Beating the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence: Darwin, social Darwinism and the Turks.

Science.gov (United States)

Bilgili, Alper

2017-10-01

Despite the vast literature on Darwinism and race, the way in which Darwin's opinions on race were received and used by non-Western circles has been little studied. In the case of the Turks, Darwin's comments have been related to British-Ottoman relations, and Darwin was blamed for stoking anti-Turkish sentiment within Europe. This allegedly resulted in the British occupation of Egypt in the 19th century, the demise of the Ottoman Empire, as well as contemporary Neo-Nazi arson attacks in Germany which targeted Turkish migrants. Consequently, Turkish anti-Darwinists perceive Darwinism to be not merely a false scientific theory, but also a political-ideological instrument of Western hegemony wielded against Turkey and the Islamic World. Turkish Darwinists who responded to those claims, on the other hand, presented Darwin as an egalitarian who could overcome the prejudices of his social class. Further scrutiny, however, proves both accounts to be over-simplistic. This paper aims to throw some light on the context within which Darwin expressed his opinions on Turks and thus contribute to the broader discussion of the relationship between Darwinism and race. More importantly, it aims to familiarise Western readers with one of the cultures of creationism which is very little known, despite its great impact on Muslim masses. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Darwin without borders? Looking at 'generalised Darwinism' through the prism of the 'hourglass model'.

Science.gov (United States)

Levit, Georgy S; Hossfeld, Uwe

2011-12-01

This article critically analyzes the arguments of the 'generalized Darwinism' recently proposed for the analysis of social-economical systems. We argue that 'generalized Darwinism' is both restrictive and empty. It is restrictive because it excludes alternative (non-selectionist) evolutionary mechanisms such as orthogenesis, saltationism and mutationism without any examination of their suitability for modeling socio-economic processes and ignoring their important roles in the development of contemporary evolutionary theory. It is empty, because it reduces Darwinism to an abstract triple-principle scheme (variation, selection and inheritance) thus ignoring the actual structure of Darwinism as a complex and dynamic theoretical structure inseparable from a very detailed system of theoretical constraints. Arguing against 'generalised Darwinism' we present our vision of the history of evolutionary biology with the help of the 'hourglass model' reflecting the internal dynamic of competing theories of evolution.

Vitalism and the Darwin Debate

Science.gov (United States)

Henderson, James

2012-01-01

There are currently both scientific and public debates surrounding Darwinism. In the scientific debate, the details of evolution are in dispute, but not the central thesis of Darwin's theory; in the public debate, Darwinism itself is questioned. I concentrate on the public debate because of its direct impact on education in the United States. Some…

Charles Darwin's earthquake reports

Science.gov (United States)

Galiev, Shamil

2010-05-01

As it is the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, 2009 has also been marked as 170 years since the publication of his book Journal of Researches. During the voyage Darwin landed at Valdivia and Concepcion, Chile, just before, during, and after a great earthquake, which demolished hundreds of buildings, killing and injuring many people. Land was waved, lifted, and cracked, volcanoes awoke and giant ocean waves attacked the coast. Darwin was the first geologist to observe and describe the effects of the great earthquake during and immediately after. These effects sometimes repeated during severe earthquakes; but great earthquakes, like Chile 1835, and giant earthquakes, like Chile 1960, are rare and remain completely unpredictable. This is one of the few areas of science, where experts remain largely in the dark. Darwin suggested that the effects were a result of ‘ …the rending of strata, at a point not very deep below the surface of the earth…' and ‘…when the crust yields to the tension, caused by its gradual elevation, there is a jar at the moment of rupture, and a greater movement...'. Darwin formulated big ideas about the earth evolution and its dynamics. These ideas set the tone for the tectonic plate theory to come. However, the plate tectonics does not completely explain why earthquakes occur within plates. Darwin emphasised that there are different kinds of earthquakes ‘...I confine the foregoing observations to the earthquakes on the coast of South America, or to similar ones, which seem generally to have been accompanied by elevation of the land. But, as we know that subsidence has gone on in other quarters of the world, fissures must there have been formed, and therefore earthquakes...' (we cite the Darwin's sentences following researchspace. auckland. ac. nz/handle/2292/4474). These thoughts agree with results of the last publications (see Nature 461, 870-872; 636-639 and 462, 42-43; 87-89). About 200 years ago Darwin gave oneself airs by the

Infectious diseases in dogs rescued during dogfighting investigations.

Science.gov (United States)

Cannon, S H; Levy, J K; Kirk, S K; Crawford, P C; Leutenegger, C M; Shuster, J J; Liu, J; Chandrashekar, R

2016-05-01

Dogs used for dogfighting often receive minimal preventive health care, and the potential for spread of infectious diseases is high. The purpose of this study was to describe the prevalence of infectious diseases in dogs rescued from fighting operations to guide medical protocols for their immediate and long-term care. A total of 269 pit bull-type dogs were seized in a multi-state investigation. Fleas were present on most dogs, but few ticks were observed. Testing performed at intake included packed cell volume (PCV), serology and PCR for vector-borne pathogens, and fecal analysis. The most common infections were Babesia gibsoni (39%), 'Candidatus Mycoplasma haematoparvum' (32%), Mycoplasma haemocanis (30%), Dirofilaria immitis (12%), and Ancylostoma (23%). Anemia was associated with B. gibsoni infection (63% of infected dogs, odds ratio = 2.5, P dogs from dogfighting cases should include broad-spectrum internal and external parasiticides and monitoring for anemia. Dogfighting case responders should be prepared for mass screening and treatment of B. gibsoni and heartworm infections and should implement protocols to prevent transmission of infectious and zoonotic diseases in the shelter and following adoption. Former fighting dogs and dogs with possible dog bite scars should not be used as blood donors due to the risk of vector-borne pathogens that can escape detection and for which curative treatment is difficult to document. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Influence of Darwin on Evolutionary Algorithms from "Dinner with Darwin"

Science.gov (United States)

Overbye, David L.

2009-01-01

The "Dinner with Darwin" event held at the National Association of Biology Teachers Conference over several successive years represented an innovative forum for exploring the ways that the work of Charles Darwin has had an impact in fields quite far removed from biology. Through a wide-ranging discussion by panel participants, drawn from a number…

Ferdinand von Mueller's interactions with Charles Darwin and his response to Darwinism.

Science.gov (United States)

Lucas, A M

2010-01-01

Although Ferdinand Mueller (later von Mueller), Government Botanist of Victoria, opposed Darwin's theories when "On the origin of species" was published, there has been little detailed study of the nature of Mueller's opposition from 1860, when he received a presentation copy of "Origin," to his death in 1896. Analysis of Mueller's correspondence and publications shows that he remained a theist and misunderstood key aspects of Darwin's theory. However, Mueller did come to accept that natural selection could operate within a species, although never accepting it could produce speciation. Despite these differences he retained a cordial relationship with Darwin.

More than a Mentor: Leonard Darwin's Contribution to the Assimilation of Mendelism into Eugenics and Darwinism.

Science.gov (United States)

Serpente, Norberto

2016-08-01

This article discusses the contribution to evolutionary theory of Leonard Darwin (1850-1943), the eighth child of Charles Darwin. By analysing the correspondence Leonard Darwin maintained with Ronald Aylmer Fisher in conjunction with an assessment of his books and other written works between the 1910s and 1930s, this article argues for a more prominent role played by him than the previously recognised in the literature as an informal mentor of Fisher. The paper discusses Leonard's efforts to amalgamate Mendelism with both Eugenics and Darwinism in order for the first to base their policies on new scientific developments and to help the second in finding a target for natural selection. Without a formal qualification in biological sciences and as such mistrusted by some "formal" scientists, Leonard Darwin engaged with key themes of Darwinism such as mimicry, the role of mutations on speciation and the process of genetic variability, arriving at important conclusions concerning the usefulness of Mendelian genetics for his father's theory.

Stability of congruent Darwin ellipsoids

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Tassoul, M.

1975-01-01

The problem of synchronous oscillations of congruent Darwin ellipsoids is reconsidered. Contrary to results obtained by Chandrasekhar, it is shown that along a Darwin sequence the configurations remain stable with respect to ellipsoidal disturbances until they become too closely spaced. The precise limit which separates stable from unstable systems is found. Apart from some minor differences the Darwin sequence is the exact analog of the Roche sequence

Darwin and Darwinism: the (alleged) social implications of the origin of species.

Science.gov (United States)

Orr, H Allen

2009-11-01

Most scientific theories, even revolutionary ones, change the practice of a particular science but have few consequences for culture or society at large. But Darwinism, it has often been said, is different in this respect. Since the publication of The Origin of Species, many have claimed that Darwinism has a number of profound social implications. Here, I briefly consider three of these: the economic, the political, and the religious. I suggest that, for the most part, these supposed implications have been misconstrued or exaggerated. Indeed, it is reasonably clear that the chain of implication sometimes primarily ran in the opposite direction-from, for instance, economics and political theory to Darwinism.

Commentary: Darwin at 200

Science.gov (United States)

Brandt, Danita

2009-01-01

2009 marked the bicentennial of Charles Darwin's birth (February 12) and the 150th anniversary (in November) of the publication of Darwin's "extended abstract" "On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection." Universities, scientific societies, and disciplinary journals anticipated this event by organizing meetings, theme…

Darwinism: Evolution or Revolution?

Science.gov (United States)

Holt, Niles R.

1989-01-01

Maintains that Darwin's theory of evolution was more than a science versus religion debate; rather it was a revolutionary concept that influenced numerous social and political ideologies and movements throughout western history. Traces the impact of Darwin's work historically, utilizing a holistic approach. (RW)

Darwin and his Mathematical Inspirations

Science.gov (United States)

Pugliese, Andrea

2008-07-01

I have been kindly asked by the organizers of the BIOCOMP2007 conference to provide a short sketch of Charles Darwin's contribution to science, and of the role mathematics has played in his discoveries and in subsequent developments. I felt flattered by the invitation but rather unfit to it, since I have no particular expertise in evolutionary theory, and even less in its history; eventually, I decided to accept the invitation, appreciating the opportunity to read some more about Darwin, and the importance of making his contribution better known, at a time where teaching at school the theory of evolution is coming under attack also in Italy (perhaps under American influence). I hope to be able here to give a glimpse of the history of Darwinian thought, and of some current research areas, that will lead some readers towards further reading. There are many excellent books available now about Darwin and Darwinian theory, and my presentation is based on many of them, listed in the Bibliography; I found especially illuminating the book by Gayon Darwinism's Struggle for Survival, a history of theoretical Darwinism illustrating the scientific content, and the philosophical implications, of the debates on evolutionary theory at Darwin's time and up to the "modern synthesis".

Relationship Between Scarring and Dog Aggression in Pit Bull-Type Dogs Involved in Organized Dogfighting

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Katherine A. Miller

2016-11-01

Full Text Available When pit bull-type dogs are seized in an investigation of organized dogfighting, heavily scarred dogs are often assumed to be highly dog aggressive due to a history of fighting. These dogs may be deemed dangerous and euthanized based on scarring alone. We analyzed our existing data on dogs seized from four dogfighting investigations, examining the relationship between the dogs’ scars with aggression towards other dogs. Scar and wound data were tallied in three body zones where dogfighting injuries tend to be concentrated. Dog aggression was assessed using a model dog and a friendly stimulus dog in a standardized behavior evaluation. Scarring and dog aggression were significantly related, more strongly among male (Fisher’s Exact p < 0.001 than female dogs (Fisher’s Exact p = 0.05. Ten or more scars in the three body zones was a reasonable threshold with which to classify a dog as high risk for dog aggression: 82% of males and 60% of females with such scarring displayed dog aggression. However, because many unscarred dogs were dog aggressive while some highly scarred dogs were not, we recommend collecting behavioral information to supplement scar counts when making disposition decisions about dogs seized in dogfighting investigations.

The Creativity of Natural Selection? Part I: Darwin, Darwinism, and the Mutationists.

Science.gov (United States)

Beatty, John

2016-12-01

This is the first of a two-part essay on the history of debates concerning the creativity of natural selection, from Darwin through the evolutionary synthesis and up to the present. Here I focus on the mid-late nineteenth century to the early twentieth, with special emphasis on early Darwinism and its critics, the self-styled "mutationists." The second part focuses on the evolutionary synthesis and some of its critics, especially the "neutralists" and "neo-mutationists." Like Stephen Gould, I consider the creativity of natural selection to be a key component of what has traditionally counted as "Darwinism." I argue that the creativity of natural selection is best understood in terms of (1) selection initiating evolutionary change, and (2) selection being responsible for the presence of the variation it acts upon, for example by directing the course of variation. I consider the respects in which both of these claims sound non-Darwinian, even though they have long been understood by supporters and critics alike to be virtually constitutive of Darwinism.

Charles Darwin 1809-2009.

Science.gov (United States)

van Wyhe, John

2009-02-01

The year 2009 is the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species. This article briefly surveys his life and work, dispelling some common myths and summarizes Darwin's achievement and legacy at his death in 1882.

Darwin-industrien i højt gear

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kjærgaard, Peter C.

2008-01-01

Darwin-industrien i højt gear. Næste år bliver et 'Darwin-år' - både tilhængere og kritikere gør sig klar. Udgivelsesdato: 12. december......Darwin-industrien i højt gear. Næste år bliver et 'Darwin-år' - både tilhængere og kritikere gør sig klar. Udgivelsesdato: 12. december...

In praise of Darwin

Science.gov (United States)

2009-07-01

Charles Darwin, who was born 200 years ago, is rightly being celebrated as the founding father of modern biology with a series of events around the world this year. Just as Einstein revolutionized physics, so Darwin changed our understanding of life. He came to realize that "natural selection" could account for the huge diversity of life, with more-efficient groups-arising from random variation-always replacing less-efficient groups in a particular environment as a result of competition. After publishing his seminal book On the Origin of Species in 1859-exactly 150 years ago-Darwin, like Einstein, became the most noted scientist of his time.

Darwinizing the Danes, 1859-1909

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Gregersen, Niels Henrik; Kjærgaard, Peter C.; Hjermitslev, Hans Henrik

2008-01-01

Charles Darwin is a crucial figure in nineteenth-century science with an extensive and varied reception in different countries and disciplines. His theory had a revolutionary impact not only on biology, but also on other natural sciences and the new social sciences. The term ‘Darwinism', already...... popular in Darwin's lifetime, ranged across many different areas and ideological aspects. and his own ideas about the implications of evolution for human cognitive, emotional, social and ethical capacities were often interpreted in a way that did not mirror his own intentions. The implications...... for religious, philosophical and political issues and institutions remain as momentous today as in his own time. This volume conveys the many-sidedness of Darwin's reception and exhibit his far-reaching impact on our self- understanding as human beings....

Charles Darwin: What Else Did He Write?

Science.gov (United States)

Berra, Tim M.

1980-01-01

Lists a number of books written by Charles Darwin, selected to indicate the depth and breadth of Darwin's biological interests. Each entry is described with a short annotation. Also provides a reading list of references about Darwin's life. (CS)

Darwin por Manoel Bomfim Darwin by Manoel Bomfim

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Celso Noboru Uemori

2008-01-01

Full Text Available A noção de "luta pela existência" de Charles Darwin foi apropriada por diversas tendências intelectuais e serviu a vários propósitos políticos. Ela deu suporte para aqueles que queriam legitimar o capitalismo, fazer apologia do individualismo, do mercado, do fim dos monopólios e da competição. Ensejou concepções conservadoras como a prática da eugenia, a justificação do elitismo, da conquista e da colonização dos europeus sobre as populações asiáticas e africanas e o racismo. A idéia de luta pela existência foi trabalhada, também, por intelectuais que defendiam a idéia de que lutar pela vida relacionava-se à solidariedade e à cooperação. Manoel Bomfim sofreu influência de Darwin e beneficiou-se de suas idéias para elaborar argumentos, graças aos quais foi visto por seus intérpretes como um autor "radical" e original.Charles Darwin's notion of a 'struggle for existence' has been appropriated by several intellectual currents of opinion, and used for various political purposes. It has served to support free market capitalism, as an apologia of individualism, the market, the end of monopolies, and competition. Conservative conceptions have been based on it: the practice of eugenics, the justification of elitism, of the conquest and colonization of Asian and African peoples by the European, and of racism. On the other hand, the idea of a struggle for existence has been worked on by intellectuals who argued that it was related to solidarity and cooperation. Manoel Bomfim was influenced by Darwin and used his ideas to form arguments which have led his interpreters to see him as a 'radical' and original author.

Race, Racism, and Darwinism

Science.gov (United States)

Jeynes, William H.

2011-01-01

This article examines the views of Darwinist evolution on issues regarding race and how this contributed to the spread of racism in the United States. The writings of Charles Darwin and a myriad of his followers are examined, including Herbert Spencer, Francis Galton, and others. The influence of Darwinism in contributing to the growth of…

Infectious diseases in dogs rescued during dogfighting investigations

Science.gov (United States)

Cannon, S.H.; Levy, J.K.; Kirk, S.K.; Crawford, P.C.; Leutenegger, C.M.; Shuster, J.J.; Liu, J.; Chandrashekar, R.

2017-01-01

Dogs used for dogfighting often receive minimal preventive health care, and the potential for spread of infectious diseases is high. The purpose of this study was to describe the prevalence of infectious diseases in dogs rescued from fighting operations to guide medical protocols for their immediate and long-term care. A total of 269 pit bull-type dogs were seized in a multi-state investigation. Fleas were present on most dogs, but few ticks were observed. Testing performed at intake included packed cell volume (PCV), serology and PCR for vector-borne pathogens, and fecal analysis. The most common infections were Babesia gibsoni (39%), ‘Candidatus Mycoplasma haematoparvum’ (32%), Mycoplasma haemocanis (30%), Dirofilaria immitis (12%), and Ancylostoma (23%). Anemia was associated with B. gibsoni infection (63% of infected dogs, Odds ratio=2.5, P<0.001), but not with hemotropic mycoplasmas or Ancylostoma. Pit bull heritage and dogfighting are known risk factors for B. gibsoni infection, possibly via blood transmission from bites and vertical transmission. Hemotropic mycoplasmas have a similar risk pattern. Empirical care for dogs from dogfighting cases should include broad-spectrum internal and external parasiticides and monitoring for anemia. Dogfighting case responders should be prepared for mass screening and treatment of B. gibsoni and heartworm infections and should implement protocols to prevent transmission of infectious and zoonotic diseases in the shelter and following adoption. Former fighting dogs and dogs with possible dog bite scars should not be used as blood donors due to the risk of vector-borne pathogens that can escape detection and for which curative treatment is difficult to document. PMID:27056107

Darwin in disguise.

Science.gov (United States)

Derry, J F

2009-02-01

Darwinism appears in many more academic areas than just evolutionary biology. New disciplines are created out of its fusion with existing fields of study. However, this practise is criticised for a lack of evidence-based justification, and for adopting gene-oriented reductionism in the social sciences. This article briefly considers seven examples of new disciplines for which Darwinism has been appropriated. In each case, succinct background information precedes quotes provided for this purpose by a leading researcher.

Darwin: German mystic or French rationalist?

Science.gov (United States)

Ghiselin, Michael T

2015-01-01

The notion that Charles Darwin embraced the German Romantic tradition seems plausible, given the early influence of Alexander von Humboldt. But this view fails to do justice to other scientific traditions. Darwin was a protégé of the Englishman John Stevens Henslow and was a follower of the Scott Charles Lyell. He had important debts to French scientists, notably Henri Milne-Edwards, Etienne and Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, and Alphonse de Candolle. Many Germans were quite supportive of Darwin, but not all of these were encumbered by idealistic metaphysical baggage. Both Darwin and Anton Dohrn treated science as very much a cosmopolitan enterprise.

Lloyd Morgan's theory of instinct: from Darwinism to neo-Darwinism.

Science.gov (United States)

Richards, R J

1977-01-01

Darwin's proposal of two sources of instinct--natural selection and inherited habit--fostered among late nineteenth century evolutionists a variety of conflicting notions concerning the mechanisms of evolution. The British comparative psychologist C. Lloyd Morgan was a cardinal figure in restructuring the orthodox Darwinian conception to relieve the confusion besetting it and to meet the demands of the new biology of Weismann. This paper traces the development of Morgan's ideas about instinct against the background of his philosophic assumptions and the views of instinct theorists from Darwin and Romanes to McDougall and Lorenz.

Nietzsche’s reception of Darwinism

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Mostert, Pieter

1979-01-01

It has been generally assumed that the influence of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution on Friedrich Nietzsche (1844- 1900) is to be understood in terms of Nietzsche's concept """"Obermensch"""" (overman). Hardly any attention has been paid to the question of the status of Darwin's theory in

Vy jste Darwin! Yes, I am Darwin. Darwin českýma očima a darwinismus v českých zemích

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Hermann, Tomáš

2009-01-01

Roč. 31, č. 2 (2009), s. 36-39 ISSN 0418-5129 R&D Projects: GA AV ČR KJB800630701 Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z80630520 Keywords : Darwin´s theory * history of biology * reception of Darwinism Subject RIV: AB - History

Darwin's Perplexing Paradox

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Thorvaldsen, Steinar; Øhrstrøm, Peter

2013-01-01

from classical natural theology. When Darwin discovered the dynamic process of natural selection, he rejected the old teleological argument as formulated by William Paley. However, he was never able to ignore the powerful experience of the beauty and complexity of an intelligently designed universe......, as a whole. He corresponded with Asa Gray on religious themes, particularly touching the problem of pain and intelligent design in nature. The term “intelligent design” was probably introduced by William Whewell. Principally for theological and philosophical reasons, Darwin could only accept the concept...

Drugs offshore: companies stepping up fight against hidden adversary

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Redden, J.

1986-01-01

Oil companies worldwide are effectively fighting a growing nemesis, drug and alcohol abuse on offshore installations. It is estimated that companies are losing millions of dollars in lost productivity, accidents, and thefts caused by on-the-job use of illegal drugs. Some of the measures being employed to combat the use of such drugs, e.g., tight control, better communications, diversions for employees, and the use of sniffer dogs, are discussed.

John Tweedie and Charles Darwin in Buenos Aires.

Science.gov (United States)

Ollerton, Jeff; Chancellor, Gordon; van Wyhe, John

2012-06-20

The journey of exploration undertaken by Charles Darwin FRS during the voyage of HMS Beagle has a central place within the historical development of evolutionary theory and has been intensively studied. Despite this, new facts continue to emerge about some of the details of Darwin's activities. Drawing on recently published Darwin material and unpublished letters in the archives of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, we document a hitherto unexamined link between Darwin and John Tweedie (1775-1862), a relatively obscure Scottish gardener turned South American plant collector. All of the available evidence points to a meeting between the two men in Buenos Aires in 1832. Tweedie provided Darwin with information about the geography of the Rio Paraná, including the locality of fossilized wood eroding from the river bank. It also seems likely that Tweedie supplied Darwin with seeds that he later shipped back to John Stevens Henslow in Cambridge. Although this brief meeting was at the time relatively unimportant to either man, echoes of that encounter have resonated with Tweedie's descendants to the present day and have formed the basis for a family story about a written correspondence between Darwin and Tweedie. Local information supplied to Darwin by residents such as Tweedie was clearly important and deserves further attention.

Random unitary operations and quantum Darwinism

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Balaneskovic, Nenad

2016-01-01

We study the behavior of Quantum Darwinism (Zurek, Nature Physics 5, 181-188 (2009)) within the iterative, random unitary operations qubit-model of pure decoherence (Novotn'y et al, New Jour. Phys. 13, 053052 (2011)). We conclude that Quantum Darwinism, which describes the quantum mechanical evolution of an open system from the point of view of its environment, is not a generic phenomenon, but depends on the specific form of initial states and on the type of system-environment interactions. Furthermore, we show that within the random unitary model the concept of Quantum Darwinism enables one to explicitly construct and specify artificial initial states of environment that allow to store information about an open system of interest and its pointer-basis with maximal efficiency. Furthermore, we investigate the behavior of Quantum Darwinism after introducing dissipation into the iterative random unitary qubit model with pure decoherence in accord with V. Scarani et al (Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 097905 (2002)) and reconstruct the corresponding dissipative attractor space. We conclude that in Zurek's qubit model Quantum Darwinism depends on the order in which pure decoherence and dissipation act upon an initial state of the entire system. We show explicitly that introducing dissipation into the random unitary evolution model in general suppresses Quantum Darwinism (regardless of the order in which decoherence and dissipation are applied) for all positive non-zero values of the dissipation strength parameter, even for those initial state configurations which, in Zurek's qubit model and in the random unitary model with pure decoherence, would lead to Quantum Darwinism. Finally, we discuss what happens with Quantum Darwinism after introducing into the iterative random unitary qubit model with pure decoherence (asymmetric) dissipation and dephasing, again in accord with V. Scarani et al (Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 097905 (2002)), and reconstruct the corresponding

Trees and networks before and after Darwin

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ragan Mark A

2009-11-01

Full Text Available Abstract It is well-known that Charles Darwin sketched abstract trees of relationship in his 1837 notebook, and depicted a tree in the Origin of Species (1859. Here I attempt to place Darwin's trees in historical context. By the mid-Eighteenth century the Great Chain of Being was increasingly seen to be an inadequate description of order in nature, and by about 1780 it had been largely abandoned without a satisfactory alternative having been agreed upon. In 1750 Donati described aquatic and terrestrial organisms as forming a network, and a few years later Buffon depicted a network of genealogical relationships among breeds of dogs. In 1764 Bonnet asked whether the Chain might actually branch at certain points, and in 1766 Pallas proposed that the gradations among organisms resemble a tree with a compound trunk, perhaps not unlike the tree of animal life later depicted by Eichwald. Other trees were presented by Augier in 1801 and by Lamarck in 1809 and 1815, the latter two assuming a transmutation of species over time. Elaborate networks of affinities among plants and among animals were depicted in the late Eighteenth and very early Nineteenth centuries. In the two decades immediately prior to 1837, so-called affinities and/or analogies among organisms were represented by diverse geometric figures. Series of plant and animal fossils in successive geological strata were represented as trees in a popular textbook from 1840, while in 1858 Bronn presented a system of animals, as evidenced by the fossil record, in a form of a tree. Darwin's 1859 tree and its subsequent elaborations by Haeckel came to be accepted in many but not all areas of biological sciences, while network diagrams were used in others. Beginning in the early 1960s trees were inferred from protein and nucleic acid sequences, but networks were re-introduced in the mid-1990s to represent lateral genetic transfer, increasingly regarded as a fundamental mode of evolution at least for

Darwin as a plant scientist: a Southern Hemisphere perspective.

Science.gov (United States)

Hopper, Stephen D; Lambers, Hans

2009-08-01

Events around the world this year celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and the sesquicentenary of publication of his most important work, The Origin of Species (Darwin 1859). The associated plethora of books and papers now appearing to commemorate Darwin's work continue the traditional emphasis on his zoological and geological contributions. There has been some recent attention directed towards Darwin's relatively unsung but significant accomplishments as a botanist. Here, we bring together a review of Darwin's botanical discoveries and experiments and relevant aspects of his geological investigations, with a focus on the Southern Hemisphere. This is a relatively unexplored aspect of Darwin's contributions that yields some new insights meriting future research.

Charles Darwin in the Andes

Science.gov (United States)

Bizzo, Nelio; Bizzo, Luis Eduardo Maestrelli

2006-01-01

Considering geological time as an important epistemological obstacle to the construction of ideas on biological evolution, a study was carried out on the so-called "Darwin Papers". The conclusion was that Charles Darwin's excursion in the Andes during March-April 1835 was a crucial step in this regard. An expedition was carried out in…

The Darwins and Wells: from revolution to evolution.

Science.gov (United States)

Wade, Nicholas J

2010-04-08

In the biography of his grandfather (Erasmus Darwin), Charles Darwin hinted that his father (Robert Darwin) had received parental assistance in conducting and writing his medical thesis (which concerned afterimages). The experiments also involved visual vertigo, and they were elaborated by the senior Darwin in his Zoonomia, published in 1794. Erasmus Darwin's interpretation was in terms of trying to pursue peripheral afterimages formed during rotation; it was at variance with one published two years earlier by William Charles Wells, who had investigated the visual consequences of body rotation when the body is subsequently still. Wells penned two retorts to the Darwins' theory; although they were not accepted by Erasmus, he did devise a human centrifuge, models of which were employed in later studies of vertigo. Wells's ideas on evolution were expressed in a paper delivered to the Royal Society (in 1813) but not published in its Transactions. Commenting on the case of a white woman, part of whose skin was black, he proposed a process of change that was akin to natural selection. His ideas were acknowledged by Charles Darwin in the fourth edition of On the Origin of Species.

More on Darwin's illness: comment on the final diagnosis of Charles Darwin.

Science.gov (United States)

Sheehan, William; Meller, William H; Thurber, Steven

2008-06-20

Without the possibility of confirmatory exhumation, diagnostic inferences about Darwin's illness must remain speculative. A diagnosis of Darwin's aggregate symptoms must account for not only gastrointestinal distress but also his predominant and excessive retching and the conglomerate of other heterogeneous symptoms. We opine that Crohn's disease, posited as the 'final diagnosis', is not sufficient for subsuming his pleiomorphic symptomatology. An additional proposal is outlined that may help to explain his presentation with heterogeneous symptoms. It incorporates constitutional vulnerabilities, psychosomatic influences and Pavlovian conditioning as explanatory variables.

Darwin model in plasma physics revisited

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Xie, Huasheng; Zhu, Jia; Ma, Zhiwei

2014-01-01

Dispersion relations from the Darwin (a.k.a., magnetoinductive or magnetostatic) model are given and compared with those of the full electromagnetic model. Analytical and numerical solutions show that the errors from the Darwin approximation can be large even if phase velocity for a low-frequency wave is close to or larger than the speed of light. Besides missing two wave branches associated mainly with the electron dynamics, the coupling branch of the electrons and ions in the Darwin model is modified to become a new artificial branch that incorrectly represents the coupling dynamics of the electrons and ions. (paper)

Gilson, Darwin, and Intelligent Design

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Desmond J. FitzGerald

2015-12-01

Full Text Available The article starts with stating the fact that today there is an increasing recognition of difficulties with Darwinism accompanied by vigorous responses on the part of Darwin’s defenders; among the instances of challenge to the dominant theory, one can find a book of Gilson, From Aristotle to Darwin and Back Again, and those behind the Intelligent Design movement. Inrelating the book of Gilson to the ID proponents, the author concludes that, while in some ways they are on the same side in opposing the anti-creation thrust of Darwinism, Gilson is neutral on the validity or truth of Darwin’s biological hypothesis. Gilson, however, whose book preceded the ID movement by some twenty years, seeks to analyze Darwinism from the perspective of the classical philosophy of nature. He well understands that, according to modern scientific method, final causes are excluded from consideration, but he calls for a biophilosophy which will be open to the reality of human experience as Aristotle was and recognize that teleology is present in nature. According to him, even if teleology seems to be a contestable explanation, chance as understood by Darwinists is the pure absence of explanation.

Darwin's explanation of races by means of sexual selection.

Science.gov (United States)

Millstein, Roberta L

2012-09-01

In Darwin's Sacred Cause, Adrian Desmond and James Moore contend that "Darwin would put his utmost into sexual selection because the subject intrigued him, no doubt, but also for a deeper reason: the theory vindicated his lifelong commitment to human brotherhood" (2009: p. 360). Without questioning Desmond and Moore's evidence, I will raise some puzzles for their view. I will show that attention to the structure of Darwin's arguments in the Descent of Man shows that they are far from straightforward. As Desmond and Moore note, Darwin seems to have intended sexual selection in non-human animals to serve as evidence for sexual selection in humans. However, Darwin's account of sexual selection in humans was different from the canonical cases that Darwin described at great length. If explaining the origin of human races was the main reason for introducing sexual selection, and if sexual selection was a key piece of Darwin's anti-slavery arguments, then it is puzzling why Darwin would have spent so much time discussing cases that did not really support his argument for the origin of human races, and it is also puzzling that his argument for the origin of human races would be so (atypically) poor. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Darwin in domineesland: een reconstructie van de wijze waarop geleerde Nederlanders Darwins evolutietheorie filosofisch beoordeelden, 1859-1877

NARCIS (Netherlands)

B. Leeuwenburgh (Bart)

2009-01-01

textabstractIn zijn proefschrift Darwin in domineesland geeft Bart Leeuwenburgh een overzicht van het debat dat in Nederland ontstond over de evolutietheorie, na de publicatie van Charles Darwins On the Origin of Species in 1859. Hierbij trekt een bonte stoet voorbij van bedaarde wetenschappers,

Formalizing Darwinism and inclusive fitness theory.

Science.gov (United States)

Grafen, Alan

2009-11-12

Inclusive fitness maximization is a basic building block for biological contributions to any theory of the evolution of society. There is a view in mathematical population genetics that nothing is caused to be maximized in the process of natural selection, but this is explained as arising from a misunderstanding about the meaning of fitness maximization. Current theoretical work on inclusive fitness is discussed, with emphasis on the author's 'formal Darwinism project'. Generally, favourable conclusions are drawn about the validity of assuming fitness maximization, but the need for continuing work is emphasized, along with the possibility that substantive exceptions may be uncovered. The formal Darwinism project aims more ambitiously to represent in a formal mathematical framework the central point of Darwin's Origin of Species, that the mechanical processes of inheritance and reproduction can give rise to the appearance of design, and it is a fitting ambition in Darwin's bicentenary year to capture his most profound discovery in the lingua franca of science.

Darwin taxonomist: Barnacles and shell burrowing barnacles Darwin taxónomo: cirrípedos y cirrípedos perforadores de conchas

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

JUAN CARLOS CASTILLA

2009-12-01

Full Text Available This bibliographic review revisits circumstances in which the wharf, shell burrowing barnacle, Cryptophialus minutus, was first collected by Charles Darwin in southern Chile, in 1836. Further, explores how its collection marked Darwin's taxonomical interest in Cirripedia. A short review analyzes the initial number of extant species of Cirripedia, as described by Darwin and the present situation, with emphasis on recent collections of C. minutus in the southern tip of South America.Esta revisión bibliográfica describe las circunstancias en el que el cirrípedo enano, Crypophialus minutus, perforador de conchas, fue recolectado por Charles Darwin en el sur de Chile, en 1836. Además, cómo esta recolección marcó el interés taxonómico de Darwin en Cirripedia. Se presenta una revisión resumida sobre el número inicial de especies vivas de Cirripedia, como fueron descritas por Darwin, y la situación actual, con énfasis en recolecciones recientes de C. minutus en el cono sur de Suramérica.

Darwin på arabisk

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Riexinger, Martin Thomas

2014-01-01

Det var to revolutionære spor, som i begyndelsen af 1800-talet gødede jorden for introduktionen af Darwins evolutionsteori i Mellemøsten, og muslimer spillede stort set ingen rolle for den udviklingen. Ny bog om islam og evolutionsteorien.......Det var to revolutionære spor, som i begyndelsen af 1800-talet gødede jorden for introduktionen af Darwins evolutionsteori i Mellemøsten, og muslimer spillede stort set ingen rolle for den udviklingen. Ny bog om islam og evolutionsteorien....

Charles Darwin and John Herschel

Science.gov (United States)

Warner, B.

2009-11-01

The influence of John Herschel on the philosophical thoughts of Charles Darwin, both through the former's book, Natural Philosophy, and through their meeting in 1836 at the Cape of Good Hope, is discussed. With Herschel having himself speculated on evolution just a few months before he met Darwin, it is probable that he stimulated at least the beginnings of the latter's lifelong work on the subject.

A unified approach to the Darwin approximation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Krause, Todd B.; Apte, A.; Morrison, P. J.

2007-01-01

There are two basic approaches to the Darwin approximation. The first involves solving the Maxwell equations in Coulomb gauge and then approximating the vector potential to remove retardation effects. The second approach approximates the Coulomb gauge equations themselves, then solves these exactly for the vector potential. There is no a priori reason that these should result in the same approximation. Here, the equivalence of these two approaches is investigated and a unified framework is provided in which to view the Darwin approximation. Darwin's original treatment is variational in nature, but subsequent applications of his ideas in the context of Vlasov's theory are not. We present here action principles for the Darwin approximation in the Vlasov context, and this serves as a consistency check on the use of the approximation in this setting

The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good

OpenAIRE

Robert Frank

2013-01-01

Who was the greater economist — Adam Smith or Charles Darwin? The question seems absurd. Darwin, after all, was a naturalist, not an economist. But Robert Frank, «The New York Times’» economics columnist and best-selling author of «The Economic Naturalist», predicts that within the next century Darwin will unseat Smith as the intellectual founder of economics. The reason, Frank argues, is that Darwin's understanding of competition describes economic reality far more accurately than Smith's. A...

Charles Darwin, Richard Owen, and Natural Selection: A Question of Priority.

Science.gov (United States)

Johnson, Curtis N

2018-05-03

No single author presented Darwin with a more difficult question about his priority in discovering natural selection than the British comparative anatomist and paleontologist Richard Owen. Owen was arguably the most influential biologist in Great Britain in Darwin's time. Darwin wanted his approbation for what he believed to be his own theory of natural selection. Unfortunately for Darwin, when Owen first commented in publication about Darwin's theory of descent he was openly hostile (Edinb. Rev. vol. 111, Article VIII, 1860, pp. 487-533, anonymous). Darwin was taken off-guard. In private meetings and correspondence prior to 1860 Owen had been nothing but polite and friendly, even helping Darwin in cataloguing and analyzing Darwin's zoological specimens from the Beagle voyage. Every early indication predicted a life-long friendship and collaboration. But that was not to be. Owen followed his slashing review with a mounting campaign in the 1860s to denounce and discredit both Darwin and his small but ascendant circle of friends and supporters. But that was not enough for Owen. Starting in 1866, perhaps by now realizing Darwin had landed the big fish, Owen launched a new campaign, to claim the discovery of "Darwin's theory" for himself. Darwin naturally fought back, mainly in the "Historical Sketch" that he prefaced to Origin starting in 1861. But when we peel back the layers of personal animus and escalating vituperation we discover in fact their quarrel was generated more by mutual misunderstanding than scientific disagreement. The battle ended only when Darwin finally penetrated to the crux of the matter and put an end to the rivalry in 1872, in the final version of the Sketch.

Evolutionary ethics from Darwin to Moore.

Science.gov (United States)

Allhoff, Fritz

2003-01-01

Evolutionary ethics has a long history, dating all the way back to Charles Darwin. Almost immediately after the publication of the Origin, an immense interest arose in the moral implications of Darwinism and whether the truth of Darwinism would undermine traditional ethics. Though the biological thesis was certainly exciting, nobody suspected that the impact of the Origin would be confined to the scientific arena. As one historian wrote, 'whether or not ancient populations of armadillos were transformed into the species that currently inhabit the new world was certainly a topic about which zoologists could disagree. But it was in discussing the broader implications of the theory...that tempers flared and statements were made which could transform what otherwise would have been a quiet scholarly meeting into a social scandal' (Farber 1994, 22). Some resistance to the biological thesis of Darwinism sprung from the thought that it was incompatible with traditional morality and, since one of them had to go, many thought that Darwinism should be rejected. However, some people did realize that a secular ethics was possible so, even if Darwinism did undermine traditional religious beliefs, it need not have any effects on moral thought. Before I begin my discussion of evolutionary ethics from Darwin to Moore, I would like to make some more general remarks about its development. There are three key events during this history of evolutionary ethics. First, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of the Species (Darwin 1859). Since one did not have a fully developed theory of evolution until 1859, there exists little work on evolutionary ethics until then. Shortly thereafter, Herbert Spencer (1898) penned the first systematic theory of evolutionary ethics, which was promptly attacked by T.H. Huxley (Huxley 1894). Second, at about the turn of the century, moral philosophers entered the fray and attempted to demonstrate logical errors in Spencer's work; such errors were alluded

Darwin's Eclipse Concerned Function versus Mechanism

Science.gov (United States)

Tryon, Warren W.

2009-01-01

Comments on a article by Dewsbury (February-March 2009) in which he stated, "Darwin provided a viable mechanism for evolutionary change, natural selection" (p. 67). Although this view is consistent with the modern synthesis, the author argues that (a) the natural selection "mechanism" provided by Darwin was not initially accepted by scientists…

Wallace, Darwin and Ternate 1858.

Science.gov (United States)

Smith, Charles H

2014-06-20

Recent debates on the mailing date of Alfred Russel Wallace's 'Ternate essay' to Charles Darwin in the spring of 1858 have ignored certain details that, once taken into account, alter the matter considerably. Here, a closer look is taken at the critical question of whether Wallace's manuscript-accompanying letter represented a reply to the Darwin letter that arrived in Ternate on 9 March; it is concluded that it very probably did not.

Revisiting the eclipse of Darwinism.

Science.gov (United States)

Bowler, Peter J

2005-01-01

The article sums up a number of points made by the author concerning the response to Darwinism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and repeats the claim that a proper understanding of the theory's impact must take account of the extent to which what are now regarded as the key aspects of Darwin's thinking were evaded by his immediate followers. Potential challenges to this position are described and responded to.

Understanding phototropism: from Darwin to today.

Science.gov (United States)

Holland, Jennifer J; Roberts, Diana; Liscum, Emmanuel

2009-01-01

Few individuals have had the lasting impact on such a breadth of science as Charles Darwin. While his writings about time aboard the HMS Beagle, his study of the Galapagos islands (geology, fauna, and flora), and his theories on evolution are well known, less appreciated are his studies on plant growth responses to a variety of environmental stimuli. In fact, Darwin, together with the help of his botanist son Francis, left us an entire book, 'The power of movements in plants', describing his many, varied, and insightful observations on this topic. Darwin's findings have provided an impetus for an entire field of study, the study of plant tropic responses, or differential growth (curvature) of plant organs in response to directional stimuli. One tropic response that has received a great deal of attention is the phototropic response, or curvature response to directional light. This review summarizes many of the most significant advancements that have been made in our understanding of this response and place these recent findings in the context of Darwin's initial observations.

Edward B. Aveling: the people's Darwin.

Science.gov (United States)

Paylor, Suzanne

2005-06-01

By the late-19th century, evolutionary theory, known by most people as Darwinism, had earned a reputation as an atheistic theory that challenged religious orthodoxy. From recent historical work we now know a great deal about how those with religious convictions received Darwinian ideas, and the role that professional scientists played in styling and communicating 'Darwinism' to the wider public and between themselves. However, relatively little is known about how Darwinian ideas were received and used by avowedly irreligious groups, and how these groups set about communicating their own version of Darwinism to a public hungry for cheap and accessible science. The activities of the Secularist Edward Bibbins Aveling, a prolific popularizer of Darwinian ideas in the late-19th century, offer a unique insight into this relatively uncharted territory. His work helped to develop the polemic of popular irreligious groups and imbue Darwinism with overtly atheistic connotations; it also engendered unprecedented support for atheism from the general public, and challenged the monopoly that some professional scientists enjoyed over imparting serious scientific knowledge to them.

Charles Darwin's Reception in Germany and What Followed.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Axel Meyer

2009-07-01

Full Text Available 150 years ago, Heinrich Bronn provided in the first German translation of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species a rather liberal interpretation, even adding his own view of Darwin's ideas in an additional 15th chapter. Ernst Haeckel widely popularized his view of Darwinian evolution based on his reading of this translation. This was long seen - probably incorrectly - as the intellectual root of social Darwinism in Germany.

Darwin's Book: On the Origin of Species

Science.gov (United States)

Hodge, Jonathan

2013-09-01

This essay is an interpretation of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species. It focuses on the contents of the Origin as Darwin intended them to be understood and the background to the work, thus revealing the originality (or otherwise) of the work.

Darwin and Religion: Correcting the Caricatures

Science.gov (United States)

Brooke, John Hedley

2010-01-01

Much has been written on the subject of Darwinism and religion, but rather less on the development of Darwin's own thinking on religious matters and how it changed over time. What were his religious, or anti-religious, beliefs? Did he believe that his theory of evolution by natural selection was incompatible with belief in a Creator? Was it his…

Identification of genomic variants putatively targeted by selection during dog domestication.

Science.gov (United States)

Cagan, Alex; Blass, Torsten

2016-01-12

Dogs [Canis lupus familiaris] were the first animal species to be domesticated and continue to occupy an important place in human societies. Recent studies have begun to reveal when and where dog domestication occurred. While much progress has been made in identifying the genetic basis of phenotypic differences between dog breeds we still know relatively little about the genetic changes underlying the phenotypes that differentiate all dogs from their wild progenitors, wolves [Canis lupus]. In particular, dogs generally show reduced aggression and fear towards humans compared to wolves. Therefore, selection for tameness was likely a necessary prerequisite for dog domestication. With the increasing availability of whole-genome sequence data it is possible to try and directly identify the genetic variants contributing to the phenotypic differences between dogs and wolves. We analyse the largest available database of genome-wide polymorphism data in a global sample of dogs 69 and wolves 7. We perform a scan to identify regions of the genome that are highly differentiated between dogs and wolves. We identify putatively functional genomic variants that are segregating or at high frequency [> = 0.75 Fst] for alternative alleles between dogs and wolves. A biological pathways analysis of the genes containing these variants suggests that there has been selection on the 'adrenaline and noradrenaline biosynthesis pathway', well known for its involvement in the fight-or-flight response. We identify 11 genes with putatively functional variants fixed for alternative alleles between dogs and wolves. The segregating variants in these genes are strong candidates for having been targets of selection during early dog domestication. We present the first genome-wide analysis of the different categories of putatively functional variants that are fixed or segregating at high frequency between a global sampling of dogs and wolves. We find evidence that selection has been strongest

[Charles Darwin and the problem of evolutionary progress].

Science.gov (United States)

Iordanskiĭ, N N

2010-01-01

According to Ch. Darwin's evolutionary theory, evolutionary progress (interpreted as morpho-physiological progress or arogenesis in recent terminology) is one of logical results of natural selection. At the same time, natural selection does not hold any factors especially promoting evolutionary progress. Darwin emphasized that the pattern of evolutionary changes depends on organism nature more than on the pattern of environment changes. Arogenesis specificity is determined by organization of rigorous biological systems - integral organisms. Onward progressive development is determined by fundamental features of living organisms: metabolism and homeostasis. The concept of social Darwinism differs fundamentally from Darwin's ideas about the most important role of social instincts in progress of mankind. Competition and selection play secondary role in socio-cultural progress of human society.

Threat-level-dependent manipulation of signaled body size: dog growls' indexical cues depend on the different levels of potential danger.

Science.gov (United States)

Bálint, Anna; Faragó, Tamás; Miklósi, Ádám; Pongrácz, Péter

2016-11-01

Body size is an important feature that affects fighting ability; however, size-related parameters of agonistic vocalizations are difficult to manipulate because of anatomical constraints within the vocal production system. Rare examples of acoustic size modulation are due to specific features that enable the sender to steadily communicate exaggerated body size. However, one could argue that it would be more adaptive if senders could adjust their signaling behavior to the fighting potential of their actual opponent. So far there has been no experimental evidence for this possibility. We tested this hypothesis by exposing family dogs (Canis familiaris) to humans with potentially different fighting ability. In a within-subject experiment, 64 dogs of various breeds consecutively faced two threateningly approaching humans, either two men or two women of different stature, or a man and a woman of similar or different stature. We found that the dogs' vocal responses were affected by the gender of the threatening stranger and the dog owner's gender. Dogs with a female owner, or those dogs which came from a household where both genders were present, reacted with growls of lower values of the Pitch-Formant component (including deeper fundamental frequency and lower formant dispersion) to threatening men. Our results are the first to show that non-human animals react with dynamic alteration of acoustic parameters related to their individual indexical features (body size), depending on the level of threat in an agonistic encounter.

Charles Darwin and the origin of life.

Science.gov (United States)

Peretó, Juli; Bada, Jeffrey L; Lazcano, Antonio

2009-10-01

When Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species 150 years ago he consciously avoided discussing the origin of life. However, analysis of some other texts written by Darwin, and of the correspondence he exchanged with friends and colleagues demonstrates that he took for granted the possibility of a natural emergence of the first life forms. As shown by notes from the pages he excised from his private notebooks, as early as 1837 Darwin was convinced that "the intimate relation of Life with laws of chemical combination, & the universality of latter render spontaneous generation not improbable". Like many of his contemporaries, Darwin rejected the idea that putrefaction of preexisting organic compounds could lead to the appearance of organisms. Although he favored the possibility that life could appear by natural processes from simple inorganic compounds, his reluctance to discuss the issue resulted from his recognition that at the time it was possible to undertake the experimental study of the emergence of life.

Darwin and the divine experiment

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Gregersen, Niels Henrik; Kjærgaard, Peter C.

2009-01-01

In Denmark Darwin’s theory of evolution was known early on and viewed with respect, but did not make immediate scientific converts. In the 1870s, when Darwinism was promoted by free thinkers, public debates began to flourish, but religious reactions were remarkably few and mostly undramatic. Since...... natural theology was not assumed by Lutheran theologians, the issue of design vs. chance was not prevalent. Discussions focused rather on scripture and the general challenge of naturalism, and if Darwin’s name was included, the concern was human uniqueness and the social consequences of Darwinism....... Religious responses thus targeted the materialism of semi-popular Darwinism more than the substance of Darwin’s theory. Around 1900, however, many aspects of Darwin’s theory were accepted. At that time, however, leading biologists found that Darwin’s theory needed to be complemented by a Lamarckian emphasis...

Galapagos: Darwin, evolution, and ENT.

Science.gov (United States)

Bluestone, Charles D

2009-10-01

This year is especially important in the history of the theory of evolution; 2009 is the bicentennial anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the sesquicentennial anniversary of his publication, The Origin of Species. Darwin visited the Galapagos Islands as a young man, which greatly influenced his thinking. My son Jim and I had the good fortune to visit these islands in January 2009 and see firsthand what led Darwin to arrive at his monumental insights into the origins of life on this planet. I have described my observations and related some of this experience to the ear, nose, and throat, albeit with whimsy in several instances. Nonetheless, some of the adaptations in the animals on these unique islands may have bearing on my hypotheses related to the incidence and pathogenesis of otitis media in humans. It is hoped the reader will share my enthusiasm for the experience we had on these fantastic islands and tour them in the future.

Quantum Darwinism as a Darwinian process

OpenAIRE

Campbell, John

2010-01-01

The Darwinian nature of Wojciech Zurek's theory of Quantum Darwinism is evaluated against the criteria of a Darwinian process as understood within Universal Darwinism. The characteristics of a Darwinian process are developed including the consequences of accumulated adaptations resulting in adaptive systems operating in accordance with Friston's free energy principle and employing environmental simulations. Quantum theory, as developed in Zurek's research program and encapsulated by his theor...

Darwin's Legacy to Comparative Psychology and Ethology

Science.gov (United States)

Burghardt, Gordon M.

2009-01-01

Charles Darwin made numerous seminal contributions to the study of animal behavior over his long career. This essay places these contributions in the context of Darwin's life, showing his long-standing interest in psychological and behavioral issues encompassing all species, including humans. Ten areas are highlighted: natural history;…

Defining Darwinism.

Science.gov (United States)

Hull, David L

2011-03-01

Evolutionary theory seems to lend itself to all sorts of misunderstanding. In this paper I strive to decrease such confusions, for example, between Darwinism and Darwinians, propositions and people, organisms and individuals, species as individuals versus species as classes, homologies and homoplasies, and finally essences versus histories. Copyright © 2010. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

[Darwin and bacteria].

Science.gov (United States)

Ledermann D, Walter

2009-02-01

As in 2009 the scientific world celebrates two hundreds years from the birthday of Charles Darwin and one hundred and fifty from the publication of The Origin of Species, an analysis of his complete work is performed, looking for any mention of bacteria. But it seems that the great naturahst never took knowledge about its existence, something rather improbable in a time when the discovery of bacteria shook the medical world, or he deliberately ignored them, not finding a place for such microscopic beings into his theory of evolution. But the bacteria badly affected his familiar life, killing scarlet fever one of his children and worsening to death the evolution of tuberculosis of his favourite Annie. Darwin himself could suffer the sickness of Chagas, whose etiological agent has a similar level to bacteria in the scale of evolution.

The curious case of charles darwin and homeopathy.

Science.gov (United States)

Ullman, Dana

2010-03-01

In 1849, Charles Darwin was so ill that he was unable to work one out of every 3 days, and after having various troubling symptoms for 2-12 years, he wrote to a friend that he was 'going the way of all flesh'. He sought treatment from Dr James Manby Gully, a medical doctor who used water cure and homeopathic medicines. Despite being highly skeptical of these treatments, he experienced a dramatic improvement in his health, though some of his digestive and skin symptoms returned various times in his life. He grew to appreciate water cure, but remained skeptical of homeopathy, even though his own experiments on insectivore plants using what can be described as homeopathic doses of ammonia salts surprised and shocked him with their significant biological effect. Darwin even expressed concern that he should publish these results. Two of Darwin's sons were as incredulous as he was, but their observations confirmed the results of his experiments. Darwin was also known to have read a book on evolution written by a homeopathic physician that Darwin described as similar to his own but 'goes much deeper.'

The Curious Case of Charles Darwin and Homeopathy

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dana Ullman

2010-01-01

Full Text Available In 1849, Charles Darwin was so ill that he was unable to work one out of every 3 days, and after having various troubling symptoms for 2–12 years, he wrote to a friend that he was ‘going the way of all flesh’. He sought treatment from Dr James Manby Gully, a medical doctor who used water cure and homeopathic medicines. Despite being highly skeptical of these treatments, he experienced a dramatic improvement in his health, though some of his digestive and skin symptoms returned various times in his life. He grew to appreciate water cure, but remained skeptical of homeopathy, even though his own experiments on insectivore plants using what can be described as homeopathic doses of ammonia salts surprised and shocked him with their significant biological effect. Darwin even expressed concern that he should publish these results. Two of Darwin's sons were as incredulous as he was, but their observations confirmed the results of his experiments. Darwin was also known to have read a book on evolution written by a homeopathic physician that Darwin described as similar to his own but ‘goes much deeper.’

Foreign bodies; or, how did Darwin invent the symptom?

Science.gov (United States)

Rowlinson, Matthew

2010-01-01

Beginning with a discussion of the sources in Darwin's writing for Freud's theory of the hysterical symptom, this essay proceeds to a symptomatic reading of Darwin himself. With reference to "The Origin of Species," "The Descent of Man," and "The Expression of the Emotions," this essay shows that Darwin's theories of involuntary expressive behavior and of aesthetic preference in sexual selection are linked by their role in his understanding of racial difference and also by their reliance on the idea that learned habits can be inherited as instincts, a view often identified with Lamarck. They are thus at once theories of the foreign body and theories that appear as foreigners within the body of Darwin's work.

Is Darwinism Dead?

Science.gov (United States)

Futuyma, Douglas J.

1985-01-01

Outlines principles of evolutionary theory, including such recent changes as punctuated equilibria. Indicates that the incompleteness of Darwin's theory has been replaced with a conceptual framework and empirical information. Controversial issues remain, but the basic ideas still stand strong. (DH)

Substantive uniformitarianism and Darwinism

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Hsu, K.J.

1985-01-01

Darwin's theory of evolution has two themes: common descent and natural selection. The first has been controversial from the beginning to the present day, but is now well supported by geological and biological evidence. The idea of natural selection was inspired by Malthus' Essay on the Principle of Population and by the Weltanschauung of his time. Geological evidence, commonly negative, was dismissed as artifact of imperfect geological record. Variation, adaptation, and survival of the fittest are the three steps of natural selection. Adaptation implies the presence of stable environments as the goal; changes, if any, had to be gradual, slow enough for organisms to adapt. The definition of fitness also depends upon frame of reference; fitness has no meaning in a rapidly changing world. Recent geochemical, sedimentological, and paleontological studies revealed past occurrences of convulsive environmental changes as probably causes of biotic crises. Extinction was often not, as Darwin believed, the consequence of multiplication of species and selection of the fittest. Extinction could be the cause of several episodes of accelerated evolution when ecologic niches had been liberated after a catastrophe. The geological investigations of the century after Darwin indicated the inadequacy of those ideas which had been postulated on the basis of social philosophy.

The Mastodon in the room: how Darwinian is neo-Darwinism?

Science.gov (United States)

Brooks, Daniel R

2011-03-01

Failing to acknowledge substantial differences between Darwinism and neo-Darwinism impedes evolutionary biology. Darwin described evolution as the outcome of interactions between the nature of the organism and the nature of the conditions, each relatively autonomous but both historically and spatially intertwined. Furthermore, he postulated that the nature of the organism was more important than the nature of the conditions, leading to natural selection as an inevitable emergent product of biological systems. The neo-Darwinian tradition assumed a creative rather than selective view of natural selection, with the nature of the organism determined by the nature of the conditions, rendering the nature of the organism and temporal contingency unnecessary. Contemporary advances in biology, specifically the phylogenetics revolution and evo-devo, underscore the significance of history and the nature of the organism in biology. Darwinism explains more biology better, and better resolves apparent anomalies between living systems and more general natural laws, than does neo-Darwinism. The "extended" or "expanded" synthesis currently called for by neo-Darwinians is Darwinism. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Danes commemorating Darwin: apes and evolution at the 1909 anniversary.

Science.gov (United States)

Hjermitslev, Hans Henrik

2010-10-01

This article analyses the Danish 1909 celebrations of the centenary of Charles Darwin's birth on 12 February 1809. I argue that the 1909 meetings, lectures and publications devoted to Darwin and his theory of evolution by natural selection can be characterised by ambivalence: on the one hand, tribute to a great man of science who established a new view of nature and, on the other hand, scepticism towards the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection and the wider religious and political implications drawn from his theory. The article examines both professional and popular commemorative activities, focusing primarily on celebratory articles carried in widely circulated magazines and newspapers. I identify three types of interpretations of Darwin's ideas which I characterise as 'radical', 'evangelical' and 'safe' science. These different positions were closely linked to the political and cultural divisions of the periodical press. Moreover, my analysis of the popular press offers a solid basis for asserting that to most people Darwinism was associated with human evolution, primarily the relationship between man and apes, while more sophisticated discussions about the crisis of Darwinism prominent among naturalists played only a secondary role in the public arena. This article demonstrates the value of using newspapers as historical sources when looking for public images of Darwin, popular receptions of Darwinism and representations of science in general.

Darwin at Orchis Bank: Selection after the Origin.

Science.gov (United States)

Tabb, Kathryn

2016-02-01

Darwin's first publication after the Origin of Species was a volume on orchids that expanded on the theory of adaptation through natural selection introduced in his opus. Here I argue that On the Various Contrivances by which British and Foreign Orchids are Fertilised by Insects (1862) is not merely an empirical confirmation of his theory. In response to immediate criticisms of his metaphor of natural selection, Darwin uses Orchids to present adaptation as the result of innumerable natural laws, rather than discrete acts analogous to conscious choices. The means of selection among polliniferous plants cannot be neatly classed under the Origin's categories of artificial, natural, or sexual selection. Along with Darwin's exploration of sexual selection in his later works, Orchids serves to undo the restrictive metaphor so firmly established by the Origin and to win over those of Darwin's contemporaries who were committed advocates of natural law but suspicious of evolution by natural selection. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

[Does Darwinism really contribute to ecology].

Science.gov (United States)

Mirkin, B M

2003-01-01

The author questions Ghilarov's (2003) claim that Darwinism has high explanatory power in ecology. He is agree with S.V. Meyen who believed that beside synthetic theory of evolution (the popular variant on Darwinism) other explanations of evolution are possible. It is emphasized that several processes (e.g., diversification and unification of species at one trophic level, as well as individual and diffusive coadaptations of species of different levels) can contribute to community evolution. Communities cannot be considered as units of natural selection.

Charles Darwin and psychology at the bicentennial and sesquicentennial: an introduction.

Science.gov (United States)

Dewsbury, Donald A

2009-01-01

This article provides an introduction to the special issue on Darwin and psychology at the bicentennial of his birth and the sesquicentennial of his publication of On the Origin of Species. His core contributions, as viewed today, were his theory of natural selection, his naturalistic philosophy, and his mass of evidence for evolutionary change. A brief summary of Darwin's life is also presented. Among Darwin's contributions to psychology were his demonstration of the continuity of species, a model for the study of instinct, a book on the expression of the emotions, and a baby biography. Previous celebrations of Darwin and the changing perceptions of his work since its publication are described. Darwin's theory remains an important part of psychology. 2009 APA, all rights reserved

Stratigraphy and paleogeographic significance of a Late Pennsylvanian to Early Permian channeled slope sequence in the Darwin Basin, southern Darwin Hills, east-central California

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Stevens, Calvin H.; Stone, Paul; Magginetti, Robert T.; Ritter, Scott M.

2015-01-01

The complex stratigraphy of late Paleozoic rocks in the southern Darwin Hills consists of regionally extensive Mississippian and Early to Middle Pennsylvanian rocks overlain by latest Pennsylvanian to Early Permian rocks, herein called the Darwin Hills sequence. Deposition of this latter sequence marked the beginning of the Darwin Basin. In Mississippian time, a carbonate platform prograded westward over slightly older slope deposits. In the Late Mississippian this platform was exposed to erosion and siliciclastic sediments were deposited. In Early to Middle Pennsylvanian time the area subsided, forming a west-facing ramp that was subjected to deformation and erosion in Middle or early Late Pennsylvanian time. Later this area was tilted westward and deep-water sediments were deposited on this slope. In latest Pennsylvanian to earliest Permian time, a major channel was cut through the older Pennsylvanian rocks and into the Upper Mississippian strata. This channel was gradually filled with increasingly finer grained, deep-water sediment as the area evolved into a basin floor by Early Permian (Sakmarian) time. Expansion of the Darwin Basin in Artinskian time led to a second phase of deposition represented by strata of the regionally extensive Darwin Canyon Formation. The geology in this small area thus documents tectonic events occurring during the early development of the Darwin Basin.

Neutrino physics with DARWIN

Science.gov (United States)

Benabderrahmane, M. L.

2017-09-01

DARWIN (DARk matter WImp search with liquid xenoN) will be a multi-ton dark matter detector with the primary goal of exploring the entire experimentally accessible parameter space for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) over a wide mass-range. With its 40 tonne active liquid xenon target, low-energy threshold and ultra-low background level, DARWIN can also search for other rare interactions. Here we present its sensitivity to low-energy solar neutrinos and to neutrinoless double beta decay. In a low-energy window of 2-30 keV a rate of 105/year, from pp and 7Be neutrinos can be reached. Such a measurement, with 1% precision will allow testing neutrinos models. DARWIN could also reach a competitive half-life sensitivity of 8.5 · 1027 y to the neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ) of 136Xe after an exposure of 140 t×y of natural xenon. Nuclear recoils from coherent scattering of solar neutrinos will limit the sensitivity to WIMP masses below 5 GeV/c2, and the event rate from 8B neutrinos would range from a few to a few tens of events per tonne and year, depending on the energy threshold of the detector. Deviations from the predicted but yet unmeasured neutrino flux would be an indication for physics beyond the Standard Model

The Voyage of the Beagle: Field Work Lessons from Charles Darwin.

Science.gov (United States)

Smith, Louis M.

1987-01-01

Analyzes Charles Darwin's letters to his family during his voyage on H.M.S. Beagle. Relates the information to the development of Darwin's professional identity and the degree to which the concepts, field methods, and research methods revealed in Darwin's personal correspondence are useful to students of educational administration. (MD)

Streamlined Darwin simulation of nonneutral plasmas

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hewett, D.W.; Boyd, J.K.

1987-01-01

Efficient, new algorithms that require less formal manipulation than previous implementations have been formulated for the numerical solution of the Darwin model. These new procedures reduce the effort required to achieve some of the advantages that the Darwin model offers. Because the Courant--Friedrichs--Lewy stability limit for radiation modes is eliminated, the Darwin model has the advantage of a substantially larger time-step. Further, without radiation modes, simulation results are less sensitive to enhanced particle fluctation noise. We discuss methods for calculating the magnetic field that avoid formal vector decomposition and offer a new procedure for finding the inductive electric field. This procedure avoids vector decomposition of plasma source terms and circumvents some source gradient issues that slow convergence. As a consequence, the numerical effort required for each of the field time-steps is reduced, and more importantly, the need to specify several nonintuitive boundary conditions is eliminated. copyright 1987 Academic Press, Inc

Darwin as a student of behavior.

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Thierry, Bernard

2010-02-01

In The Expression of the Emotions, Charles Darwin documents evolutionary continuity between animals and humans, emphasizing the universality of expressions in man. Most of the book addresses human behavior, and its influence on the study of animal behavior has been weak. The issue of natural selection is remarkably absent from this book, which relies on the inheritance of acquired characters rather than on a genuine Darwinian logic. Yet Konrad Lorenz considered Darwin to be a forerunner of behavioral biology. The reason was to be found in The Descent of Man and chapter VIII of The Origin of Species, where Darwin provides an explanation of behavior through selection, stating that the same mechanisms explaining morphological changes also account for gradual improvements in instincts. He assessed the accuracy of his evolutionary theory by directly studying animal behavior, hence laying the foundations of behavioral research for the next century. 2009 Académie des sciences. Published by Elsevier SAS. All rights reserved.

Social Darwinism: from reality to myth and from myth to reality.

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Becquemont, Daniel

2011-03-01

Considering the variety of contradictory definitions which have been attributed to the term in the course of more than a century, one may be tempted to admit that 'Social Darwinism' can be reduced to a social myth. But it seems nevertheless necessary to answer the question: what has been called 'Social Darwinism' for more than one century and why was the expression used in a negative way to express contradictory opinions which sometimes have nothing to do with Darwin's theory. What we still call 'Social Darwinism' is the result of a misunderstanding: the theories expressed under that phrase have little to do with the Darwinian concepts of natural selection or descent with modification. They have their origin in a pre-darwinian conception of the struggle for existence, which Darwin used in a metaphorical sense. This confusion will then appear to refer clearly to the relationship we establish between biology and society, whether biological laws are directly prolonged in society, or more or less intermingle in a close network. The issue of the definition of Social Darwinism depends obviously on the possible answers to this question, and so does the issue of redefining Darwinism at large. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

And of Darwin that?

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Pinzon Lopez, Jaime

2002-01-01

The article is about the investigations and contributions of Darwin related with the evolution of the species. Material that gathered through their trips along everybody and the comparison that he makes with the man

Like grandfather, like grandson: Erasmus and Charles Darwin on evolution.

Science.gov (United States)

Smith, C U M

2010-01-01

Last year (2009) marked the bicentenary of Charles Darwin's birth and the sesquicentenary of The Origin of Species. This article examines the influence of Erasmus Darwin on Charles's evolutionary thought and shows how, in many ways, Erasmus anticipated his much better-known grandson. It discusses the similarity in the mindsets of the two Darwins, asks how far the younger Darwin was exposed to the elder's evolutionary thought, examines the similarities and differences in their theories of evolution, and ends by showing the surprising similarity between their theories of inheritance. Erasmus's influence on Charles is greater than customarily acknowledged, and now is an opportune time to bring the grandfather out from behind the glare of his stellar grandson.

Darwin's Revolution in Thought: An Illustrated Lecture. Teaching Guide and Videotape.

Science.gov (United States)

Gould, Stephen Jay

"Darwin's Revolution in Thought" is Stephen Jay Gould's definitive treatise on Charles Darwin. This 50-minute classroom edition videotaped lecture is structured in the form of a paradox and three riddles about Darwin's life. Each is designed to shed light on one of the key features of the theory of natural selection, its philosophical…

Darwin and Evolution Indian Academy of Sciences, 3 July 2009 (mid ...

Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

2009-07-03

Jul 3, 2009 ... Darwin and Evolution Indian Academy of Sciences, 3 July 2009 (mid-year meeting, Hyderabad) · Darwin, 1840 · Slide 3 · Natural Selection · Why does natural selection occur? What does natural selection lead to? Slide 7 · Complexity · Slide 9 · Slide 10 · Darwin on mind · Features of natural selection.

Did Darwin change his mind about the Fuegians?

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Radick, Gregory

2010-06-01

Shocked by what he considered to be the savagery he encountered in Tierra del Fuego, Charles Darwin ranked the Fuegians lowest among the human races. An enduring story has it, however, that Darwin was later so impressed by the successes of missionaries there, and by the grandeur they discovered in the native tongue, that he changed his mind. This story has served diverse interests, religious and scientific. But Darwin in fact continued to view the Fuegians as he had from the start, as lowly but improvable. And while his case for their unity with the other human races drew on missionary evidence, that evidence concerned emotional expression, not language. Copyright 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Humanos salvajes y monos altruistas. Reflexiones sobre Darwin

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jorge Martinez Contreras

2009-10-01

Full Text Available RESUMEN   Darwin propuso en 1871 que preferiría descender de un mono que de los “salvajes”. El mono es un babuino hamadryas que, en un relato de Brehm, salva a un infante de una jauría. Los “salvajes” son los fueguinos a los que visitó en los años 1830. ¿Por qué Darwin fue tan buen observador del comportamiento animal y por qué no dudo discernir en qué consistía la sociedad de cazadores-recolectores de los cuatro grupos de Tierra del Fuego?. Esto es lo que tratamos de dilucidar en este trabajo.   Palabras clave: Darwin, fueguinos, hamadryas, altruismo, egoísmo.

Economic Darwinism

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sloth, Birgitte; Whitta-Jacobsen, Hans Jørgen

We define an evolutionary process of “economic Darwinism” for playing-the-field, symmetric games. The process captures two forces. One is “economic selection”: if current behavior leads to payoff differences, behavior yielding lowest payoff has strictly positive probability of being replaced...... in the literature. Using this result, we demonstrate that generally under positive (negative) externalities, economic Darwinism implies even more under- (over-) activity than does Nash equilibrium...

Darwin's Book: "On the Origin of Species"

Science.gov (United States)

Hodge, Jonathan

2013-01-01

This essay is an interpretation of Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species". It focuses on the contents of the "Origin" as Darwin intended them to be understood and the background to the work, thus revealing the originality (or otherwise) of the work.

Darwin Core: An Evolving Community-Developed Biodiversity Data Standard

Science.gov (United States)

Wieczorek, John; Bloom, David; Guralnick, Robert; Blum, Stan; Döring, Markus; Giovanni, Renato; Robertson, Tim; Vieglais, David

2012-01-01

Biodiversity data derive from myriad sources stored in various formats on many distinct hardware and software platforms. An essential step towards understanding global patterns of biodiversity is to provide a standardized view of these heterogeneous data sources to improve interoperability. Fundamental to this advance are definitions of common terms. This paper describes the evolution and development of Darwin Core, a data standard for publishing and integrating biodiversity information. We focus on the categories of terms that define the standard, differences between simple and relational Darwin Core, how the standard has been implemented, and the community processes that are essential for maintenance and growth of the standard. We present case-study extensions of the Darwin Core into new research communities, including metagenomics and genetic resources. We close by showing how Darwin Core records are integrated to create new knowledge products documenting species distributions and changes due to environmental perturbations. PMID:22238640

The first Charles Darwin (1758-78).

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Harris, Stuart

2009-11-01

The paper places the first Charles Darwin in his family context: the eldest son of Dr Erasmus Darwin and Mary Howard. Mention is made of Charles's upbringing and education, with illustrative material taken from his father's writings and from Anna Seward's Memoirs of the Life of Dr Darwin (1804). The part played by Dr Andrew Duncan of the Edinburgh Medical School is established. The award to Charles in March 1778 of the first medal by the Aesculapian Society of Edinburgh is described. The involvement of Dr William Cullen and Dr Joseph Black in the treatment of Charles's fatal infection is evidenced from Erasmus' letters. Attention is given to 'An Elegy on the much-lamented death of a most ingenious young gentleman who lately died in the College at Edinburgh where he was a student' which was written jointly by Duncan and Erasmus in 1778. The Elegy's curious publishing history will be glanced at. The paper concludes with a statement of Charles's great promise as a medical student and of Erasmus' efforts to ensure that his son's achievements were memorialised.

From Charles Darwin's botanical country-house studies to modern plant biology.

Science.gov (United States)

Kutschera, U; Briggs, W R

2009-11-01

As a student of theology at Cambridge University, Charles Darwin (1809-1882) attended the lectures of the botanist John S. Henslow (1796-1861). This instruction provided the basis for his life-long interest in plants as well as the species question. This was a major reason why in his book On the Origin of Species, which was published 150 years ago, Darwin explained his metaphorical phrase 'struggle for life' with respect to animals and plants. In this article, we review Darwin's botanical work with reference to the following topics: the struggle for existence in the vegetable kingdom with respect to the phytochrome-mediated shade avoidance response; the biology of flowers and Darwin's plant-insect co-evolution hypothesis; climbing plants and the discovery of action potentials; the power of movement in plants and Darwin's conflict with the German plant physiologist Julius Sachs; and light perception by growing grass coleoptiles with reference to the phototropins. Finally, we describe the establishment of the scientific discipline of Plant Biology that took place in the USA 80 years ago, and define this area of research with respect to Darwin's work on botany and the physiology of higher plants.

The explanatory logic and ontological commitments of generalized Darwinism

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Stoelhorst, J.W.

2008-01-01

The recent debate about the value of Darwinism as a source of ontological foundations for evolutionary economics reduces to a disagreement about whether or not the causal logic of Darwinism applies to economic evolution. However, this logic has not yet been fully specified. While the explanantia of

Aspects of three field approximations: Darwin, frozen, EMPULSE

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Boyd, J.K.; Lee, E.P.; Yu, S.S.

1985-01-01

The traditional approach used to study high energy beam propagation relies on the frozen field approximation. A minor modification of the frozen field approximation yields the set of equations applied to the analysis of the hose instability. These models are constrasted with the Darwin field approximation. A statement is made of the Darwin model equations relevant to the analysis of the hose instability

Darwin, Veblen and the problem of causality in economics.

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Hodgson, G M

2001-01-01

This article discusses some of the ways in which Darwinism has influenced a small minority of economists. It is argued that Darwinism involves a philosophical as well as a theoretical doctrine. Despite claims to the contrary, the uses of analogies to Darwinian natural selection theory are highly limited in economics. Exceptions include Thorstein Veblen, Richard Nelson, and Sidney Winter. At the philosophical level, one of the key features of Darwinism is its notion of detailed understanding in terms of chains of cause and effect. This issue is discussed in the context of the problem of causality in social theory. At least in Darwinian terms, the prevailing causal dualism--of intentional and mechanical causality--in the social sciences is found wanting. Once again, Veblen was the first economist to understand the implications for economics of Darwinism at this philosophical level. For Veblen, it was related to his notion of 'cumulative causation'. The article concludes with a discussion of the problems and potential of this Veblenian position.

Combating plant diseases--the Darwin connection.

Science.gov (United States)

Hollomon, Derek W; Brent, Keith J

2009-11-01

Although Darwin knew of plant diseases, he did not study them as part of his analysis of natural selection. Effective plant disease control has only been developed after his death. This article explores the relevance of Darwin's ideas to three problem areas with respect to diseases caused by fungi: emergence of new diseases, loss of disease resistance bred into plants and development of fungicide resistance. Darwin's concept of change through natural or artificial selection relied on selection of many small changes, but subsequent genetic research has shown that change can also occur through large steps. Appearance of new diseases can involve gene duplication, transfer or recombination, but all evidence points to both host plant resistance and fungicide susceptibility being overcome through point mutations. Because the population size of diseases such as rusts and powdery and downy mildews is so large, all possible point mutations are likely to occur daily, even during moderate epidemics. Overcoming control measures therefore reflects the overall fitness of these mutants, and much resource effort is being directed towards assessment of their fitness, both in the presence and in the absence of selection. While recent developments in comparative genomics have caused some revision of Darwin's ideas, experience in managing plant disease control measures clearly demonstrates the relevance of concepts he introduced 150 years ago. It also reveals the remarkable speed and the practical impact of adaptation in wild microorganism populations to changes in their environment, and the difficulty of stopping or delaying such adaptation. (c) 2009 Society of Chemical Industry.

JAMSTEC DARWIN Database Assimilates GANSEKI and COEDO

Science.gov (United States)

Tomiyama, T.; Toyoda, Y.; Horikawa, H.; Sasaki, T.; Fukuda, K.; Hase, H.; Saito, H.

2017-12-01

Introduction: Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) archives data and samples obtained by JAMSTEC research vessels and submersibles. As a common property of the human society, JAMSTEC archive is open for public users with scientific/educational purposes [1]. For publicizing its data and samples online, JAMSTEC is operating NUUNKUI data sites [2], a group of several databases for various data and sample types. For years, data and metadata of JAMSTEC rock samples, sediment core samples and cruise/dive observation were publicized through databases named GANSEKI, COEDO, and DARWIN, respectively. However, because they had different user interfaces and data structures, these services were somewhat confusing for unfamiliar users. Maintenance costs of multiple hardware and software were also problematic for performing sustainable services and continuous improvements. Database Integration: In 2017, GANSEKI, COEDO and DARWIN were integrated into DARWIN+ [3]. The update also included implementation of map-search function as a substitute of closed portal site. Major functions of previous systems were incorporated into the new system; users can perform the complex search, by thumbnail browsing, map area, keyword filtering, and metadata constraints. As for data handling, the new system is more flexible, allowing the entry of variety of additional data types. Data Management: After the DARWIN major update, JAMSTEC data & sample team has been dealing with minor issues of individual sample data/metadata which sometimes need manual modification to be transferred to the new system. Some new data sets, such as onboard sample photos and surface close-up photos of rock samples, are getting available online. Geochemical data of sediment core samples will supposedly be added in the near future. Reference: [1] http://www.jamstec.go.jp/e/database/data_policy.html [2] http://www.godac.jamstec.go.jp/jmedia/portal/e/ [3] http://www.godac.jamstec.go.jp/darwin/e/

From Darwin's Origin of Species toward a theory of natural history.

Science.gov (United States)

Boero, Ferdinando

2015-01-01

Darwin is the father of evolutionary theory because he identified evolutionary patterns and, with Natural Selection, he ascertained the exquisitely ecological ultimate processes that lead to evolution. The proximate processes of evolution he proposed, however, predated the discovery of genetics, the backbone of modern evolutionary theory. The later discovery of the laws of inheritance by Mendel and the rediscovery of Mendel in the early 20th century led to two reforms of Darwinism: Neo-Darwinism and the Modern Synthesis (and subsequent refinements). If Darwin's evolutionary thought required much refinement, his ecological insight is still very modern. In the first edition of The Origin of Species, Darwin did not use either the word "evolution" or the word "ecology". "Ecology" was not coined until after the publication of the Origin. Evolution, for him, was the origin of varieties, then species, which he referred to as well-marked varieties, whereas, instead of using ecology, he used "the economy of nature". The Origin contains a high proportion of currently accepted ecological principles. Darwin labelled himself a naturalist. His discipline (natural history) was a blend of ecology and evolution in which he investigated both the patterns and the processes that determine the organization of life. Reductionist approaches, however, often keep the two disciplines separated from each other, undermining a full understanding of natural phenomena that might be favored by blending ecology and evolution through the development of a modern Theory of Natural History based on Darwin's vision of the study of life.

Darwin's goldmine is still open: variation and selection run the world

Science.gov (United States)

Forterre, Patrick

2012-01-01

The scientific contribution of Darwin, still agonized in many religious circles, has now been recognized and celebrated by scientists from various disciplines. However, in recent years, several evolutionists have criticized Darwin as outdated, arguing that “Darwinism,” assimilated to the “tree of life,” cannot explain microbial evolution, or else was not operating in early life evolution. These critics either confuse “Darwinism” and old versions of “neo-Darwinism” or misunderstand the role of gene transfers in evolution. The core of Darwin explanation of evolution (variation/selection) remains necessary and sufficient to decipher the history of life. The enormous diversity of mechanisms underlying variations has been successfully interpreted by evolutionists in this framework and has considerably enriched the corpus of evolutionary biology without the necessity to kill the father. However, it remains for evolutionists to acknowledge interactions between cells and viruses (unknown for Darwin) as a major driving force in life evolution. PMID:22919695

Race, language, and mental evolution in Darwin's descent of man.

Science.gov (United States)

Alter, Stephen G

2007-01-01

Charles Darwin was notoriously ambiguous in his remarks about the relationship between human evolution and biological race. He stressed the original unity of the races, yet he also helped to popularize the notion of a racial hierarchy filling the gaps between the highest anthropoids and civilized Europeans. A focus on Darwin's explanation of how humans initially evolved, however, shows that he mainly stressed not hierarchy but a version of humanity's original mental unity. In his book The Descent of Man, Darwin emphasized a substantial degree of mental development (including the incipient use of language) in the early, monogenetic phase of human evolution. This development, he argued, necessarily came before primeval man's numerical increase, geographic dispersion, and racial diversification, because only thus could one explain how that group was able to spread at the expense of rival ape-like populations. This scenario stood opposed to a new evolutionary polygenism formulated in the wake of Darwin's Origin of Species by his ostensible supporters Alfred Russel Wallace and Ernst Haeckel. Darwin judged this outlook inadequate to the task of explaining humanity's emergence. (c) 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Our Way to Understand the World: Darwin's Controversial Inheritance

Science.gov (United States)

Schmidt-Salomon, Michael

Shortly after he had completed the first draft of his theory of evolution in 1844, Charles Darwin wrote to his friend Joseph Hooker, the botanist, that publishing the theory seemed to him "like confessing a murder" (Glaubrecht 2009, p. 161). Right from the beginning, Darwin was aware of the far-reaching impact his theory would have. And this was probably one of the main reasons for his postponing the publication of his ideas for such a long time. After the completion of the 230 page text in 1844, it was another 15 years (!) before his famous book On the Origin of Species was published. Since that time 150 years have passed, but the theory of evolution is as controversial as ever. Darwin's dangerous idea is still putting many traditional world views through some very hard tests. This is the central theme to which I have devoted the following thoughts. I have divided my study into three parts: I shall start by shedding some light on the conflict between Darwin's challenging idea and traditional (Christian) beliefs, a conflict that has lasted till this very day. In the second part, I want to focus on the ideological abuse of the theory of evolution. The third and final part introduces Julian Huxley's concept of 'evolutionary humanism', which links Darwin's scientific inheritance with a distinctly humanist ethic.

Darwin and the origin of life: public versus private science.

Science.gov (United States)

Strick, James E

2009-12-01

In the first twenty years after the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species, an intense debate took place within the ranks of Darwin's supporters over exactly what his theory implied about the means by which the original living organism formed on Earth. Many supporters of evolutionary science also supported the doctrine of spontaneous generation: life forming from nonliving material not just once but many times up to the present day. Darwin was ambivalent on this topic. He feared its explosive potential to drive away liberal-minded Christians who might otherwise be supporters. His ambivalent wording created still more confusion, both among friends and foes, about what Darwin actually believed about the origin of life. A famous lecture by Thomas H. Huxley in 1870 set forth what later became the 'party line' Darwinian position on the subject.

The theory of Darwin

CERN Multimedia

Thuillier,P

1984-01-01

Biographie de Charles Darwin, naturaliste anglaise (1809 - 1882), qui demeurait fameux dans l'histoire des sciences, parce qu'il a inventé une théorie qui permet de rendre compte rationnellement en principe de la formation des diverses formes vivantes que nous voyons

Darwin: Dose monitoring system applicable to various radiations with wide energy ranges

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sato, T.; Satoh, D.; Endo, A.; Yamaguchi, Y.

2007-01-01

A new radiation dose monitor, designated as DARWIN (Dose monitoring system Applicable to various Radiations with Wide energy ranges), has been developed for real-time monitoring of doses in workspaces and surrounding environments of high-energy accelerator facilities. DARWIN is composed of a Phoswitch-type scintillation detector, which consists of liquid organic scintillator BC501A coupled with ZnS(Ag) scintillation sheets doped with 6 Li, and a data acquisition system based on a Digital-Storage-Oscilloscope. DARWIN has the following features: (1) capable of monitoring doses from neutrons, photons and muons with energies from thermal energy to 1 GeV, 150 keV to 100 MeV and 1 MeV to 100 GeV, respectively, (2) highly sensitive with precision and (3) easy to operate with a simple graphical user-interface. The performance of DARWIN was examined experimentally in several radiation fields. The results of the experiments indicated the accuracy and wide response range of DARWIN for measuring dose rates from neutrons, photons and muons with wide energies. It was also found from the experiments that DARWIN enables us to monitor small fluctuations of neutron dose rates near the background level because of its high sensitivity. With these properties, DARWIN will be able to play a very important role for improving radiation safety in high-energy accelerator facilities. (authors)

As teorias de Lamarck e Darwin nos livros didáticos de Biologia no Brasil Lamarck's and Darwin's theories in text books of Biology in Brazil

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Argus Vasconcelos de Almeida

2010-01-01

Full Text Available As teorias de Lamarck e Darwin são analisadas numa amostra de livros didáticos brasileiros de biologia, num período de sessenta anos. A de Darwin ocupa, nos livros didáticos, uma área maior do que a de Lamarck. Nestes é variável a extensão do conteúdo de Lamarck. Dentre os livros, destacam-se as edições do BSCS. Nestas, pela primeira vez, é apresentado o exemplo da figura do alongamento do pescoço da girafa, para ilustrar as diferenças de abordagem entre as teorias, e reproduzido desde então na maioria dos livros didáticos. Na teoria de Darwin, o principal conceito referenciado pelos autores é o da seleção natural, e, na de Lamarck, a herança dos caracteres adquiridos. As duas teorias são diferentemente apresentadas nos livros didáticos de biologia no Brasil. Darwin é apresentado como modelo de cientista e Lamarck como um teórico especulativo, tendo a sua teoria consideravelmente deformada, distante da formulação original.Theories formulated by Lamarck and Darwin are analyzed in a sample of Brazilian textbooks on biology published in a period of sixty years. Darwin's theory is covered more than Lamarck's theory. Among the analyzed books, an important mention must be addressed for BSCS editions, since the example of the elongation of the giraffes" necks for illustrating differences between both theories is presented in this series for the first time, and since then has been adopted by the majority of other textbooks on biology. The main concepts presented as representative of Darwin's and Lamarck's theories by all textbooks are natural selection and the inheritance of acquired characters, respectively. Not only theories but also the authors are differently presented in reviewed textbooks: while Darwin is presented as a model of scientist, Lamarck appears as a speculative theoretician, his theoretical propositions being remarkably deformed and changed from their original formulations.

The Evolution of Darwinism.

Science.gov (United States)

Stebbins, G. Ledyard; Ayala, Francisco J.

1985-01-01

Recent developments in molecular biology and new interpretations of the fossil record are gradually altering and adding to Charles Darwin's theory, which has been the standard view of the process of evolution for 40 years. Several of these developments and interpretations are identified and discussed. (JN)

Empathy's purity, sympathy's complexities; De Waal, Darwin and Adam Smith.

Science.gov (United States)

van der Weele, Cor

2011-07-01

Frans de Waal's view that empathy is at the basis of morality directly seems to build on Darwin, who considered sympathy as the crucial instinct. Yet when we look closer, their understanding of the central social instinct differs considerably. De Waal sees our deeply ingrained tendency to sympathize (or rather: empathize) with others as the good side of our morally dualistic nature. For Darwin, sympathizing was not the whole story of the "workings of sympathy"; the (selfish) need to receive sympathy played just as central a role in the complex roads from sympathy to morality. Darwin's understanding of sympathy stems from Adam Smith, who argued that the presence of morally impure motives should not be a reason for cynicism about morality. I suggest that De Waal's approach could benefit from a more thorough alignment with the analysis of the workings of sympathy in the work of Darwin and Adam Smith.

Developing of the future: scaffolded Darwinism in societal evolution.

Science.gov (United States)

Andersson, Claes; Törnberg, Anton; Törnberg, Petter

2014-08-01

We sympathize with the project of a synthetic approach for devising a "theory of intentional change" and agree that Darwinism should be central in such a theory. But Darwinism is not the only process of evolution that needs to be included. Evolutionary biology itself has taken such a turn recently, with the emergence of developmental evolutionary approaches.

Charles Darwin's Botanical Investigations

Science.gov (United States)

Harley, Suzanne M.

2010-01-01

Charles Darwin's botanical studies provide a way to expose students to his work that followed the publication of "On the Origin of Species." We can use stories from his plant investigations to illustrate key concepts in the life sciences and model how questions are asked and answered in science.

Bravo Emma! Music in the life and work of Charles Darwin.

Science.gov (United States)

Derry, J F

2009-03-01

The long-term marital dance of Emma and Charles Darwin was set to the routine beat of an almost daily piano recital. Emma was a proficient pianist, and so a quality instrument was a welcome and appropriate house-warming present for their first marital home in London. That same piano accompanied the Darwins on their move to Downe before being upgraded for a newer model, which is still there, whilst another, cheaper piano may have played in Charles Darwin's work, particularly on earthworms. Whilst he lamented his own lack of musicality, Darwin revelled in his wife's prowess, a capacity that he recognised could be inherited, not least through observation of his own children. The evolution of musicality, he reasoned, was rooted in sexual attraction as a form of communication that preceded language.

Getting to Darwin: Obstacles to Accepting Evolution by Natural Selection

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Thagard, Paul; Findlay, Scott

2010-01-01

Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is central to modern biology, but is resisted by many people. This paper discusses the major psychological obstacles to accepting Darwin's theory. Cognitive obstacles to adopting evolution by natural selection include conceptual difficulties, methodological issues, and coherence problems that…

An Ottoman response to Darwinism: İsmail Fennî on Islam and evolution.

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Bilgili, Alper

2015-12-01

The Scopes trial (1925) fuelled discussion in the United States on the social and political implications of Darwinism. For the defenders of the 1925 Tennessee law - which prohibited the teaching of Darwinism in schools - Darwinism was, amongst other things, responsible for the German militarism which eventually led to the First World War. This view was supported by İsmail Fennî, a late Ottoman intellectual, who authored a book immediately after the trial which aimed to debunk scientific materialism. In it, he claimed that Darwinism blurred the distinction between man and beast and thus destroyed the foundations of morality. However, despite his anti-Darwinist stance, İsmail Fennî argued against laws forbidding the teaching of Darwinism in schools, and emphasized that even false theories contributed to scientific improvement. Indeed, because of his belief in science he claimed that Muslims should not reject Darwinism if it were supported by future scientific evidence. If this turned out to be the case, then religious interpretations should be revised accordingly. This article contributes to the literature on early Muslim reactions to Darwinism by examining the views of İsmail Fennî, which were notably sophisticated when compared with those of the anti-religious Darwinist and anti-Darwinist religious camps that dominated late Ottoman intellectual life.

Classical system boundaries cannot be determined within quantum Darwinism

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Fields, Chris

Multiple observers who interact with environmental encodings of the states of a macroscopic quantum system S as required by quantum Darwinism cannot demonstrate that they are jointly observing S without a joint a priori assumption of a classical boundary separating S from its environment E. Quantum Darwinism cannot, therefore, be regarded as providing a purely quantum-mechanical explanation of the "emergence" of classicality.

Darwin and Reductionisms: Victorian, Neo-Darwinian and Postgenomic Biologies

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Angelique Richardson

2010-10-01

Full Text Available This article compares the open-ended Darwinism of Charles Darwin, George Lewes, George Eliot and Thomas Hardy with reductive post-Weismann and early eugenist views and more recent neo-Darwinian ideas including literary Darwinism. It argues that some Victorians had a clear sense of the complexities of the natural world, and of the centrality of environment to life. This awareness contrasts with the processes of divorce and isolation that underpin neo-Darwinian understandings of evolutionary development. But biologists and philosophers of biology are now emphasising the complex and dynamic relations between organism and environment in ways that would have appealed to Darwin’s contemporaries. The article establishes that there are significant parallels between mid-Victorian and postgenomic thought.

Darwin-Bali Exchange School Visits

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Stone, T.

1974-01-01

Describes an exchange program between Indonesian language students and teachers from Darwin and a group of students and teachers from Bali. The visits related to the subject areas of history, geography, Asian studies, and Bahasa Indonesia. (RM)

Cock-fighting

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Lech, Marcel Lysgaard

2018-01-01

That Cock-fighting was extremely popular the ancient Greece, is clearly showed by the numerous depictions on vases and its symbolic and metaphorical range among the language of the Athenians. Greek comedy exploits and expands the metaphorical use of cock-fighting in both the linguistic and the pe...

An appreciation of Christiane Groehen: the correspondence between Charles Darwin and Anton Dohrn.

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Browne, Janet

2015-01-01

Anton Dohrn was introduced to Darwinism by Ernst Haeckel during his student years at Jena, and became an eager disciple of Charles Darwin's work. He founded the Stazione Zoologica in 1872. Darwin became a patron of Dohrn's Stazione, and the two naturalists corresponded regularly. This article discusses their relationship and the contributions of Christiane Groeben to its elucidation.

"How nationality influences Opinion": Darwinism and palaeontology in France (1859-1914).

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Cohen, Claudine

2017-12-01

This paper discusses the "non-reception" of Darwin's works and concepts in French palaeontology and palaeoanthropology between 1859 and 1914. Indeed, this integration was difficult, biased and belated, for ideological, intellectual and epistemological reasons: Clémence Royer's biased 1862 translation of Darwin's Origin of Species pulled its ideas toward "social darwinism", making them less attractive to the natural sciences. - French nationalism and the authority of religion, which imposed Cuvier's thinking until late into the century - the dominance of Lamarckian and neo-Lamarckian transformism in France, both in biology and in paleontology, which proposed the notion of orthogenetic laws and environmental determinations, and refused darwinian evolutionary mechanisms - obstacles inherent to the application of Darwin's concepts to palaeontology, namely the impossibility to identify evolutionary mechanisms through the fossil record, which was stressed by Darwin himself and underlined in turn by 19th century French palaeontologists. However, as I argue, in the course of the examined period, French palaeontology grew from refusal to a better understanding and evaluation of Darwin's thinking. The quest for intermediary forms, the construction of branching evolutionary trees and the attempts to reconstruct human biological and cultural evolution were important efforts toward an integration of some aspects of Darwinian views and practices into French palaeontology and plaeoanthropology. The 1947 Paris conference which brought together American Neo-darwinists and French paleontologists made Darwinian concepts better understood and triggered a revival of French palaeontology from the 1960s. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Protestant Responses to Darwinism in Denmark, 1859-1914

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Hjermitslev, Hans Henrik

2011-01-01

The clergyman N.F.S. Grundtvig's followers, who constituted a major fraction within the Danish Evangelical-Lutheran Established Church, were the most vocal Danish commentators on the religious consequences of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution from 1859 to 1914. While evangelicals and high......-churchmen within the church remained critical of evolution throughout the period, the Grundtvigians were divided over the issue. Orthodox Grundtvigians criticized Darwinism on philosophical and biblical grounds, while liberal neo-Grundtvigians came to terms with evolution by combining Grundtvig's critique...

'This excellent observer ...': the correspondence between Charles Darwin and James Crichton-Browne, 1869-75.

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Pearn, Alison M

2010-06-01

Between May 1869 and December 1875, Charles Darwin exchanged more than 40 letters with James Crichton-Browne, superintendent of the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum, Wakefield, Yorkshire. This paper charts their relationship within the context of Darwin's wider research networks and methods; it analyses the contribution that Crichton-Browne made to the writing of Expression, arguing that the information he provided materially affected Darwin's thesis, and that it was partly the need to assimilate this that led Darwin to publish Expression separately from Descent. The letters help to reconstruct Crichton-Browne's early research interests, and document Darwin's little-explored role as a patron. Both men are revealed within a collaborative scientific network, with each of them at various times a beneficiary or a promoter.

Mechanisms of adaptive evolution. Darwinism and Lamarckism restated.

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Aboitiz, F

1992-07-01

This article discusses the conceptual basis of the different mechanisms of adaptive evolution. It is argued that only two such mechanisms may conceivably exist, Lamarckism and Darwinism. Darwinism is the fundamental process generating the diversity of species. Some aspects of the gene-centered approach to Darwinism are questioned, since they do not account for the generation of biological diversity. Diversity in biological design must be explained in relation to the diversity of interactions of organisms (or other higher-level units) with their environment. This aspect is usually overlooked in gene-centered views of evolution. A variant of the gene-selectionist approach has been proposed to account for the spread of cultural traits in human societies. Alternatively, I argue that social evolution is rather driven by what I call pseudo-Lamarckian inheritance. Finally, I argue that Lamarckian and pseudo-Lamarckian inheritance are just special cases of faithful replication which are found in the development of some higher-order units, such as multicellular organisms and human societies.

Spanish Darwinian iconography: Darwin and evolutionism portrayed in Spanish press cartoons.

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Domínguez, Martí; Mateu, Anna

2013-11-01

The theory of evolution has played a major role in the press since it was put forward by Charles Darwin in 1859. Its key role in biology and human philosophy is reflected by its presence in press cartoons, sections where the image of social reality is depicted in a more direct and satirical light. Through cartoons, artists have used their ingenuity or wit to portray one of the most controversial scientific figures of the past two centuries. This study examines the views portrayed by Spanish cartoonists about Charles Darwin and evolutionary theory in 2009, the bicentenary of the naturalist's birth and the celebration of 150 years since the publication of On the Origin of Species. These cartoons show how the controversy between Darwinism and religion remain latent in the heart of Spanish society, and how the figure of Darwin has become one of the main icons of science.

Getting Our History Right: Six Errors about Darwin and His Influence

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Hiram Caton

2007-01-01

Full Text Available The Darwin Exhibition created by the American Museum of Natural History is the centerpiece of the bicentennial of Darwin's birth. It opened in November 2005 and will circulate to a number of museums before terminating at the London Natural History Museum in February 2009. The Exhibition is also a major contributor to online instruction about evolution for schools. The quality of the Exhibition's narrative is accordingly of some significance. This paper argues that the narrative is the legendary history that dominates public opinion. The legend has been thoroughly disassembled by historical research over recent decades. My criticism is organized as six theses. (1 Publication of the Origin was not a sudden (“revolutionary” interruption of Victorian society's confident belief in the traditional theological world-view. (2 The Origin did not “revolutionize” the biological sciences by removing the creationist premise or introducing new principles. (3 The Origin did not revolutionize Victorian public opinion. The public considered Darwin and Spencer to be teaching the same lesson, known today as “Social Darwinism”, which, though fashionable, never achieved dominance. (4 Many biologists expressed significant disagreements with Darwin's principles. (5 Darwin made little or no contribution to the renovation of theology. His public statements on Providence were inconsistent and the liberal reform of theology was well advanced by 1850. (6 The so-called “Darwinian revolution” was, at the public opinion level, the fashion of laissez-faire economic beliefs backed by Darwin and Spencer's inclusion of the living world in the economic paradigm.

Darwinism in Context: An interdisciplinary, highly contextualized course on nature of science

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Kostas Kampourakis

2015-10-01

Full Text Available In this article, we describe a course, titled Darwinism in Context, which focuses on the social, cultural and scientific influences on the development of Darwin's theory. This was an interdisciplinary, highly contextualized nature of science course that aimed to help students learn about a core nature of science aspect: that there are historical, cultural and social influences on the practice and directions of science. For this purpose, the course was based on a well-documented historical case study: the development of Darwin's theory. The course consisted of five classes that focused on: (a Victorian society, (b the views and beliefs of scholars that had an impact on Darwin's thinking (historical influences, (c aspects of Darwin's personal and social life that influenced the publication of his theory (social influences, (d the reception of Darwin's theory and the relationship between religion and science (cultural influences and (e the relationship between science and literature. In all cases, teaching included presentations of the historical events but was mostly based on the analysis and discussion of excerpts from the respective original writings. During the classes only a few examples were presented; students were motivated to study further the original writings and identify some key concepts and ideas after the classes. It is concluded that this kind of highly contextualized nature of science instruction can provide students with a more authentic view of science.

Darwin and Emotion Expression

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Hess, Ursula; Thibault, Pascal

2009-01-01

In his book "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals," Charles Darwin (1872/1965) defended the argument that emotion expressions are evolved and adaptive (at least at some point in the past) and serve an important communicative function. The ideas he developed in his book had an important impact on the field and spawned rich domains of…

Scientific Cousins: The Relationship between Charles Darwin and Francis Galton

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Fancher, Raymond E.

2009-01-01

This article traces the personal as well as the intellectual and scientific relationship between Charles Darwin and his younger half-cousin Francis Galton. Although they had been on friendly terms as young men, and Darwin had in some ways been a role model for Galton, the two did not share major scientific interests until after the publication of…

Chinese paleontology and the reception of Darwinism in early twentieth century.

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Yu, Xiaobo

2017-12-01

The paper examines the social, cultural and disciplinary factors that influenced the reception and appropriation of Darwinism by China's first generation paleontologists. Darwinism was mixed with Social Darwinism when first introduced to China, and the co-option of Darwinian phrases for nationalistic awakening obscured the scientific essence of Darwin's evolutionary theory. First generation Chinese paleontologists started their training in 1910s-1920s. They quickly asserted their professional identity by successfully focusing on morphology, taxonomy and biostratigraphy. Surrounded by Western paleontologists with Lamarckian or orthogenetic leanings, early Chinese paleontologists enthusiastically embraced evolution and used fossils as factual evidence; yet not enough attention was given to mechanistic evolutionary studies. The 1940s saw the beginning of a new trend for early Chinese paleontologists to incorporate more biological and biogeographical components in their work, but external events such as the dominance of Lysenkoism in the 1950s made the Modern Synthesis pass by without being publicly noticed in Chinese paleontology. Characterized by the larger goal of using science for nation building and by the utilitarian approach favoring local sciences, the reception and appropriation of Darwinism by first generation Chinese paleontologists raise important questions for studying the indigenizing efforts of early Chinese scientists to appropriate Western scientific theories. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Charles Darwin: um observador do desenvolvimento humano

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Eloisa Helena Rubello Valler Celeri

2010-12-01

Full Text Available Os autores traduzem, pela primeira vez para o português, o artigo de Charles Darwin "A Biographical Sketch of an Infant", publicado no periódico Mind em julho de 1877. Utilizando anotações de observações do desenvolvimento de seus filhos, especialmente de seu filho mais velho William Erasmus (Doddy, Darwin descreve e estuda, a partir de seu enfoque naturalista, o filhote humano, narrando os primeiros indicativos comportamentais de emoções tais como raiva e medo, curiosidade e senso moral, o brincar e o prazer envolvido nesta atividade, a capacidade de imitação e os primeiros indícios daquilo que hoje conhecemos como "teoria da mente". Colocando-se questões sobre as capacidades do bebê, como eles aprendem e como se comunicam e levantando hipóteses sobre possíveis significados de certos comportamentos, questões ainda hoje fundamentais para o estudo do desenvolvimento humano, Darwin mostra-se também um pioneiro no estudo do bebê e da criança pequena, numa época na qual as capacidades dos bebês eram extremamente subestimadas e desconsideradas.

Did Jean François Barbe Anticipate Charles Darwin?

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Drouin, Anne-Sophie; Drouin, Emmanuel; Pereon, Yann

2016-12-01

The publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species in 1859 is widely suppose to have initiated a revolution in science. In 1837, he broke with dogmatic fixism and argued that the adaptation of populations to their local environment was the cause of transmutation. Some contributors helped him start his reasoning: he indeed expressed his indebtedness to Samuel Rowley for having called his attention to Charles Wells' notions of natural selection. Darwin was certainly not the first to suggest the idea of evolution as an alternative to the creation of species by God. We report on a medical thesis published in 1837 being concluded by an unexpected and important statement related to the appearance of mammals on Earth. It remained unknown but it constitutes a link between the transformative thought of Lamarck and Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, and Darwin's work.

Quantum Darwinism

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Zurek, Wojciech Hubert

2009-03-01

Quantum Darwinism describes the proliferation, in the environment, of multiple records of selected states of a quantum system. It explains how the quantum fragility of a state of a single quantum system can lead to the classical robustness of states in their correlated multitude; shows how effective `wave-packet collapse' arises as a result of the proliferation throughout the environment of imprints of the state of the system; and provides a framework for the derivation of Born's rule, which relates the probabilities of detecting states to their amplitudes. Taken together, these three advances mark considerable progress towards settling the quantum measurement problem.

The teacher taught? What Charles Darwin owed to John Lubbock

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Pearn, Alison

2014-01-01

The period around the publication of John Lubbock's Origin of civilisation in 1870 and Charles Darwin's Descent of man and selection in relation to sex the following year is key to a re-evaluation of the relationship between the two men, usually characterized as that of pupil and master. It is in the making of Descent that Lubbock's role as a scientific collaborator is most easily discerned, a role best understood within the social and political context of the time. Lubbock made Darwin—both the man and his science—acceptable and respectable. Less obvious is Darwin's conscious cultivation of Lubbock's patronage in both his private and public life, and Lubbock's equally conscious bestowal, culminating in his role in Darwin's burial in Westminster Abbey.

On Darwin's 'metaphysical notebooks'. I: teleology and the project of a theory.

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Calabi, L

2001-01-01

Huxley's essay On the Reception of the 'Origin of Species' brings us close to the issue of cause and of why- and how-questions in the understanding of the living world. The present contribution, which is divided into two parts, reviews the problem of Teleology as conceived by Huxley and re-examines Darwin as the author who revealed the existence of a 'foundations problem' in the explanation of an entire realm of nature, i.e., the problem of explaining such realm in terms of its own, specific legality, or iuxta sua propria principia. In the first part the enquiry is mainly focused on the secularization of natural history after Paley; in the second part it is mainly focused on the desubjectivization of the inquiry into natural history after Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck. The second part will be published in the next issue of Rivista di Biologia/Biology Forum. In the first part below an analysis is made of Notebooks M and N. The author disputes the correctness of conceiving them only as the works where Darwin envisages the 'metaphysical' themes later to become the subject of The Expression of the Emotions. He suggests to conceive of them also as the works where Darwin defines the terms of the general project of his own, peculiar evolutionary theory. The author then outlines the intellectual progress of Darwin from the inosculation to the transmutation hypotheses. Darwin's reading of Malthus appears to be analytically decisive, because it offers him the vintage point to attack the metaphysical and theological citadels on the morphological side. Darwin is thus able to re-consider Erasmus' comprehensive zoonomic project, by displacing it, however, from the old idea of the scala naturae to the new one of the "coral of life", and by emphasising the distinction between "the fittest" and "the best" vs. the tradition of Natural Theology.

Phylogenetic inertia and Darwin's higher law.

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Shanahan, Timothy

2011-03-01

The concept of 'phylogenetic inertia' is routinely deployed in evolutionary biology as an alternative to natural selection for explaining the persistence of characteristics that appear sub-optimal from an adaptationist perspective. However, in many of these contexts the precise meaning of 'phylogenetic inertia' and its relationship to selection are far from clear. After tracing the history of the concept of 'inertia' in evolutionary biology, I argue that treating phylogenetic inertia and natural selection as alternative explanations is mistaken because phylogenetic inertia is, from a Darwinian point of view, simply an expected effect of selection. Although Darwin did not discuss 'phylogenetic inertia,' he did assert the explanatory priority of selection over descent. An analysis of 'phylogenetic inertia' provides a perspective from which to assess Darwin's view. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The "Annie hypothesis": did the death of his daughter cause Darwin to "give up Christianity"?

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Van Wyhe, John; Pallen, Mark J

2012-01-01

This article examines one of the most widely believed episodes in the life of Charles Darwin, that the death of his daughter Annie in 1851 caused the end of Darwin's belief in Christianity, and according to some versions, ended his attendance of church on Sundays. This hypothesis, it is argued, is commonly treated as a straightforward true account of Darwin's life, yet there is little or no supporting evidence. Furthermore, we argue, there is sufficient evidence that Darwin's loss of faith occurred before Annie's death.

The DARWIN mission: Search for extra-solar planets

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Kaltenegger, L.; Fridlund, M.

The direct detection of a planet close to its parent star is challenging because the signal detected from the parent star is between 109 and 106 times brighter than the signal of a planet in the visual and IR respectively. Future space based missions like DARWIN and TPF concentrate on the region between 6μ m to 18μ m, a region that contains the CO2, H2O, O3 spectral features of the atmosphere. The presence or absence of these spectral features would indicate similarities or differences with the atmosphere of telluric planets. The Infra Red Space Interferometer DARWIN is an integral part of ESA's Cosmic Vision 2020 plan, intended for a launch towards the middle of next decade. It is constructed around the new technique of `nulling interferometry', which exploits the wave nature of light to extinguish light from an on-axis bright object (the central star in this case), while at the same time light from a nearby source (the planet) is enhanced. An overview and update of the science of the DARWIN mission is given.

William Keith Brooks and the naturalist's defense of Darwinism in the late-nineteenth century.

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Nash, Richard

2015-06-01

William Keith Brooks was an American zoologist at Johns Hopkins University from 1876 until his death in 1908. Over the course of his career, Brooks staunchly defended Darwinism, arguing for the centrality of natural selection in evolutionary theory at a time when alternative theories, such as neo-Lamarckism, grew prominent in American biology. In his book The Law of Heredity (1883), Brooks addressed problems raised by Darwin's theory of pangenesis. In modifying and developing Darwin's pangenesis, Brooks proposed a new theory of heredity that sought to avoid the pitfalls of Darwin's hypothesis. In so doing he strengthened Darwin's theory of natural selection by undermining arguments for the inheritance of acquired characteristics. In later attacks on neo-Lamarckism, Brooks consistently defended Darwin's theory of natural selection on logical grounds, continued to challenge the idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, and argued that natural selection best explained a wide range of adaptations. Finally, he critiqued Galton's statistical view of heredity and argued that Galton had resurrected an outmoded typological concept of species, one which Darwin and other naturalists had shown to be incorrect. Brooks's ideas resemble the "biological species concept" of the twentieth century, as developed by evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr and others. The late-nineteenth century was not a period of total "eclipse" of Darwinism, as biologists and historians have hitherto seen it. Although the "Modern Synthesis" refers to the reconciliation of post-Mendelian genetics with evolution by natural selection, we might adjust our understanding of how the synthesis developed by seeing it as the culmination of a longer discussion that extends back to the late-nineteenth century.

The Most Important of All the Organs: Darwin on the Brain

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Jacyna, Stephen

2009-01-01

This article discusses Charles Darwin's interest in topics that may broadly be defined as "neurological" in character. Using published and manuscript materials, it examines the sources of Darwin's knowledge of neurological matters and seeks to explain why questions concerning the relation of mind and brain both in humans and other animals were…

Correspondence of Charles Darwin on James Torbitt's project to breed blight-resistance potatoes.

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DeArce, M

2008-01-01

The most prolific of Darwin's correspondents from Ireland was James Torbitt, an enterprising grocer and wine merchant of 58 North Street, Belfast. Between February 1876 and March 1882, 141 letters were exchanged on the feasibility and ways of supporting one of Torbitt's commercial projects, the large-scale production and distribution of true potato seeds (Solan um tuberosum) to produce plants resistant to the late blight fungus Phytophthora infestans, the cause of repeated potato crop failures and thus the Irish famines in the nineteenth century. Ninety-three of these letters were exchanged between Torbitt and Darwin, and 48 between Darwin and third parties, seeking or offering help and advice on the project. Torbitt's project required selecting the small proportion of plants in an infested field that survived the infection, and using those as parents to produce seeds. This was a direct application of Darwin's principle of selection. Darwin cautiously lobbied high-ranking civil servants in London to obtain government funding for the project, and also provided his own personal financial support to Torbit.

Random unitary evolution model of quantum Darwinism with pure decoherence

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Balanesković, Nenad

2015-10-01

We study the behavior of Quantum Darwinism [W.H. Zurek, Nat. Phys. 5, 181 (2009)] within the iterative, random unitary operations qubit-model of pure decoherence [J. Novotný, G. Alber, I. Jex, New J. Phys. 13, 053052 (2011)]. We conclude that Quantum Darwinism, which describes the quantum mechanical evolution of an open system S from the point of view of its environment E, is not a generic phenomenon, but depends on the specific form of input states and on the type of S-E-interactions. Furthermore, we show that within the random unitary model the concept of Quantum Darwinism enables one to explicitly construct and specify artificial input states of environment E that allow to store information about an open system S of interest with maximal efficiency.

Charles Darwin, beetles and phylogenetics.

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Beutel, Rolf G; Friedrich, Frank; Leschen, Richard A B

2009-11-01

Here, we review Charles Darwin's relation to beetles and developments in coleopteran systematics in the last two centuries. Darwin was an enthusiastic beetle collector. He used beetles to illustrate different evolutionary phenomena in his major works, and astonishingly, an entire sub-chapter is dedicated to beetles in "The Descent of Man". During his voyage on the Beagle, Darwin was impressed by the high diversity of beetles in the tropics, and he remarked that, to his surprise, the majority of species were small and inconspicuous. However, despite his obvious interest in the group, he did not get involved in beetle taxonomy, and his theoretical work had little immediate impact on beetle classification. The development of taxonomy and classification in the late nineteenth and earlier twentieth century was mainly characterised by the exploration of new character systems (e.g. larval features and wing venation). In the mid-twentieth century, Hennig's new methodology to group lineages by derived characters revolutionised systematics of Coleoptera and other organisms. As envisioned by Darwin and Ernst Haeckel, the new Hennigian approach enabled systematists to establish classifications truly reflecting evolution. Roy A. Crowson and Howard E. Hinton, who both made tremendous contributions to coleopterology, had an ambivalent attitude towards the Hennigian ideas. The Mickoleit school combined detailed anatomical work with a classical Hennigian character evaluation, with stepwise tree building, comparatively few characters and a priori polarity assessment without explicit use of the outgroup comparison method. The rise of cladistic methods in the 1970s had a strong impact on beetle systematics. Cladistic computer programs facilitated parsimony analyses of large data matrices, mostly morphological characters not requiring detailed anatomical investigations. Molecular studies on beetle phylogeny started in the 1990s with modest taxon sampling and limited DNA data. This has

Evolutionary plant physiology: Charles Darwin's forgotten synthesis.

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Kutschera, Ulrich; Niklas, Karl J

2009-11-01

Charles Darwin dedicated more than 20 years of his life to a variety of investigations on higher plants (angiosperms). It has been implicitly assumed that these studies in the fields of descriptive botany and experimental plant physiology were carried out to corroborate his principle of descent with modification. However, Darwin's son Francis, who was a professional plant biologist, pointed out that the interests of his father were both of a physiological and an evolutionary nature. In this article, we describe Darwin's work on the physiology of higher plants from a modern perspective, with reference to the following topics: circumnutations, tropisms and the endogenous oscillator model; the evolutionary patterns of auxin action; the root-brain hypothesis; phloem structure and photosynthesis research; endosymbioses and growth-promoting bacteria; photomorphogenesis and phenotypic plasticity; basal metabolic rate, the Pfeffer-Kleiber relationship and metabolic optimality theory with respect to adaptive evolution; and developmental constraints versus functional equivalence in relationship to directional natural selection. Based on a review of these various fields of inquiry, we deduce the existence of a Darwinian (evolutionary) approach to plant physiology and define this emerging scientific discipline as the experimental study and theoretical analysis of the functions of green, sessile organisms from a phylogenetic perspective.

Darwin and Teacher: An Analysis of the Mentorship between Charles Darwin and Professor John Henslow.

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McGreevy, Ann

1990-01-01

The paper examines the mentorship between Charles Darwin and his teacher, John Stevens Henslow of Cambridge University (England). The importance of a mentor in stimulating creative productivity is demonstrated through discussion of their teaching and learning styles, their interests, their time spent together, and Henslow's character traits.…

Ciência e educação: a propósito do bicentenário do nascimento de Charles Darwin Science and education: about Charles Darwin's 200th birthday

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Angel Pino

2009-10-01

Full Text Available Este artigo visa à evocação da memória do grande naturalista e cientista britânico Charles Darwin no bicentenário do seu nascimento. A melhor maneira de evocar sua memória é trazer à reflexão dos leitores as ideias de suas três obras maiores: A origem das espécies (1859, A descendência do homem (1871 e A expressão das emoções no homem e nos animais (1872. Após apresentar a importância e a oportunidade de Darwin no debate contemporâneo, o texto inicia com uma rápida referência aos antecedentes históricos da "teoria da evolução" e às reações que ela produz. Na sequência, a obra de Darwin é situada no contexto histórico da sua época. Apresenta-se também um breve histórico das três obras maiores e uma análise das suas principais ideias. Conclui-se o texto com uma indicação sumária de algumas questões que as ideias de Darwin colocam à ciência contemporânea e, em especial, à reflexão no campo da Educação.This paper evokes the memory of the British naturalist and scientist, Charles Darwin on his 200th birthday. The best way to do so is to invite our readers to reflect on some ideas of three books of his: The origin of species (1859, Descent of man (1871 and The expression of emotions in man and animals (1872. After presenting the importance and appropriateness of Darwin in the contemporaneous debate, the text rapidly explores the historical precedents of the so called "theory of evolution" and the reactions to it. It then situates Darwin's works in its historical context and presents a brief history of these three books and an analysis of their main ideas. As a conclusion, it summarizes how Darwin's ideas question contemporary science and, more particularly, the reflection in the field of education.

A preliminary study to estimate contact rates between free-roaming domestic dogs using novel miniature cameras.

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Courtenay B Bombara

Full Text Available Information on contacts between individuals within a population is crucial to inform disease control strategies, via parameterisation of disease spread models. In this study we investigated the use of dog-borne video cameras-in conjunction with global positioning systems (GPS loggers-to both characterise dog-to-dog contacts and to estimate contact rates. We customized miniaturised video cameras, enclosed within 3D-printed plastic cases, and attached these to nylon dog collars. Using two 3400 mAh NCR lithium Li-ion batteries, cameras could record a maximum of 22 hr of continuous video footage. Together with a GPS logger, collars were attached to six free roaming domestic dogs (FRDDs in two remote Indigenous communities in northern Australia. We recorded a total of 97 hr of video footage, ranging from 4.5 to 22 hr (mean 19.1 per dog, and observed a wide range of social behaviours. The majority (69% of all observed interactions between community dogs involved direct physical contact. Direct contact behaviours included sniffing, licking, mouthing and play fighting. No contacts appeared to be aggressive, however multiple teeth baring incidents were observed during play fights. We identified a total of 153 contacts-equating to 8 to 147 contacts per dog per 24 hr-from the videos of the five dogs with camera data that could be analysed. These contacts were attributed to 42 unique dogs (range 1 to 19 per video which could be identified (based on colour patterns and markings. Most dog activity was observed in urban (houses and roads environments, but contacts were more common in bushland and beach environments. A variety of foraging behaviours were observed, included scavenging through rubbish and rolling on dead animal carcasses. Identified food consumed included chicken, raw bones, animal carcasses, rubbish, grass and cheese. For characterising contacts between FRDD, several benefits of analysing videos compared to GPS fixes alone were identified in

Disease control through fertility control: Secondary benefits of animal birth control in Indian street dogs.

Science.gov (United States)

Yoak, Andrew J; Reece, John F; Gehrt, Stanley D; Hamilton, Ian M

2014-01-01

We sought to (1) survey sexually intact street dogs for a wide range of diseases in three cities in Rajasthan, India and (2) evaluate links between the health of non-treated dogs and both the presence and duration of animal birth control (ABC) programs. ABC regimes sterilize and vaccinate stray dogs in an attempt to control their population and the spread of rabies. They are commonly suggested to improve the health of those dogs they serve, but here we provide evidence that these benefits also extend to untreated dogs in the community. Viral and bacterial disease seroprevalences were assessed in 240 sexually intact street dogs from Jaipur, Jodhpur, and Sawai Madhopur cities in October and September 2011. Those individuals and 50 additional dogs were assessed for the presence of ticks, fleas, fight wounds, and given body condition scores. Dogs in cities with an ABC program had with significantly (pdogs in cities with ABC programs had significantly higher prevalence of Brown Dog Tick (Rhipicephalus sanguineus) infestations. Canine parvovirus and Brucella canis prevalences were not significantly different between cities. This study is the first to demonstrate the health benefits of ABC on non-vaccinated diseases and non-treated individuals. Copyright © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The many lives of Charles Darwin: early biographies and the definitive evolutionist.

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Lightman, Bernard

2010-12-20

This article focuses on the early book-length biographies of Darwin published from his death in 1882 up to 1900. By making 1900 the cutoff point I can examine the biographies produced when the iconic figure was not yet set in stone, and before the rediscovery of Mendel's work in the early twentieth century and the anniversary celebrations of 1909 changed the way in which Darwin was regarded. Darwin's biographers dealt with three major themes. First, several biographers emphasized his scientific abilities, in particular his powers of observation and his prowess in conducting experiments. Second, many biographers discussed his character, a key issue in determining whether or not he could be trusted as a scientific guide. Finally, his scientific theories and religious beliefs, and how they related to the evolutionary controversy, formed a topic taken up by most biographers. By focusing on these three themes, the biographies published before 1900 were important in shaping the image of Darwin that was forming in American and British culture.

Environmental Education in the Galapagos: 2007 Report to the Charles Darwin Foundation

Science.gov (United States)

Stepath, Carl M.

2007-01-01

Background: "Environmental education in the Galapagos: 2007 report to the Charles Darwin Foundation" is a report to the Charles Darwin Foundation (CDF) about the researchers observations about the status of environmental education in the Galapagos in 2006 and 2007. Purpose: This paper reports on environmental education in the Galapagos…

Gehlen, Darwin e la salamandra

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

RASINI, VALLORI

2016-12-01

Full Text Available Gehlen, Darwin and the Salamander Arnold Gehlen creates a theory of man as “lacking being” that leads to a theory of a “superior being”. Man is radically different from animal, and Gehlen uses the biological idea of human neoteny to refuse the Darwinian theory of human evolution. However his arguments are preconceived and ineffectual.

An Amphibious Being: How Maritime Surveying Reshaped Darwin's Approach to Natural History.

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Sponsel, Alistair

2016-06-01

This essay argues that Charles Darwin's distinctive approach to studying distribution and diversity was shaped by his face-to-face interactions with maritime surveyors during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle (1831-1836). Introducing their hydrographic surveying methods into natural history enabled him to compare fossil and living marine organisms, to compare sedimentary rocks to present-day marine sediments, and to compare landscapes to submarine topology, thereby realizing Charles Lyell's fanciful ambition for a superior form of geology that might be practiced by an "amphibious being." Darwin's theories of continental uplift, coral reef formation, and the origin of species all depended on his amphibious natural history. This essay contributes to our understanding of theorizing in nineteenth-century natural history by illustrating that specific techniques of observing and collecting could themselves help to generate a particular theoretical orientation and, indeed, that such practical experiences were a more proximate source of Darwin's "Humboldtian" interest in distribution and diversity than Alexander von Humboldt's writings themselves. Darwin's debt to the hydrographers became obscured in two ways: through the "funneling" of credit produced by single-authorship publication in natural history and the "telescoping" of memory by which Darwin's new theories made him recall his former researches as though he had originally undertaken them for the very purpose of producing the later theory.

The Darwin Core extension for genebanks opens up new opportunities for sharing genebank datasets

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dag Terje Filip Endresen

2012-07-01

Full Text Available Darwin Core (DwC defines a standard set of terms to describe the primary biodiversity data. Primary biodiversity data are data records derived from direct observation of species occurrences in nature or describing specimens in biological collections. The Darwin Core terms can be seen as an extension to the standard Dublin Core metadata terms. The new Darwin Core extension for genebanks declares the additional terms required for describing genebank datasets, and is based on established standards from the plant genetic resources community. The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF provides an information infrastructure for biodiversity data including a suite of software tools for data publishing, distributed data access, and the capture of biodiversity data. The Darwin Core extension for genebanks is a key component that provides access for the genebanks and the plant genetic resources community to the GBIF informatics infrastructure including the new toolkits for data exchange. This paper provides one of the first examples and guidelines for how to create extensions to the Darwin Core standard.

Looking at Darwin: portraits and the making of an icon.

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Browne, Janet

2009-09-01

With increased attention on the visual in the history of science, there is renewed interest in the role of portraiture and other forms of personal imagery in constructing scientific reputation and the circulation of scientific ideas. This essay indicates some directions in which researchers could push forward by studying the dissemination of pictures and portraits of Charles Darwin. Selected portraits are discussed, with particular attention paid to their circulation. The mode of production and original intent of these portraits is briefly addressed, but the thrust of the argument is to highlight subsequent shifts in usage. While self-fashioning is an important part of the story, it is useful also to dwell on the rise and diversification of printed media in conjunction with escalating interest in Darwin as a celebrity figure. Historicizing the variety of opportunities that people have had of "looking"at Darwin adds considerably to our understanding of scientific fame.

ECONOMIA EVOLUCIONISTA Y DARWIN

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ivan Hernandez

2009-10-01

Full Text Available A partir del siglo xix, se tomaron dos caminos distintos en la historia de la ciencia económica. Casi simultáneamente, la revolución darwiniana y la revolución marginalista tuvieron lugar pero sus intenciones ulteriores no pudieron ser más opuestas. Las grandes teorías Darwin acerca de la evolución de la vida en la tierra y la evolución de las especies por medio de la selección natural, se convirtieron en no menos que un desafío a la visión del mundo dominante: la newtoniana (Witt 1999. Este desafío al ideal newtoniano, fue influido, paradójicamente, por estímulos intelectuales de pensadores fuera de la biología. Estas influencias emanaron de la filosofía social del "dejar pasar, dejar hacer" liberal de los siglos xviii y de principios del siglo xix. De los diarios de Darwin se destaca la correspondencia con Herbert Spencer, en donde se denota una clara influencia del trabajo de economistas-filósofos como Adam Smith, de la llamada Escuela de Edimburgo, y Robert Malthus. Lo paradójico de esta situación es que ahora es Darwin quien, de vuelta, influye sobre los economistas modernos. La revolución darwiniana en la economía moderna consiste en mostrar al capitalismo como un proceso evolucionario explicado por procesos del cambio de patrones en las relaciones entre entidades. Pero gran parte de este estudio de influencia darwiniana no tiene que ver en sí  con el estudio de la biología. Está relacionado con los principios y conceptos que definen el mecanismo evolucionario que es fundamento del desarrollo de la teoría evolucionista moderna. Desde el estudio del sistema natural,y sus disciplinas ¿qué podemos aprender en el campo de lo social en los temas de adaptabilidad, ante la adversidad y bio- y sociodiversidad? El alto grado de emprenderismo en regiones y países latinoamericanos es síntoma de resiliencia social y adaptabilidad. Es en la adversidad donde mas variedad de comportamiento se encuentra y hay m

Mate choice and sexual selection: what have we learned since Darwin?

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Jones, Adam G; Ratterman, Nicholas L

2009-06-16

Charles Darwin laid the foundation for all modern work on sexual selection in his seminal book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. In this work, Darwin fleshed out the mechanism of sexual selection, a hypothesis that he had proposed in The Origin of Species. He went well beyond a simple description of the phenomenon by providing extensive evidence and considering the far-reaching implications of the idea. Here we consider the contributions of Darwin to sexual selection with a particular eye on how far we have progressed in the last 150 years. We focus on 2 key questions in sexual selection. First, why does mate choice evolve at all? And second, what factors determine the strength of mate choice (or intensity of sexual selection) in each sex? Darwin provided partial answers to these questions, and the progress that has been made on both of these topics since his time should be seen as one of the great triumphs of modern evolutionary biology. However, a review of the literature shows that key aspects of sexual selection are still plagued by confusion and disagreement. Many of these areas are complex and will require new theory and empirical data for complete resolution. Overall, Darwin's contributions are still surprisingly relevant to the modern study of sexual selection, so students of evolutionary biology would be well advised to revisit his works. Although we have made significant progress in some areas of sexual selection research, we still have much to accomplish.

Assessment of UK radioactive waste management strategies using DARWIN 2.1

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Skennerton, S.K.

1995-02-01

This report summarises the analysis of a number of waste management strategies for the management of UK radioactive wastes using Version 2.1 of the computer code DARWIN (DoE Assessor of Radioactive Waste Inventory) and describes the key results identified. The DARWIN system, mounted on a personal computer, allows preliminary estimates of the likely waste storage and disposal implications of alternative scenarios to be calculated. (author)

Darwin, Hume, Morgan, and the verae causae of psychology.

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Clatterbuck, Hayley

2016-12-01

Charles Darwin and C. Lloyd Morgan forward two influential principles of cognitive ethological inference that yield conflicting results about the extent of continuity in the cognitive traits of humans and other animals. While these principles have been interpreted as reflecting commitments to different senses of parsimony, in fact, both principles result from the same vera causa inferential strategy, according to which "We ought to admit no more causes of natural things, than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances". Instead, the conflict stems from Darwin's and Morgan's views about the true causes of human psychology. Darwin holds a thoroughly Humean philosophy of the human mind, from which he infers significant continuity between human and animal minds. In contrast, Morgan argues that Humean cognitive mechanisms cannot account for a class of uniquely human behaviors, and therefore, he concludes that there is a significant discontinuity between human and animal cognition. This historical debate is informative for current controversies in comparative psychology. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Numerical simulation of distorted crystal Darwin width

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wang Li; Xu Zhongmin; Wang Naxiu

2012-01-01

A new numerical simulation method according to distorted crystal optical theory was used to predict the direct-cooling crystal monochromator optical properties(crystal Darwin width) in this study. The finite element analysis software was used to calculate the deformed displacements of DCM crystal and to get the local reciprocal lattice vector of distorted crystal. The broadening of direct-cooling crystal Darwin width in meridional direction was estimated at 4.12 μrad. The result agrees well with the experimental data of 5 μrad, while it was 3.89 μrad by traditional calculation method of root mean square (RMS) of the slope error in the center line of footprint. The new method provides important theoretical support for designing and processing of monochromator crystal for synchrotron radiation beamline. (authors)

Charles Robert Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace: their dispute over the units of selection.

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Ruse, Michael

2013-12-01

Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace independently discovered the mechanism of natural selection for evolutionary change. However, they viewed the working of selection differently. For Darwin, selection was always focused on the benefit for the individual. For Wallace, selection was as much something of benefit for the group as for the individual. This difference is traced to their different background political-economic views, with Darwin in favor of Adam Smith's view of society and Wallace following Robert Owen in being a socialist.

Calculation of the two-electron Darwin term using explicitly correlated wave functions

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Middendorf, Nils; Höfener, Sebastian; Klopper, Wim; Helgaker, Trygve

2012-01-01

Graphical abstract: The two-electron Darwin term is computed analytically at the MP2-F12 level of theory using density fitted integrals. Highlights: ► Two-electron Darwin term computed analytically at the MP2-F12 level. ► Darwin two-electron integrals computed using density fitting techniques. ► Two-electron Darwin term dominated by singlet pair contributions. ► Much improved basis set convergence is achieved with F12 methods. ► Interference correction works well for the two-electron Darwin term. - Abstract: This article is concerned with the calculation of the two-electron Darwin term (D2). At the level of explicitly correlated second-order perturbation theory (MP2-F12), the D2 term is obtained as an analytic energy derivative; at the level of explicitly correlated coupled-cluster theory, it is obtained from finite differences. To avoid the calculation of four-center integrals, a density-fitting approximation is applied to the D2 two-electron integrals without loss of accuracy, even though the absolute value of the D2 term is typically about 0.1 mE h . Explicitly correlated methods provide a qualitatively correct description of the short-range region around the Coulomb hole, even for small orbital basis sets. Therefore, explicitly correlated wave functions remedy the otherwise extremely slow convergence of the D2 contribution with respect to the basis-set size, yielding more accurate results than those obtained by two-point basis-set extrapolation. Moreover, we show that the interference correction of Petersson’s complete-basis-set model chemistry can be used to compute a D2 basis-set correction at the MP2-F12 level to improve standard coupled-cluster singles-and-doubles results.

Making a Theist out of Darwin: Asa Gray's Post-Darwinian Natural Theology

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Hunter, T. Russell

2012-01-01

In March of 1860 the eminent Harvard Botanist and orthodox Christian Asa Gray began promoting the Origin of Species in hopes of securing a fair examination of Darwin's evolutionary theory among theistic naturalists. To this end, Gray sought to demonstrate that Darwin had not written atheistically and that his theory of evolution by natural…

Born to win? Testing the fighting hypothesis in realistic fights: left-handedness in the Ultimate Fighting Championship

OpenAIRE

Pollet, Thomas V.; Stulp, Gert; Groothuis, Ton G. G.

2013-01-01

Given the heritability of human left-handedness and its purported associations with fitness-lowering traits, the persistence of the minority of left-handedness in human populations is an evolutionary puzzle. The fighting hypothesis proposes that these negative fitness costs are offset by fitness gains for left-handers when involved in fights with right-handers, as being a minority would generate a surprise effect increasing the chance of winning. The finding that left-handers are overrepresen...

Why Darwin would have loved evolutionary game theory.

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Brown, Joel S

2016-09-14

Humans have marvelled at the fit of form and function, the way organisms' traits seem remarkably suited to their lifestyles and ecologies. While natural selection provides the scientific basis for the fit of form and function, Darwin found certain adaptations vexing or particularly intriguing: sex ratios, sexual selection and altruism. The logic behind these adaptations resides in frequency-dependent selection where the value of a given heritable phenotype (i.e. strategy) to an individual depends upon the strategies of others. Game theory is a branch of mathematics that is uniquely suited to solving such puzzles. While game theoretic thinking enters into Darwin's arguments and those of evolutionists through much of the twentieth century, the tools of evolutionary game theory were not available to Darwin or most evolutionists until the 1970s, and its full scope has only unfolded in the last three decades. As a consequence, game theory is applied and appreciated rather spottily. Game theory not only applies to matrix games and social games, it also applies to speciation, macroevolution and perhaps even to cancer. I assert that life and natural selection are a game, and that game theory is the appropriate logic for framing and understanding adaptations. Its scope can include behaviours within species, state-dependent strategies (such as male, female and so much more), speciation and coevolution, and expands beyond microevolution to macroevolution. Game theory clarifies aspects of ecological and evolutionary stability in ways useful to understanding eco-evolutionary dynamics, niche construction and ecosystem engineering. In short, I would like to think that Darwin would have found game theory uniquely useful for his theory of natural selection. Let us see why this is so. © 2016 The Author(s).

Superintegrability of the Fock-Darwin system

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Drigho-Filho, E.; Kuru, Ş.; Negro, J.; Nieto, L. M.

2017-08-01

The Fock-Darwin system is analyzed from the point of view of its symmetry properties in the quantum and classical frameworks. The quantum Fock-Darwin system is known to have two sets of ladder operators, a fact which guarantees its solvability. We show that for rational values of the quotient of two relevant frequencies, this system is superintegrable, the quantum symmetries being responsible for the degeneracy of the energy levels. These symmetries are of higher order and close a polynomial algebra. In the classical case, the ladder operators are replaced by ladder functions and the symmetries by constants of motion. We also prove that the rational classical system is superintegrable and its trajectories are closed. The constants of motion are also generators of symmetry transformations in the phase space that have been integrated for some special cases. These transformations connect different trajectories with the same energy. The coherent states of the quantum superintegrable system are found and they reproduce the closed trajectories of the classical one.

The paradoxical advantages and disadvantages of natural selection: the case history of Charles Darwin.

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Lieb, J

2007-01-01

The biology of natural selection is an enduring mystery, as is the nature of Charles Darwin's chronic illness. Of the theories advanced to explain the latter, Oedipal conflicts and Chagas' disease are preeminent. Hypomania, however, propelled Darwin to the pinnacle of scientific achievement and good health, the depression that followed condemning him to intellectual stagnation, lethargy, impaired memory and concentration, and incapacitating gastrointestinal disorders. Examples of natural selection in humans are much sought after when, ironically, one need look no further than Darwin himself.

Vom Milch trinkenden Sonnentau (Drosera spec.) zum schlafenden Wassersalat (Pistia spec.): Charles Darwin als Botaniker

OpenAIRE

Rutishauser, R

2009-01-01

Charles Darwin wird oft nur mit der Evolutionstheorie in Verbindung gebracht. Die vorliegende Arbeit betont Darwins Verdienste bei der Erforschung von Pflanzen. Seine Beobachtungsgabe verbunden mit experimentellem Geschick verhalfen Darwin zu botanischen Entdeckungen, für die wir ihn am 200. Geburtstag ebenso ehren sollten wie für seine mit natürlicher und sexueller Selektion verbundene Evolutionstheorie. Für die Pflanzenzüchtung und damit für die Evolution bedeutsa...

Methods and means of sodium fire fighting

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zemskij, G.T.

1985-01-01

Methods and means for coaling sodium fire fighting are analyzed. Their advantages and drawbacks are considered. Comparative data on sodium fire fighting using some of considered compositions are presented. High efficiency of self-expanding compositions (Grafeks SK-23 and RS) is noted. Properties of MGS new composition for sodium fire fighting are considered. High fighting ability of the composition independent of burning metal layer width is shown. It is noted that fire fighting MGS efficiency decreases with growth of time of free fire burning which affects fire fighting methods. Technical means of powder delivery to burning sodium are reported

Darwin on Race, Gender, and Culture

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Shields, Stephanie A.; Bhatia, Sunil

2009-01-01

Darwin's theories of natural selection and sexual selection are significant scientific achievements, although his understanding of race and gender was defined and limited by his own life circumstances and the sociohistorical context within which he worked. This article considers the ways in which race, gender, and culture were represented and…

Exploring the nature of science through courage and purpose: a case study of Charles Darwin's way of knowing.

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Cohen, Joel I

2016-01-01

In 1836, Charles Darwin returned to England with finches classified and seemingly showing little resemblance. However, subsequent examination by John Gould revealed 13 closely related species endemic to the Galápagos Islands. Despite initial confusion, and Darwin's overlooking to label these birds by island, some 100 years later they had become evolution's icon. The same could be said of Darwin's education and scientific pursuits, beginning in a rough, trial and error manner, lacking direction, but eventually benefitting from an unexpected opportunity that would lead to his theory of natural selection. This case study examines Darwin's way of learning and the reserve of courage and perseverance that he would need to see his treatise on evolution and natural selection published. To do this, themes from studying the "Nature of Science" are used to examine how Darwin's "way of knowing" advanced before and after his voyage upon HMS Beagle. Five themes from the "Nature of Science" were selected to illustrate Darwin's struggles and triumph: creating scientific knowledge is a human endeavor, such knowledge can explain an order and consistency in natural systems, knowledge comes from a scientist's way of knowing, is open to revision, and based on empirical evidence. The "Nature of Science" as applied to Charles Darwin is explored through the three above mentioned themes identified by the Next Generation Science Standards. Together, the themes help explain Darwin's way of knowing, from boyhood to manhood. This explanation helps humanize Darwin, allows students to see how he arrived at his theories, how the time taken to do so wore on his health and safety, and the risk Darwin had to weigh from their eventual publication. Each theme ends with a summary and related extension questions to draw students into the case, and facilitate inquiry. They relate Darwin's way of learning from the 1800s and his commitment to see his work published, to the learning environment of

Clinical anatomy and surgical repair of prepubic hernia in dogs and cats.

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Beittenmiller, Menolly R; Mann, F A; Constantinescu, Gheorghe M; Luther, Jill K

2009-01-01

Prepubic hernia is a traumatic hernia in small animals, most often associated with severe trauma to the caudal abdomen. Common causes include vehicular trauma, dog fights, and kicks by large animals. Rupture of the prepubic tendon in dogs and of its equivalent in cats results in a ventral abdominal hernia. Due to the traumatic nature of the injury, concurrent injuries are frequently seen. Clinical signs of herniation are often nonspecific, and the resultant hernia may not be readily apparent during routine physical examination. This being so, diagnosis is often based on a thorough physical examination in conjunction with abdominal radiography and, possibly, abdominal ultrasonography. Multiple methods of repair of prepubic hernia have been reported, and survival rates are quite good if concurrent injuries are not severe.

Evolution by epigenesis: farewell to Darwinism, neo- and otherwise.

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Balon, Eugene K

2004-01-01

In the last 25 years, criticism of most theories advanced by Darwin and the neo-Darwinians has increased considerably, and so did their defense. Darwinism has become an ideology, while the most significant theories of Darwin were proven unsupportable. The critics advanced other theories instead of 'natural selection' and the survival of the fittest'. 'Saltatory ontogeny' and 'epigenesis' are such new theories proposed to explain how variations in ontogeny and novelties in evolution are created. They are reviewed again in the present essay that also tries to explain how Darwinians, artificially kept dominant in academia and in granting agencies, are preventing their acceptance. Epigenesis, the mechanism of ontogenies, creates in every generation alternative variations in a saltatory way that enable the organisms to survive in the changing environments as either altricial or precocial forms. The constant production of two such forms and their survival in different environments makes it possible, over a sequence of generations, to introduce changes and establish novelties--the true phenomena of evolution. The saltatory units of evolution remain far-from-stable structures capable of self-organization and self-maintenance (autopoiesis).

Darwin--a mission to detect and search for life on extrasolar planets.

Science.gov (United States)

Cockell, C S; Léger, A; Fridlund, M; Herbst, T M; Kaltenegger, L; Absil, O; Beichman, C; Benz, W; Blanc, M; Brack, A; Chelli, A; Colangeli, L; Cottin, H; Coudé du Foresto, F; Danchi, W C; Defrère, D; den Herder, J-W; Eiroa, C; Greaves, J; Henning, T; Johnston, K J; Jones, H; Labadie, L; Lammer, H; Launhardt, R; Lawson, P; Lay, O P; LeDuigou, J-M; Liseau, R; Malbet, F; Martin, S R; Mawet, D; Mourard, D; Moutou, C; Mugnier, L M; Ollivier, M; Paresce, F; Quirrenbach, A; Rabbia, Y D; Raven, J A; Rottgering, H J A; Rouan, D; Santos, N C; Selsis, F; Serabyn, E; Shibai, H; Tamura, M; Thiébaut, E; Westall, F; White, G J

2009-01-01

The discovery of extrasolar planets is one of the greatest achievements of modern astronomy. The detection of planets that vary widely in mass demonstrates that extrasolar planets of low mass exist. In this paper, we describe a mission, called Darwin, whose primary goal is the search for, and characterization of, terrestrial extrasolar planets and the search for life. Accomplishing the mission objectives will require collaborative science across disciplines, including astrophysics, planetary sciences, chemistry, and microbiology. Darwin is designed to detect rocky planets similar to Earth and perform spectroscopic analysis at mid-infrared wavelengths (6-20 mum), where an advantageous contrast ratio between star and planet occurs. The baseline mission is projected to last 5 years and consists of approximately 200 individual target stars. Among these, 25-50 planetary systems can be studied spectroscopically, which will include the search for gases such as CO(2), H(2)O, CH(4), and O(3). Many of the key technologies required for the construction of Darwin have already been demonstrated, and the remainder are estimated to be mature in the near future. Darwin is a mission that will ignite intense interest in both the research community and the wider public.

Expecting a boomtown? Exploring potential housing – related impacts of large scale resource developments in Darwin

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Gretchen Ennis

2013-05-01

Full Text Available Darwin is a city in the Northern Territory of Australia expecting a ‘boomtown’ scenario due to significant natural resource developments in the Greater Darwin area. The experience of ‘booming’ has a range of impacts upon communities. Housing is a key area of impact, particularly for the most vulnerable members of a population, who may not reap the benefits of the ‘boom’. In Darwin, new resource developments will begin in the context of record high house prices, high rents and high homelessness rates. This literature review explores what is known about the housing-related impacts of boomtowns and considers the likely housing-related impacts of a boomtown scenario in Darwin. While the city’s diverse economy and population size may provide some insulation from severe boomtown impacts, housing availability and affordability is likely to be negatively impacted. The implications of this for the most vulnerable members of the greater Darwin population require careful consideration.

Darwin's "Mr. Arthrobalanus": Sexual Differentiation, Evolutionary Destiny and the Expert Eye of the Beholder.

Science.gov (United States)

Buchanan, Roderick D

2017-05-01

Darwin's Cirripedia project was an exacting exercise in systematics, as well as an encrypted study of evolution in action. Darwin had a long-standing interest and expertise in marine invertebrates and their sexual arrangements. The surprising and revealing sexual differentiation he would uncover amongst barnacles represented an important step in his understanding of the origins of sexual reproduction. But it would prove difficult to reconcile these findings with his later theorizing. Moreover, the road to discovery was hardly straightforward. Darwin was both helped and hindered by the tacit expectations generated by his transformist theorizing, and had to overcome culturally-embedded assumptions about gender and reproductive roles. Significant observational backtracking was required to correct several oversights and misapprehensions, none more so than those relating to the chronically misunderstood "Mr. Arthrobalanus." With careful attention to chronology, this paper highlights some curious and overlooked aspects of Darwin's epic project.

Boltzmann, Gibbs and Darwin-Fowler approaches in parastatistics

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ponczek, R.L.; Yan, C.C.

1976-01-01

Derivations of the equilibrium values of occupation numbers are made using three approaches, namely, the Boltzmann 'elementary' one, the ensemble method of Gibbs, and that of Darwin and Fowler as well [pt

Relationship between number and intensity of fighting: evidence from cow fighting tournaments in Valdostana cattle

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Cristina Sartori

2014-10-01

Full Text Available Cattle establish firm dominance relationships through ritualised fights. This study aimed at investigating behaviours involved in dominance relationships and effect of factors such as weight, age and repeated fighting experience in fighting dynamics. Subject of the study was the Valdostana breed, whose cows assess dominance relationships in traditional competitions. Tournaments consist in rounds in which cows interact in pairs to assess dominance. Only winners participate in subsequent rounds. An amount of 120 fights involving 145 cows was retained, and winners (51 cows were considered as focal individuals. An ethogram of agonistic interactions was established, including behaviours of different agonistic intensity as physical interactions (pushes, clashes, displays (threats, vocalisations, and non agonistic approaches. A transition diagram of behaviours showed a tendency to express firstly non agonistic approaches and lastly more aggressive clashes. A mixed linear model analysis on traits like competition intensity, duration, and type of behaviours expressed showed a significant effect of age difference on behaviours. However, the most important factor was the number of rounds performed: from the first to subsequent fights agonistic intensity and physical contacts increased, and displays reduced. This may be due either to the fact that more aggressive individuals were likely to be the winners, or that in higher rounds the opponents were more similar regarding fighting ability or aggressiveness and thus more intense fights occurred. The increased aggressiveness after repeated situations of competition suggests suggests that careful attention should be paid to welfare when animals are exposed to situations of high competition, like regrouping.

La Regla de Darwin

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Gustavo Caponi

2000-06-01

Full Text Available Taking as a starting point Brandon's account of the principle of natural selection, we argue that it is possible to consider such a principle as bearing the same status of the principle of causation, to wit, that of a methodological rule whose function would be to introduce a "teleological mode of inquiring the living". This way of understanding the principle of natural selection will drive us into an interpretation of Darwinism that is close to that one argued for by Daniel Dennett.

DARWIN. An evolution code system for a large range of applications

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Tsilanizara, A.; Diop, C.M.; Nimal, B.

2000-01-01

The aim of this article is to present the main capabilities of an evolution code system, DARWIN, developed at CEA (France). It is devoted to radioactivity studies in various application fields such as nuclear fuel cycle, dismantling, thermonuclear fusion, accelerator driven system, medecine etc. All types of nuclides are dealt with: actinides, fission products, activation products, spallation products. Physical quantities calculated by the code are isotope concentration, isotope mass, activity, radiotoxicity, gamma spectra, beta spectra, alpha spectra, neutron production by spontaneous fission and (α, n) reaction, residual heating, for any cooling times until geological times. Both analytical and numerical schemes are developed in the PEPIN2 depletion module of DARWIN to solve the generalized coupled differential depletion equations. The depletion module PEPIN2 is automatically linked to international evaluations (JEF2, ENDF/B6, EAF97...) both for decay data and cross-sections, and to some transport codes such as TRIPOLI, APOLLO2 and ERANOS. These transport codes provide neutronic data as self-shielded cross-sections and neutron fluxes. DARWIN includes a generator of radioisotope chain built automatically from decay modes and nuclear reaction types specified in the evaluation libraries. A 'search engine' allows to determine all formation ways of a considered isotope. Several examples are given for illustrating capabilities of DARWIN in different field applications. Some comparisons with other codes such as ORIGEN, FISPIN and FISPACT are also presented. (author)

Mathematic study and numerical implantation of the Vlasov-Darwin model

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sonnendrucker, E.

1994-12-01

Numerical simulation of some phenomena in plasma physics, or more generally in electromagnetism, can be more easily done using approximate models of Maxwell equations such as the Darwin model in which the transverse part of the displacement current in the Ampere equation is neglected, or such as the static model in which the time derivatives are neglected. In this note, the Darwin model is presented first, and then an asymptotic analysis of Maxwell equations is given with limit conditions of perfect conductor on one part of the side, and Silver-Muller absorbing conditions on the other part. This allows to obtain a variational formulation for the Darwin model which is a good approximation of Maxwell equations. A variational formulation for the quasi-static model is also obtained. In a second part this implantation is described using a 2-D finite element method coupled with a particulate method for the Vlasov equations which leads to numerical results allowing a determination of the different models application. (J.S.). 2 refs

Streamlined Darwin methods for particle beam injectors

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Boyd, J.K.

1987-01-01

Physics issues that involve inductive effects, such as beam fluctuations, electromagnetic (EM) instability, or interactions with a cavity require a time-dependent simulation. The most elaborate time-dependent codes self-consistently solve Maxwell's equations and the force equation for a large number of macroparticles. Although these full EM particle-in-cell (PIC) codes have been used to study a broad range of phenomena, including beam injectors, they have several drawbacks. In an explicit solution of Maxwell's equations, the time step is restricted by a Courant condition. A second disadvantage is the production of anomalously large numerical fluctuations, caused by representing many real particles by a single computational macroparticle. Last, approximate models of internal boundaries can create nonphysical radiation in a full EM simulation. In this work, many of the problems of a fully electromagnetic simulation are avoided by using the Darwin field model. The Darwin field model is the magnetoinductive limit of Maxwell's equations, and it retains the first-order relativistic correction to the particle Lagrangian. It includes the part of the displacement current necessary to satisfy the charge-continuity equation. This feature is important for simulation of nonneutral beams. Because the Darwin model does not include the solenoidal vector component of the displacement current, it cannot be used to study high-frequency phenomena or effects caused by rapid current changes. However, because wave motion is not followed, the Courant condition of a fully electromagnetic code can be exceeded. In addition, inductive effects are modeled without creating nonphysical radiation

Darwinizing Gaia.

Science.gov (United States)

Doolittle, W Ford

2017-12-07

The Gaia hypothesis of James Lovelock was co-developed with and vigorously promoted by Lynn Margulis, but most mainstream Darwinists scorned and still do not accept the notion. They cannot imagine selection for global stability being realized at the level of the individuals or species that make up the biosphere. Here I suggest that we look at the biogeochemical cycles and other homeostatic processes that might confer stability - rather than the taxa (mostly microbial) that implement them - as the relevant units of selection. By thus focusing our attentions on the "song", not the "singers", a Darwinized Gaia might be developed. Our understanding of evolution by natural selection would however need to be stretched to accommodate differential persistence as well as differential reproduction. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Exploration and exploitation of Victorian science in Darwin's reading notebooks.

Science.gov (United States)

Murdock, Jaimie; Allen, Colin; DeDeo, Simon

2017-02-01

Search in an environment with an uncertain distribution of resources involves a trade-off between exploitation of past discoveries and further exploration. This extends to information foraging, where a knowledge-seeker shifts between reading in depth and studying new domains. To study this decision-making process, we examine the reading choices made by one of the most celebrated scientists of the modern era: Charles Darwin. From the full-text of books listed in his chronologically-organized reading journals, we generate topic models to quantify his local (text-to-text) and global (text-to-past) reading decisions using Kullback-Liebler Divergence, a cognitively-validated, information-theoretic measure of relative surprise. Rather than a pattern of surprise-minimization, corresponding to a pure exploitation strategy, Darwin's behavior shifts from early exploitation to later exploration, seeking unusually high levels of cognitive surprise relative to previous eras. These shifts, detected by an unsupervised Bayesian model, correlate with major intellectual epochs of his career as identified both by qualitative scholarship and Darwin's own self-commentary. Our methods allow us to compare his consumption of texts with their publication order. We find Darwin's consumption more exploratory than the culture's production, suggesting that underneath gradual societal changes are the explorations of individual synthesis and discovery. Our quantitative methods advance the study of cognitive search through a framework for testing interactions between individual and collective behavior and between short- and long-term consumption choices. This novel application of topic modeling to characterize individual reading complements widespread studies of collective scientific behavior. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The necessity of Darwin: this journal's tribute to the most influential scientist of all time.

Science.gov (United States)

Sessions, Stanley K; Macgregor, Herbert C

2009-01-01

Charles Darwin is considered by many to be one of the most influential scientists of all time. His theory of evolution via natural selection was astonishingly prescient in terms of what modern biology has revealed in the 150 years since the publication of The Origin of Species, especially since Darwin was unaware of even the most fundamental aspects of transmission genetics, not to mention molecular biology. Here we speculate what impact it would have had on Darwin's thinking if he had known what we now know about molecular biology and cytogenetics.

Keeping the Dogs in the Fight: What Combatant Commanders Need to Know about MWDs

Science.gov (United States)

2013-05-20

be traced back to the arid land of ancient Mesopotamia , a conflicted region of the world where today’s war dogs have returned to ensure the security... relationships with JIEDDO is vital. In 2010, after an estimated total of $19B was transferred to it, LTG Michael Oats, the head of JIEDDO, said

Darwin y la laicización del discurso sobre el hombre

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tort, Patrick

2000-12-01

Full Text Available

Resurging of the ideologies against transformism of a creationist orientation follows today the sociobiology fashion of the two precedent decades as second phase of the pendulous movement that regulates the alternating return of the faced ideologies. The show of the polemic among these two versions of the reflections on life, its origins and its evolution, is organized like a fight without barracks for the conquest of the consciences. This show is born in the United States and it is exported. America si not, neither he has never been, «between the Bible and Darwin». At the beginning it was between the Bible and Spencer. Today, logically, is between the Creationism and the Sociobiology. The reading of Darwin is, at the moment, a prerequisite to overcome this game of illusions and false equivalences.