural and the biological and finally all
the way down into the Precambrian “primordial soup.” The present paper reports an attempt at understanding this Greater System
of Knowledge (GSK) as a hierarchical nested set of selection processes acting concurrently on several different scales of
time and space. To this end, a general selection theory extending mainly from the work of Hull and Campbell is introduced.
The perhaps most drastic change from previous similar theories is that replication is revealed as a composite function consisting
of what is referred to as memory and synthesis. This move is argued to drastically improve the fit between theory and human-related knowledge systems. The introduced theory
is then used to interpret the subsystems of the GSK and their interrelations. This is done to the end of demonstrating some
of the new perspectives offered by this view.
相似文献
Claes AnderssonEmail: |