Darwin the scientist.

Science.gov (United States)

Browne, J

2009-01-01

Charles Darwin's experimental investigations show him to have been a superb practical researcher. These skills are often underestimated today when assessing Darwin's achievement in the Origin of Species and his other books. Supported by a private income, he turned his house and gardens into a Victorian equivalent of a modern research station. Darwin participated actively in the exchange of scientific information via letters and much of his research was also carried out through correspondence. Although this research was relatively small scale in practice, it was large scale in intellectual scope. Darwin felt he had a strong desire to understand or explain whatever he observed.

O show de Darwin

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Steve Shapin

2010-07-01

Full Text Available As comemorações dos 200 anos de nascimento de Charles Darwin revelaram menos sobre a figura histórica do cientista vitoriano do que sobre o lugar da ciência e do cientista na cultura moderna. O artigo explora os eventos do "Dia de Darwin" e a produção recente sobre o "pai da teoria da evolução" com a intenção de ligá-los à recepção contemporânea da obra (e da figura de Charles Darwin.The celebrations of the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth were less about the historical figure of the Victorian scientist than about the place of science and the scientist in modern culture. The article explores the "Darwin Day" events and recent books on the "father of the theory of evolution" in order to relate them to the contemporary reception of Darwin's life and work.

Charles Darwin's Theory of Moral Sentiments: What Darwin's Ethics Really Owes to Adam Smith.

Science.gov (United States)

Priest, Greg

2017-01-01

When we read the Origin, we cannot help but hear echoes of the Wealth of Nations. Darwin's "economy of nature" features a "division of labour" that leads to complexity and productivity. We should not, however, analyze Darwin's ethics through this lens. Darwin did not draw his economic ideas from Smith, nor did he base his ethics on an economic foundation. Darwin's ethics rest on Smith's notion from the Theory of Moral Sentiments of an innate human faculty of sympathy. Darwin gave this faculty an evolutionary interpretation and built on this foundation an ethics far removed from what is commonly supposed.

Darwin and Emotion Expression

Science.gov (United States)

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…

Darwin as Metaphor

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Emily Ballou

2010-10-01

Full Text Available In response to Steven Shapin’s query in the 'London Review of Books', 'Why such homage?', 'I look at Darwin as a metaphor for creativity, and how Darwin, as evidenced in his own metaphysical notebooks, imagined and performed acts of creation in his pursuit of science. Many of Darwin’s ideas were first conceptualised imaginatively, instinctively almost. In this way, he created concepts, rather than simply discovering them. I include a brief discussion of my experience of rendering Darwin and his life into a portrait in 75 poems and also a discussion of the bio-pic Creation'. As species change over time, but are still related, so a portrait of Darwin is a descendent of the historical man and his words, but is no longer the historical man. 

Darwins aktualitet

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kjærgaard, Peter C.

2009-01-01

- han får os til at diskutere os selv. Uddrag af PETER C. KJÆRGAARDs tale ved åbningen af Darwin-udstillingen på Statens Naturhistoriske Museum d. 4. februar. Udgivelsesdato: Marts......- han får os til at diskutere os selv. Uddrag af PETER C. KJÆRGAARDs tale ved åbningen af Darwin-udstillingen på Statens Naturhistoriske Museum d. 4. februar. Udgivelsesdato: Marts...

Charles Darwin i 2009

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kjærgaard, Peter C.

2009-01-01

Charles Darwin blev født d. 12. februar 1809. Hans mest berømte bog, 'Om arternes oprindelse', udkom d. 24. november 1859. Det gør 2009 til noget ganske særligt for både Darwin og evolutionsteorien. Det er nemlig i år både Darwins 200-års fødselsdag og 150-års jubilæet for en af de mest...

Darwin i Danmark

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Klassiske danske oversættelser af Charles Darwins skrifter, bl.a. Om Arternes Oprindelse, Menneskets Afstamning, Rejse om Jorden og Live og Breve. Indeholder også forskellige 1800-tals reaktioner til Darwin sammen med en række introduktioner, bibliografier og andre ressourcer for studerende og...

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.

Evolutionary plant physiology: Charles Darwin's forgotten synthesis.

Science.gov (United States)

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 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

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.

Upgrades of DARWIN, a dose and spectrum monitoring system applicable to various types of radiation over wide energy ranges

Science.gov (United States)

Sato, Tatsuhiko; Satoh, Daiki; Endo, Akira; Shigyo, Nobuhiro; Watanabe, Fusao; Sakurai, Hiroki; Arai, Yoichi

2011-05-01

A dose and spectrum monitoring system applicable to neutrons, photons and muons over wide ranges of energy, designated as DARWIN, has been developed for radiological protection in high-energy accelerator facilities. DARWIN consists of a phoswitch-type scintillation detector, a data-acquisition (DAQ) module for digital waveform analysis, and a personal computer equipped with a graphical-user-interface (GUI) program for controlling the system. The system was recently upgraded by introducing an original DAQ module based on a field programmable gate array, FPGA, and also by adding a function for estimating neutron and photon spectra based on an unfolding technique without requiring any specific scientific background of the user. The performance of the upgraded DARWIN was examined in various radiation fields, including an operational field in J-PARC. The experiments revealed that the dose rates and spectra measured by the upgraded DARWIN are quite reasonable, even in radiation fields with peak structures in terms of both spectrum and time variation. These results clearly demonstrate the usefulness of DARWIN for improving radiation safety in high-energy accelerator facilities.

Upgrades of DARWIN, a dose and spectrum monitoring system applicable to various types of radiation over wide energy ranges

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sato, Tatsuhiko; Satoh, Daiki; Endo, Akira; Shigyo, Nobuhiro; Watanabe, Fusao; Sakurai, Hiroki; Arai, Yoichi

2011-01-01

A dose and spectrum monitoring system applicable to neutrons, photons and muons over wide ranges of energy, designated as DARWIN, has been developed for radiological protection in high-energy accelerator facilities. DARWIN consists of a phoswitch-type scintillation detector, a data-acquisition (DAQ) module for digital waveform analysis, and a personal computer equipped with a graphical-user-interface (GUI) program for controlling the system. The system was recently upgraded by introducing an original DAQ module based on a field programmable gate array, FPGA, and also by adding a function for estimating neutron and photon spectra based on an unfolding technique without requiring any specific scientific background of the user. The performance of the upgraded DARWIN was examined in various radiation fields, including an operational field in J-PARC. The experiments revealed that the dose rates and spectra measured by the upgraded DARWIN are quite reasonable, even in radiation fields with peak structures in terms of both spectrum and time variation. These results clearly demonstrate the usefulness of DARWIN for improving radiation safety in high-energy accelerator facilities.

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)

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".

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…

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)

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.

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

Science.gov (United States)

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.

Darwinism and the molecular revolution

OpenAIRE

Salzano, Francisco M.

2001-01-01

The main characteristics of Darwin's life and work will be examined, as well as the developments which occurred after his death, especially neodarwinism and the synthetic theory of organic change. In which ways the extraordinary progress made in the field of genetics and molecular biology in the last decades affected our ideas about evolution? This question will be considered using information recently obtained concerning the human genome, and the research performed by our group in a very int...

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...

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

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.

Music, Play and Darwin's Children: Pedagogical Reflections of and on the Ontogeny/Phylogeny Relationship

Science.gov (United States)

Bannan, Nicholas

2014-01-01

This article explores the relationship between ideas about the role and purpose of music introduced in the major publications of Charles Darwin, and the fields of child development, music education and pedagogy. It also considers the significant influence on Darwin's work of his own biography and family life. In the global village of…

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

Hydrodynamic Drag on Streamlined Projectiles and Cavities

KAUST Repository

Jetly, Aditya

2016-04-19

The air cavity formation resulting from the water-entry of solid objects has been the subject of extensive research due to its application in various fields such as biology, marine vehicles, sports and oil and gas industries. Recently we demonstrated that at certain conditions following the closing of the air cavity formed by the initial impact of a superhydrophobic sphere on a free water surface a stable streamlined shape air cavity can remain attached to the sphere. The formation of superhydrophobic sphere and attached air cavity reaches a steady state during the free fall. In this thesis we further explore this novel phenomenon to quantify the drag on streamlined shape cavities. The drag on the sphere-cavity formation is then compared with the drag on solid projectile which were designed to have self-similar shape to that of the cavity. The solid projectiles of adjustable weight were produced using 3D printing technique. In a set of experiments on the free fall of projectile we determined the variation of projectiles drag coefficient as a function of the projectiles length to diameter ratio and the projectiles specific weight, covering a range of intermediate Reynolds number, Re ~ 104 – 105 which are characteristic for our streamlined cavity experiments. Parallel free fall experiment with sphere attached streamlined air cavity and projectile of the same shape and effective weight clearly demonstrated the drag reduction effect due to the stress-free boundary condition at cavity liquid interface. The streamlined cavity experiments can be used as the upper bound estimate of the drag reduction by air layers naturally sustained on superhydrophobic surfaces in contact with water. In the final part of the thesis we design an experiment to test the drag reduction capacity of robust superhydrophobic coatings deposited on the surface of various model vessels.

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…

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

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

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.

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.

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…

Laser-fusion 40Ar/39Ar Ages of Darwin Impact Glass

Science.gov (United States)

Lo, Ching-Hua; Howard, Kieren T.; Chung, Sun-Lin; Meffre, Sebastien

2002-11-01

Three samples of Darwin Glass, an impact glass found in Tasmania, Australia at the edge of the Australasian tektite strewn field were dated using the 40Ar/39Ar single-grain laser fusion technique, yielding isochron ages of 796-815 ka with an overall weighted mean of 816 ± 7 ka. These data are statistically indistinguishable from those recently reported for the Australasian tektites from Southeast Asia and Australia (761-816 ka; with a mean weighted age of 803 ± 3 ka). However, considering the compositional and textural differences and the disparity from the presumed impact crater area for Australasian tektites, Darwin Glass is more likely to have resulted from a distinct impact during the same period of time.

[Charles Robert Darwin: the great founder of scientific evolutionism].

Science.gov (United States)

Liang, Qian-Jin; Bin, Jie; Zhang, Gen-Fa

2009-12-01

Today, we celebrated 200 years since Charles Darwin, one of the world's most creative and influential thinkers, was born. And there happens to be the 150th anniversary of the publication of his famous book, On the Origin of Species. It is verified that On the Origin of Species is an immortal classic book and is still guiding the study of anagenesis in life science as the development of natural science from then on, and even though most of the ideas in the book are well-known at the present age. In the article, we recall the brilliance and predomination life of Darwin, a great sage with rich scientific achievements, review briefly the novel discoveries and theories after him in the field, and then elucidate the focal points and perspectiveas in near future study of evolution.

[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.

Evolution beyond neo-Darwinism: a new conceptual framework.

Science.gov (United States)

Noble, Denis

2015-01-01

Experimental results in epigenetics and related fields of biological research show that the Modern Synthesis (neo-Darwinist) theory of evolution requires either extension or replacement. This article examines the conceptual framework of neo-Darwinism, including the concepts of 'gene', 'selfish', 'code', 'program', 'blueprint', 'book of life', 'replicator' and 'vehicle'. This form of representation is a barrier to extending or replacing existing theory as it confuses conceptual and empirical matters. These need to be clearly distinguished. In the case of the central concept of 'gene', the definition has moved all the way from describing a necessary cause (defined in terms of the inheritable phenotype itself) to an empirically testable hypothesis (in terms of causation by DNA sequences). Neo-Darwinism also privileges 'genes' in causation, whereas in multi-way networks of interactions there can be no privileged cause. An alternative conceptual framework is proposed that avoids these problems, and which is more favourable to an integrated systems view of evolution. © 2015. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd.

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;…

Expanding the framework of the holism/reductionism debate in neo-Darwinism: the case of Theodosius Dobzhansky and Bernhard Rensch.

Science.gov (United States)

Delisle, Richard G

2008-01-01

The holism/reductionism debate in evolutionary biology has often been analysed as involving two main phenomenological levels within neo-Darwinism: genetic and organismic. This analytical framework assumes that explanation in evolution is either found in the field of genetics or the field of organismic biology. It is argued here that this framework is far too restrictive to incorporate what at least some founding members of neo-Darwinism had in mind in their search for the ultimate cause of evolution. Dobzhansky's "super-holism" locates this drive in the highest possible entity imaginable--an ontologically unified evolutionary cosmos--while Rensch's ontological "super-reductionism," on the other hand, places it at the lowest possible entity of microphysics, that is, at the level of an energetic field of protopsychical nature. Not only it is suggested that a much-expanded framework is required for analysing the holism/reductionism debate in neo-Darwinism, but also that this new framework may have implications for the conceptualization of the neo-Darwinian movement itself.

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.

The Darwin direct implicit particle-in-cell (DADIPIC) method for simulation of low frequency plasma phenomena

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Gibbons, M.R.; Hewett, D.W.

1995-01-01

We describe a new algorithm for simulating low frequency, kinetic phenomena in plasma. Darwin direct implicit particle-in-cell (DADIPIC), as its name implies, is a combination of the Darwin and direct implicit methods. Through the Darwin method the hyperbolic Maxwell's equations are reformulated into a set of elliptic equations. Propagating light waves do not exist in the formulation so the Courant constraint on the time step is eliminated. The direct implicit method is applied only to the electrostatic field with the result that electrostatic plasma oscillations do not have to be resolved for stability. With the elimination of these constraints spatial and temporal discretization can be much larger than that possible with explicit, electrodynamic PIC. We discuss the algorithms for pushing the particles and solving the fields in 2D cartesian geometry. We also detail boundary conditions for conductors and dielectrics. Finally, we present two test cases, electron cyclotron waves and collisionless heating in inductively coupled plasmas. For these test cases DADIPIC shows agreement with analytic kinetic theory and good energy conservation characteristics. 33 refs., 7 figs., 2 tabs

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.

Charles Darwin's emotional expression "experiment" and his contribution to modern neuropharmacology.

Science.gov (United States)

Snyder, Peter J; Kaufman, Rebecca; Harrison, John; Maruff, Paul

2010-04-08

In the late 1860s and early 1870s, Darwin had corresponded with the French physician and physiologist, G. B. A. Duchenne, regarding Duchenne's experimental manipulation of human facial expression of emotion, by applying Galvanic electrical stimulation directly to facial muscles. Duchenne had produced a set of over 60 photographic plates to illustrate his view that there are different muscles in the human face that are separately responsible for each individual emotion. Darwin studied this material very carefully and he received permission from Duchenne in 1871 to reproduce several of these images in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). Darwin had doubted Duchenne's view that there were individual muscle groups that mediate the expression of dozens of separable emotions, and he wondered whether there might instead be a fewer set of core emotions that are expressed with great stability worldwide and across cultures. Prompted by his doubts regarding the veracity of Duchenne's model, Darwin conducted what may have been the first-ever single-blind study of the recognition of human facial expression of emotion. This single experiment was a little-known forerunner for an entire modern field of study with contemporary clinical relevance. Moreover, his specific question about cross-cultural recognition of the cardinal emotions in faces is a topic that is being actively studied (in the twenty-first century) with the hope of developing novel biomarkers to aid the discovery of new therapies for the treatment of schizophrenia, autism, and other neuropsychiatric diseases.

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.

Streamline-concentration balance model for in-situ uranium leaching and site restoration

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bommer, P.M.; Schechter, R.S.; Humenick, M.J.

1981-03-01

This work presents two computer models. One describes in-situ uranium leaching and the other describes post leaching site restoration. Both models use a streamline generator to set up the flow field over the reservoir. The leaching model then uses the flow data in a concentration balance along each streamline coupled with the appropriate reaction kinetics to calculate uranium production. The restoration model uses the same procedure except that binary cation exchange is used as the restoring mechanism along each streamline and leaching cation clean up is simulated. The mathematical basis for each model is shown in detail along with the computational schemes used. Finally, the two models have been used with several data sets to point out their capabilities and to illustrate important leaching and restoration parameters and schemes

Streamline-concentration balance model for in situ uranium leaching and site restoration

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bommer, P.M.

1979-01-01

This work presents two computer models. One describes in situ uranium leaching and the other describes post leaching site restoration. Both models use a streamline generator to set up the flow field over the reservoir. The leaching model then uses the flow data in a concentration balance along each streamline coupled with the appropriate reaction kinetics to calculate uranium production. The restoration model uses the same procedure ecept that binary cation exchange is used as the restoring mechanism along each streamline and leaching cation clean up is stimulated. The mathematical basis for each model is shown in detail along with the computational schemes used. Finally, the two models have been used with several data sets to point out their capabilities and to illustrate important leaching and restoration parameters and schemes

[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

Science.gov (United States)

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

Darwin as a student of behavior.

Science.gov (United States)

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.

Characterization of the Darwin direct implicit particle-in-cell method and resulting guidelines for operation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Gibbons, M.R.; Hewett, D.W.

1997-01-01

We investigate the linear dispersion and other properties of the Darwin Direct Implicit Particle-in-cell (DADIPIC) method in order to deduce guidelines for its use in the simulation of long time-scale, kinetic phenomena in plasmas. The Darwin part of this algorithm eliminates the Courant constraint for light propagation across a grid cell in a time step and divides the field solution into several elliptic equations. The direct implicit method is only applied to the electrostatic field relieving the need to resolve plasma oscillations. Linear theory and simulations verifying the theory are used to generate the desired guidelines as well as show the utility of DADIPIC for a wide range of low frequency, electromagnetic phenomena. We find that separation of the fields has made the task of predicting algorithm behavior easier and produced a robust method without restrictive constraints. 20 refs., 11 figs., 3 tabs

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

Science.gov (United States)

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…

Industrial Compositional Streamline Simulation for Efficient and Accurate Prediction of Gas Injection and WAG Processes

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Margot Gerritsen

2008-10-31

the redundant work generally done in the near-well regions. We improved the accuracy of the streamline simulator with a higher order mapping from pressure grid to streamlines that significantly reduces smoothing errors, and a Kriging algorithm is used to map from the streamlines to the background grid. The higher accuracy of the Kriging mapping means that it is not essential for grid blocks to be crossed by one or more streamlines. The higher accuracy comes at the price of increased computational costs, but allows coarser coverage and so does not generally increase the overall costs of the computations. To reduce errors associated with fixing the pressure field between pressure updates, we developed a higher order global time-stepping method that allows the use of larger global time steps. Third-order ENO schemes are suggested to propagate components along streamlines. Both in the two-phase and three-phase experiments these ENO schemes outperform other (higher order) upwind schemes. Application of the third order ENO scheme leads to overall computational savings because the computational grid used can be coarsened. Grid adaptivity along streamlines is implemented to allow sharp but efficient resolution of solution fronts at reduced computational costs when displacement fronts are sufficiently separated. A correction for Volume Change On Mixing (VCOM) is implemented that is very effective at handling this effect. Finally, a specialized gravity operator splitting method is proposed for use in compositional streamline methods that gives an effective correction of gravity segregation. A significant part of our effort went into the development of a parallelization strategy for streamline solvers on the next generation shared memory machines. We found in this work that the built-in dynamic scheduling strategies of OpenMP lead to parallel efficiencies that are comparable to optimal schedules obtained with customized explicit load balancing strategies as long as the ratio of

The Effects of Propulsive Jetting on Drag of a Streamlined body

Science.gov (United States)

Krieg, Michael; Mohseni, Kamran

2017-11-01

Recently an abundance of bioinspired underwater vehicles have emerged to leverage eons of evolution. Our group has developed a propulsion technique inspired by jellyfish and squid. Propulsive jets are generated by ingesting and expelling water from a flexible internal cavity. We have demonstrated thruster capabilities for maneuvering on AUV platforms, where the internal thruster geometry minimized forward drag; however, such a setup cannot characterize propulsive efficiency. Therefore, we created a new streamlined vehicle platform that produces unsteady jets for forward propulsion rather than maneuvering. The streamlined jetting body is placed in a water tunnel and held stationary while jetting frequency and background flow velocity are varied. For each frequency/velocity pair the flow field is measured around the surface and in the wake using PIV. Using the zero jetting frequency as a baseline for each background velocity, the passive body drag is related to the velocity distribution. For cases with active jetting the drag and jetting forces are estimated from the velocity field and compared to the passive case. For this streamlined body, the entrainment of surrounding flow into the propulsive jet can reduce drag forces in addition to the momentum transfer of the jet itself. Office of Naval Research.

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.

Elimination of electromagnetic radiation in plasma simulation: the Darwin or magnetoinductive approximation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hewett, D.W.

1985-01-01

For many astrophysical and most magnetic fusion applications, the purely electromagnetic modes generated by real as well as simulation ''plasma'' fluctuations are a source of high frequency radiation that is often irrelevant to the physics of interest. Unfortunately, a numerical CFL stability limit prevents either making c infinite or deltat large while using the usual explicit Maxwell's equations for the fields. A modification of Maxwell's equations, which provides implicitly the field components, circumvents this problem. The solution is to neglect retardation effects so that the electromagnetic propagation speed is effectively infinite. The purely electromagnetic modes in this limit evolve ''instantly'' to a time-asymptotic configuration about the macroscopic plasma configuration at each new time level. The Darwin or magnetoinductive approximation effectively provides infinite propagation speeds for purely electromagnetic modes by converting Maxwell's equations from hyperbolic to elliptic in character. In practice, this is accomplished by neglecting the solenoidal part of the displacement current. The elimination of the CFL time step constraint more than offsets the substantially more complicated field solution that is required. The details of a numerical implementation of this model will be presented. Numerical examples will be given and extentions of the Darwin field solution to other plasma models also will be considered. 9 refs., 3 figs

Did Darwin change his mind about the Fuegians?

Science.gov (United States)

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.

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.

Low frequency, electrodynamic simulation of kinetic plasmas with the DArwin Direct Implicit Particle-In-Cell (DADIPIC) method

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Gibbons, M.R.

1995-06-01

This dissertation describes a new algorithm for simulating low frequency, kinetic phenomena in plasmas. DArwin Direct Implicit Particle-in-Cell (DADIPIC), as its name implies, is a combination of the Darwin and direct implicit methods. One of the difficulties in simulating plasmas lies in the enormous disparity between the fundamental scale lengths of a plasma and the scale lengths of the phenomena of interest. The objective is to create models which can ignore the fundamental constraints without eliminating relevant plasma properties. Over the past twenty years several PIC methods have been investigated for overcoming the constraints on explicit electrodynamic PIC. These models eliminate selected high frequency plasma phenomena while retaining kinetic phenomena at low frequency. This dissertation shows that the combination of Darwin and Direct Implicit allows them to operate better than they have been shown to operate in the past. Through the Darwin method the hyperbolic Maxwell's equations are reformulated into a set of elliptic equations. Propagating light waves do not exist in the formulation so the Courant constraint on the time step is eliminated. The Direct Implicit method is applied only to the electrostatic field with the result that electrostatic plasma oscillations do not have to be resolved for stability. With the elimination of these constraints spatial and temporal discretization can be much larger than that possible with explicit, electrodynamic PIC. The code functions in a two dimensional Cartesian region and has been implemented with all components of the particle velocities, the E-field, and the B-field. Internal structures, conductors or dielectrics, may be placed in the simulation region, can be set at desired potentials, and driven with specified currents

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

Analysis of Streamline Separation at Infinity Using Time-Discrete Markov Chains.

Science.gov (United States)

Reich, W; Scheuermann, G

2012-12-01

Existing methods for analyzing separation of streamlines are often restricted to a finite time or a local area. In our paper we introduce a new method that complements them by allowing an infinite-time-evaluation of steady planar vector fields. Our algorithm unifies combinatorial and probabilistic methods and introduces the concept of separation in time-discrete Markov-Chains. We compute particle distributions instead of the streamlines of single particles. We encode the flow into a map and then into a transition matrix for each time direction. Finally, we compare the results of our grid-independent algorithm to the popular Finite-Time-Lyapunov-Exponents and discuss the discrepancies.

The first Charles Darwin (1758-78).

Science.gov (United States)

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.

ECONOMIA EVOLUCIONISTA Y DARWIN

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ivan Hernandez

2009-10-01

ás condiciones ante desafios estresantes. Dado que la teoría convencional de disyuntivas racionales convencional es insuficiente esto plantea un reto para que futuras investigaciones consideren al pensamiento evolucionista como una alternativa a la hora de estudiar sistemas con altos niveles de emprenderismo por necesidad, alta desigualdad y alta felicidad. Es seguramente  un terreno fructífero e interesante.   As of century XIX, two different paths were taken in history of economic science. Almost simultaneously, the darwinian revolution and the marginalist revolution took place but their respective "ulterior motif" are opposed one from the other. The theories of Darwin about the evolution of the life on Earth and the evolution of the species by means of the natural selection, became no less than a challenge to the dominant vision of the world: the Newtonian one (Witt 1999. This challenge to the Newtonian ideal, was influenced, paradoxically, by intellectual stimuli of thinkers outside biology. These influences emanated of the social philosophy of " laissez faire" during the XVIII century and beggining of century XIX. Within Darwin´s correspondence with Herbert Spencer, stands out the clear influence of the minds of economists-philosophers like Adam Smith, from the so-called School of Edinburgh, and Robert Malthus. The paradox is that nowadays Darwin, in return, influences modern economists. The darwinian revolution in the modern economy consists of showing capitalism like a evolutionary process explained by processes of the change of patterns in the relations between entities. But great part of this study of darwinian influence does not have to do with the study of Biology itself. It is related to the principles and concepts that define the evolucionary mechanism that is foundation of the development of the modern evolutionary theory. What we can learn from the study of the natural system and its related disciplines in the field of the social thinking in the adaptability

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

Darwin, Veblen and the problem of causality in economics.

Science.gov (United States)

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

Impact assessment: Eroding benefits through streamlining?

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Bond, Alan, E-mail: alan.bond@uea.ac.uk [School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia (United Kingdom); School of Geo and Spatial Sciences, North-West University (South Africa); Pope, Jenny, E-mail: jenny@integral-sustainability.net [Integral Sustainability (Australia); Curtin University Sustainability Policy Institute (Australia); Morrison-Saunders, Angus, E-mail: A.Morrison-Saunders@murdoch.edu.au [School of Geo and Spatial Sciences, North-West University (South Africa); Environmental Science, Murdoch University (Australia); Retief, Francois, E-mail: francois.retief@nwu.ac.za [School of Geo and Spatial Sciences, North-West University (South Africa); Gunn, Jill A.E., E-mail: jill.gunn@usask.ca [Department of Geography and Planning and School of Environment and Sustainability, University of Saskatchewan (Canada)

2014-02-15

This paper argues that Governments have sought to streamline impact assessment in recent years (defined as the last five years) to counter concerns over the costs and potential for delays to economic development. We hypothesise that this has had some adverse consequences on the benefits that subsequently accrue from the assessments. This hypothesis is tested using a framework developed from arguments for the benefits brought by Environmental Impact Assessment made in 1982 in the face of the UK Government opposition to its implementation in a time of economic recession. The particular benefits investigated are ‘consistency and fairness’, ‘early warning’, ‘environment and development’, and ‘public involvement’. Canada, South Africa, the United Kingdom and Western Australia are the jurisdictions tested using this framework. The conclusions indicate that significant streamlining has been undertaken which has had direct adverse effects on some of the benefits that impact assessment should deliver, particularly in Canada and the UK. The research has not examined whether streamlining has had implications for the effectiveness of impact assessment, but the causal link between streamlining and benefits does sound warning bells that merit further investigation. -- Highlights: • Investigation of the extent to which government has streamlined IA. • Evaluation framework was developed based on benefits of impact assessment. • Canada, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and Western Australia were examined. • Trajectory in last five years is attrition of benefits of impact assessment.

Impact assessment: Eroding benefits through streamlining?

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bond, Alan; Pope, Jenny; Morrison-Saunders, Angus; Retief, Francois; Gunn, Jill A.E.

2014-01-01

This paper argues that Governments have sought to streamline impact assessment in recent years (defined as the last five years) to counter concerns over the costs and potential for delays to economic development. We hypothesise that this has had some adverse consequences on the benefits that subsequently accrue from the assessments. This hypothesis is tested using a framework developed from arguments for the benefits brought by Environmental Impact Assessment made in 1982 in the face of the UK Government opposition to its implementation in a time of economic recession. The particular benefits investigated are ‘consistency and fairness’, ‘early warning’, ‘environment and development’, and ‘public involvement’. Canada, South Africa, the United Kingdom and Western Australia are the jurisdictions tested using this framework. The conclusions indicate that significant streamlining has been undertaken which has had direct adverse effects on some of the benefits that impact assessment should deliver, particularly in Canada and the UK. The research has not examined whether streamlining has had implications for the effectiveness of impact assessment, but the causal link between streamlining and benefits does sound warning bells that merit further investigation. -- Highlights: • Investigation of the extent to which government has streamlined IA. • Evaluation framework was developed based on benefits of impact assessment. • Canada, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and Western Australia were examined. • Trajectory in last five years is attrition of benefits of impact assessment

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.

Bayesian Methods and Universal Darwinism

Science.gov (United States)

Campbell, John

2009-12-01

Bayesian methods since the time of Laplace have been understood by their practitioners as closely aligned to the scientific method. Indeed a recent Champion of Bayesian methods, E. T. Jaynes, titled his textbook on the subject Probability Theory: the Logic of Science. Many philosophers of science including Karl Popper and Donald Campbell have interpreted the evolution of Science as a Darwinian process consisting of a `copy with selective retention' algorithm abstracted from Darwin's theory of Natural Selection. Arguments are presented for an isomorphism between Bayesian Methods and Darwinian processes. Universal Darwinism, as the term has been developed by Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Susan Blackmore, is the collection of scientific theories which explain the creation and evolution of their subject matter as due to the Operation of Darwinian processes. These subject matters span the fields of atomic physics, chemistry, biology and the social sciences. The principle of Maximum Entropy states that Systems will evolve to states of highest entropy subject to the constraints of scientific law. This principle may be inverted to provide illumination as to the nature of scientific law. Our best cosmological theories suggest the universe contained much less complexity during the period shortly after the Big Bang than it does at present. The scientific subject matter of atomic physics, chemistry, biology and the social sciences has been created since that time. An explanation is proposed for the existence of this subject matter as due to the evolution of constraints in the form of adaptations imposed on Maximum Entropy. It is argued these adaptations were discovered and instantiated through the Operations of a succession of Darwinian processes.

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

Science.gov (United States)

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.

Science.gov (United States)

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

Science.gov (United States)

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

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

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

Science.gov (United States)

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)

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

Science.gov (United States)

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).

Science.gov (United States)

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

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

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...

Providing Data Management Support to NASA Airborne Field Studies through Streamlined Usability Design

Science.gov (United States)

Beach, A. L., III; Northup, E. A.; Early, A. B.; Chen, G.

2016-12-01

Airborne field studies are an effective way to gain a detailed understanding of atmospheric processes for scientific research on climate change and air quality relevant issues. One major function of airborne project data management is to maintain seamless data access within the science team. This allows individual instrument principal investigators (PIs) to process and validate their own data, which requires analysis of data sets from other PIs (or instruments). The project's web platform streamlines data ingest, distribution processes, and data format validation. In May 2016, the NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) Atmospheric Science Data Center (ASDC) developed a new data management capability to help support the Korea U.S.-Air Quality (KORUS-AQ) science team. This effort is aimed at providing direct NASA Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) support to an airborne field study. Working closely with the science team, the ASDC developed a scalable architecture that allows investigators to easily upload and distribute their data and documentation within a secure collaborative environment. The user interface leverages modern design elements to intuitively guide the PI through each step of the data management process. In addition, the new framework creates an abstraction layer between how the data files are stored and how the data itself is organized(i.e. grouping files by PI). This approach makes it easy for PIs to simply transfer their data to one directory, while the system itself can automatically group/sort data as needed. Moreover, the platform is "server agnostic" to a certain degree, making deployment and customization more straightforward as hardware needs change. This flexible design will improve development efficiency and can be leveraged for future field campaigns. This presentation will examine the KORUS-AQ data portal as a scalable solution that applies consistent and intuitive usability design practices to support ingest and management of airborne

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

Science.gov (United States)

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.

Science.gov (United States)

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.

Science.gov (United States)

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

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

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

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

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.

ACHP | News | ACHP Issues Program Comment to Streamline Communication

Science.gov (United States)

Program Comment to Streamline Communication Facilities Construction and Modification ACHP Issues Program Comment to Streamline Communication Facilities Construction and Modification The Advisory Council on

Scientific Cousins: The Relationship between Charles Darwin and Francis Galton

Science.gov (United States)

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.

Science.gov (United States)

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

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

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.

Action of earthworms on flint burial - a return to Darwin's estate

Science.gov (United States)

Kevin R. Butt; Mac Callaham; E. Louise Loudermilk; Rowan Blaik

2016-01-01

For thirty years, from the early 1840s, Charles Darwin documented the disappearance of flints in the grounds of Down House in Kent, at a location originally known as the “Stony Field”. This site (Great Pucklands Meadow – GPM) was visited in 2007 and an experiment set up in this ungrazed grassland. Locally-sourced flints (either large – 12 cm, or small – 5 cm dia.) were...

Did Jean François Barbe Anticipate Charles Darwin?

Science.gov (United States)

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

Science.gov (United States)

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.

Rhizome of life, catastrophes, sequence exchanges, gene creations and giant viruses: How microbial genomics challenges Darwin

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Vicky eMerhej

2012-08-01

Full Text Available Darwin’s theory about the evolution of species has been the object of considerable dispute. In this review, we have described seven key principles in Darwin’s book The Origin of Species and tried to present how genomics challenge each of these concepts and improve our knowledge about evolution. Darwin believed that species evolution consists on a positive directional selection ensuring the survival of the fittest. The most developed state of the species is characterized by increasing complexity. Darwin proposed the theory of descent with modification according to which all species evolve from a single common ancestor through a gradual process of small modification of their vertical inheritance. Finally, the process of evolution can be depicted in the form of a tree. However, microbial genomics showed that evolution is better described as the biological changes over time." The mode of change is not unidirectional and does not necessarily favors advantageous mutations to increase fitness it is rather subject to random selection as a result of catastrophic stochastic processes. Complexity is not necessarily the completion of development: several complex organisms have gone extinct and many microbes including bacteria with intracellular lifestyle have streamlined highly effective genomes. Genomes evolve through large events of gene deletions, duplications, insertions and genomes rearrangements rather than a gradual adaptative process. Genomes are dynamic and chimeric entities with gene repertoires that result from vertical and horizontal acquisitions as well as de novo gene creation. The chimeric character of microbial genomes excludes the possibility of finding a single common ancestor for all the genes recorded currently. Genomes are collections of genes with different evolutionary histories that cannot be represented by a single tree of life. A forest, a network or a rhizome of life may be more accurate to represent evolutionary relationships

The teacher taught? What Charles Darwin owed to John Lubbock

Science.gov (United States)

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.

Science.gov (United States)

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.

Science.gov (United States)

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"?

Science.gov (United States)

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

Science.gov (United States)

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.

Science.gov (United States)

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.

Revised stratigraphic nomenclature and correlation of early proterozoic rocks of the Darwin - Katherine region, Northern Territory

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Needham, R.S.; Stuart-Smith, P.G.

1984-01-01

New stratigraphic names and correlations are given for parts of the Early Proterozoic Pine Creek Geosyncline metasedimentary sequence and overlying felsic volcanics of the Darwin-Katherine region. They have significant implications for the stratigraphic distribution of uranium mineralisation in the Rum Jungle, Alligator Rivers and South Alligator Valley uranium fields

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

Science.gov (United States)

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…

Random unitary evolution model of quantum Darwinism with pure decoherence

Science.gov (United States)

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.

Science.gov (United States)

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

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

Science.gov (United States)

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.…

Periodic Scarred States in Open Quantum Dots as Evidence of Quantum Darwinism

Science.gov (United States)

Burke, A. M.; Akis, R.; Day, T. E.; Speyer, Gil; Ferry, D. K.; Bennett, B. R.

2010-04-01

Scanning gate microscopy (SGM) is used to image scar structures in an open quantum dot, which is created in an InAs quantum well by electron-beam lithography and wet etching. The scanned images demonstrate periodicities in magnetic field that correlate to those found in the conductance fluctuations. Simulations have shown that these magnetic transform images bear a strong resemblance to actual scars found in the dot that replicate through the modes in direct agreement with quantum Darwinism.

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

Science.gov (United States)

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.

Streamline topologies near simple degenerate critical points in two-dimensional flow away from boundaries

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Brøns, Morten; Hartnack, Johan Nicolai

1998-01-01

Streamline patterns and their bifurcations in two-dimensional incompressible flow are investigated from a topological point of view. The velocity field is expanded at a point in the fluid, and the expansion coefficients are considered as bifurcation parameters. A series of non-linear coordinate c...

Streamline topologies near simple degenerate critical points in two-dimensional flow away from boundaries

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Brøns, Morten; Hartnack, Johan Nicolai

1999-01-01

Streamline patterns and their bifurcations in two-dimensional incompressible flow are investigated from a topological point of view. The velocity field is expanded at a point in the fluid, and the expansion coefficients are considered as bifurcation parameters. A series of nonlinear coordinate ch...

A new method for calculating volumetric sweeps efficiency using streamline simulation concepts

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hidrobo, E A

2000-01-01

One of the purposes of reservoir engineering is to quantify the volumetric sweep efficiency for optimizing reservoir management decisions. The estimation of this parameter has always been a difficult task. Until now, sweep efficiency correlations and calculations have been limited to mostly homogeneous 2-D cases. Calculating volumetric sweep efficiency in a 3-D heterogeneous reservoir becomes difficult due to inherent complexity of multiple layers and arbitrary well configurations. In this paper, a new method for computing volumetric sweep efficiency for any arbitrary heterogeneity and well configuration is presented. The proposed method is based on Datta-Gupta and King's formulation of streamline time-of-flight (1995). Given the fact that the time-of-flight reflects the fluid front propagation at various times, then the connectivity in the time-of-flight represents a direct measure of the volumetric sweep efficiency. The proposed approach has been applied to synthetic as well as field examples. Synthetic examples are used to validate the volumetric sweep efficiency calculations using the streamline time-of-flight connectivity criterion by comparison with analytic solutions and published correlations. The field example, which illustrates the feasibility of the approach for large-scale field applications, is from the north Robertson unit, a low permeability carbonate reservoir in west Texas

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…

Charles Darwin havde et nuanceret syn på dyreforsøg

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Alstrup, Aage Kristian Olsen

2015-01-01

Jeg har i en tidligere blog været inde på, hvordan Charles Darwins evolutionsteori har haft betydning for vores valg af forsøgsdyr. Men hvordan så Charles Darwin egentlig selv på dyreforsøg og dyrevelfærd? Faktisk var det et emne, der optog ham dybt. Allerede i 1838, over tyve år før...... offentliggørelsen af Arternes Oprindelse, gjorde han sig et notat om, at mennesket i sin arrogance føler sig hævet over andre skabninger, men at det snarere bør opfatte sig som skabt ud fra dyrene. Disse tanker kom dog først for alvor frem, da Charles Darwin i 1871 offentliggjorde bogen Menneskets Afstamning...

Creating customer value by streamlining business processes.

Science.gov (United States)

Vantrappen, H

1992-02-01

Much of the strategic preoccupation of senior managers in the 1990s is focusing on the creation of customer value. Companies are seeking competitive advantage by streamlining the three processes through which they interact with their customers: product creation, order handling and service assurance. 'Micro-strategy' is a term which has been coined for the trade-offs and decisions on where and how to streamline these three processes. The article discusses micro-strategies applied by successful companies.

Mesh-free Hamiltonian implementation of two dimensional Darwin model

Science.gov (United States)

Siddi, Lorenzo; Lapenta, Giovanni; Gibbon, Paul

2017-08-01

A new approach to Darwin or magnetoinductive plasma simulation is presented, which combines a mesh-free field solver with a robust time-integration scheme avoiding numerical divergence errors in the solenoidal field components. The mesh-free formulation employs an efficient parallel Barnes-Hut tree algorithm to speed up the computation of fields summed directly from the particles, avoiding the necessity of divergence cleaning procedures typically required by particle-in-cell methods. The time-integration scheme employs a Hamiltonian formulation of the Lorentz force, circumventing the development of violent numerical instabilities associated with time differentiation of the vector potential. It is shown that a semi-implicit scheme converges rapidly and is robust to further numerical instabilities which can develop from a dominant contribution of the vector potential to the canonical momenta. The model is validated by various static and dynamic benchmark tests, including a simulation of the Weibel-like filamentation instability in beam-plasma interactions.

Kropotkin between Lamarck and Darwin: the impossible synthesis

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Girón, Álvaro

2003-06-01

Full Text Available Prince P.A. Kropotkin (1842-1921 was the most important leader of revolutionary anarchism of his generation. He was also a respected explorer, geographer, and wrote a variety of books on the French Revolution, prison systems and Russian literature. However, he is better known for his contribution to the debate on Social Darwinism, exemplified by his book Mutual Aid. A Factor Evolution (1902. Actually, Kropotkin was trying to build his own brand of evolutionary Ethics: a complete socio-biology consistent with revolutionary goals. But there was a serious obstacle. The presence of the Malthusian population laws at the very core of Darwinism blocked any potential progress in this direction. Kropotkin tried to extirpate the Malthusian sting by making a critical analysis of natural selection and proposing a synthesis between Lamarck and Darwin in the 1910s.
The aim of this article is to study the basics of the argument deployed by Kropotkin. It has been paid especial attention to the criticisms addressed to the hard heredity theory of August Weismann, and the reasons why Kropotkin’s contribution in this field has been ignored.

El príncipe P.A. Kropotkin (1842-1921 fue el líder mas importante del anarquismo revolucionario de su generación. El fue también un respetado explorador y geógrafo, y escribió una variada serie de libros sobre la revolución francesa, el sistema de prisiones o la literatura rusa. Sin embargo, el es más conocido por su contribución al debate sobre el Darwinismo Social, ejemplificada por su libro El apoyo mutuo. Un factor de la evolución (1902. En realidad, Kropotkin estaba tratando de construir su particular versión de la ética evolucionista: una acabada sociobiología consistente con los objetivos revolucionarios. Pero existía un serio obstáculo. La presencia de las leyes de la población maltusianas en el mismo corazón del darwinismo bloqueaban cualquier tipo de progreso en esa dirección. Kropotkin

Self streamlining wind tunnel: Further low speed testing and final design studies for the transonic facility

Science.gov (United States)

Wolf, S. W. D.

1978-01-01

Work was continued with the low speed self streamlining wind tunnel (SSWT) using the NACA 0012-64 airfoil in an effort to explain the discrepancies between the NASA Langley low turbulence pressure tunnel (LTPT) and SSWT results obtained with the airfoil stalled. Conventional wind tunnel corrections were applied to straight wall SSWT airfoil data, to illustrate the inadequacy of standard correction techniques in circumstances of high blockage. Also one SSWT test was re-run at different air speeds to investigate the effects of such changes (perhaps through changes in Reynold's number and freestream turbulence levels) on airfoil data and wall contours. Mechanical design analyses for the transonic self-streamlining wind tunnel (TSWT) were completed by the application of theoretical airfoil flow field data to the elastic beam and streamline analysis. The control system for the transonic facility, which will eventually allow on-line computer operation of the wind tunnel, was outlined.

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.

Science.gov (United States)

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.

Science.gov (United States)

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.

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

Science.gov (United States)

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.

Science.gov (United States)

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.

Science.gov (United States)

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

Science.gov (United States)

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…

Why Darwin would have loved evolutionary game theory.

Science.gov (United States)

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

Science.gov (United States)

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.

Science.gov (United States)

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.

Experimental demonstration of the fitness consequences of an introduced parasite of Darwin's finches.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jennifer A H Koop

2011-05-01

Full Text Available Introduced parasites are a particular threat to small populations of hosts living on islands because extinction can occur before hosts have a chance to evolve effective defenses. An experimental approach in which parasite abundance is manipulated in the field can be the most informative means of assessing a parasite's impact on the host. The parasitic fly Philornis downsi, recently introduced to the Galápagos Islands, feeds on nestling Darwin's finches and other land birds. Several correlational studies, and one experimental study of mixed species over several years, reported that the flies reduce host fitness. Here we report the results of a larger scale experimental study of a single species at a single site over a single breeding season.We manipulated the abundance of flies in the nests of medium ground finches (Geospiza fortis and quantified the impact of the parasites on nestling growth and fledging success. We used nylon nest liners to reduce the number of parasites in 24 nests, leaving another 24 nests as controls. A significant reduction in mean parasite abundance led to a significant increase in the number of nests that successfully fledged young. Nestlings in parasite-reduced nests also tended to be larger prior to fledging.Our results confirm that P. downsi has significant negative effects on the fitness of medium ground finches, and they may pose a serious threat to other species of Darwin's finches. These data can help in the design of management plans for controlling P. downsi in Darwin's finch breeding populations.

Dog fight: Darwin as animal advocate in the antivivisection controversy of 1875.

Science.gov (United States)

Feller, David Allan

2009-12-01

The traditional characterization of Charles Darwin as a strong advocate of physiological experimentation on animals was posited in Richard French's Antivivisection and medical science in Victorian England (1975), where French portrayed him as a soldier in Thomas Huxley's efforts to preserve anatomical experimentation on animals unfettered by government regulation. That interpretation relied too much on, inter alia, Huxley's own description of the legislative battles of 1875, and shared many historians' propensity to foster a legacy of Darwin as a leader among a new wave of scientists, even where personal interests might indicate a conflicting story. Animal rights issues concerned more than mere science for Darwin, however, and where debates over other scientific issues failed to inspire Darwin to become publicly active, he readily joined the battle over vivisection, helping to draft legislation which, in many ways, was more protective of animal rights than even the bills proposed by his friend and anti-vivisectionist, Frances Power Cobbe. Darwin may not have officially joined Cobbe's side in the fight, but personal correspondence of the period between 1870 and 1875 reveals a man whose first interest was to protect animals from inhumane treatment, and second to protect the reputations of those men and physiologists who were his friends, and who he believed incapable of inhumane acts. On this latter point he and Cobbe never did reach agreement, but they certainly agreed on the humane treatment of animals, and the need to proscribe various forms of animal experimentation.

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...

Southern Ocean overturning across streamlines in an eddying simulation of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

A. M. Treguier

2007-12-01

Full Text Available An eddying global model is used to study the characteristics of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC in a streamline-following framework. Previous model-based estimates of the meridional circulation were calculated using zonal averages: this method leads to a counter-intuitive poleward circulation of the less dense waters, and underestimates the eddy effects. We show that on the contrary, the upper ocean circulation across streamlines agrees with the theoretical view: an equatorward mean flow partially cancelled by a poleward eddy mass flux. Two model simulations, in which the buoyancy forcing above the ACC changes from positive to negative, suggest that the relationship between the residual meridional circulation and the surface buoyancy flux is not as straightforward as assumed by the simplest theoretical models: the sign of the residual circulation cannot be inferred from the surface buoyancy forcing only. Among the other processes that likely play a part in setting the meridional circulation, our model results emphasize the complex three-dimensional structure of the ACC (probably not well accounted for in streamline-averaged, two-dimensional models and the distinct role of temperature and salinity in the definition of the density field. Heat and salt transports by the time-mean flow are important even across time-mean streamlines. Heat and salt are balanced in the ACC, the model drift being small, but the nonlinearity of the equation of state cannot be ignored in the density balance.

Streamline segment statistics of premixed flames with nonunity Lewis numbers

Science.gov (United States)

Chakraborty, Nilanjan; Wang, Lipo; Klein, Markus

2014-03-01

The interaction of flame and surrounding fluid motion is of central importance in the fundamental understanding of turbulent combustion. It is demonstrated here that this interaction can be represented using streamline segment analysis, which was previously applied in nonreactive turbulence. The present work focuses on the effects of the global Lewis number (Le) on streamline segment statistics in premixed flames in the thin-reaction-zones regime. A direct numerical simulation database of freely propagating thin-reaction-zones regime flames with Le ranging from 0.34 to 1.2 is used to demonstrate that Le has significant influences on the characteristic features of the streamline segment, such as the curve length, the difference in the velocity magnitude at two extremal points, and their correlations with the local flame curvature. The strengthenings of the dilatation rate, flame normal acceleration, and flame-generated turbulence with decreasing Le are principally responsible for these observed effects. An expression for the probability density function (pdf) of the streamline segment length, originally developed for nonreacting turbulent flows, captures the qualitative behavior for turbulent premixed flames in the thin-reaction-zones regime for a wide range of Le values. The joint pdfs between the streamline length and the difference in the velocity magnitude at two extremal points for both unweighted and density-weighted velocity vectors are analyzed and compared. Detailed explanations are provided for the observed differences in the topological behaviors of the streamline segment in response to the global Le.

Darwin on Race, Gender, and Culture

Science.gov (United States)

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.

Science.gov (United States)

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

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

Science.gov (United States)

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

La Regla de Darwin

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

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.

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

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.

Aesthetic evolution by mate choice: Darwin's really dangerous idea.

Science.gov (United States)

Prum, Richard O

2012-08-19

Darwin proposed an explicitly aesthetic theory of sexual selection in which he described mate preferences as a 'taste for the beautiful', an 'aesthetic capacity', etc. These statements were not merely colourful Victorian mannerisms, but explicit expressions of Darwin's hypothesis that mate preferences can evolve for arbitrarily attractive traits that do not provide any additional benefits to mate choice. In his critique of Darwin, A. R. Wallace proposed an entirely modern mechanism of mate preference evolution through the correlation of display traits with male vigour or viability, but he called this mechanism natural selection. Wallace's honest advertisement proposal was stridently anti-Darwinian and anti-aesthetic. Most modern sexual selection research relies on essentially the same Neo-Wallacean theory renamed as sexual selection. I define the process of aesthetic evolution as the evolution of a communication signal through sensory/cognitive evaluation, which is most elaborated through coevolution of the signal and its evaluation. Sensory evaluation includes the possibility that display traits do not encode information that is being assessed, but are merely preferred. A genuinely Darwinian, aesthetic theory of sexual selection requires the incorporation of the Lande-Kirkpatrick null model into sexual selection research, but also encompasses the possibility of sensory bias, good genes and direct benefits mechanisms.

Modelling of Charles Darwin's tsunami reports

Science.gov (United States)

Galiev, Shamil

2010-05-01

Darwin landed at Valdivia and Concepcion, Chile, just before, during, and after a great 1835 earthquake. He described his impressions and results of the earthquake-induced natural catastrophe in The Voyage of the Beagle. His description of the tsunami could easily be read as a report from Indonesia or Sri Lanka, after the catastrophic tsunami of 26 December 2004. In particular, Darwin emphasised the dependence of earthquake-induced waves on a form of the coast and the coastal depth: ‘… Talcuhano and Callao are situated at the head of great shoaling bays, and they have always suffered from this phenomenon; whereas, the town of Valparaiso, which is seated close on the border of a profound ocean... has never been overwhelmed by one of these terrific deluges…' . He reports also, that ‘… the whole body of the sea retires from the coast, and then returns in great waves of overwhelming force ...' (we cite the Darwin's sentences following researchspace. auckland. ac. nz/handle/2292/4474). The coastal evolution of a tsunami was analytically studied in many publications (see, for example, Synolakis, C.E., Bernard, E.N., 2006. Philos. Trans. R. Soc., Ser. A, 364, 2231-2265; Tinti, S., Tonini, R. 205. J.Fluid Mech., 535, 11-21). However, the Darwin's reports and the influence of the coastal depth on the formation and the evolution of the steep front and the profile of tsunami did not practically discuss. Recently, a mathematical theory of these phenomena was presented in researchspace. auckland. ac. nz/handle/2292/4474. The theory describes the waves which are excited due to nonlinear effects within a shallow coastal zone. The tsunami elevation is described by two components: . Here is the linear (prime) component. It describes the wave coming from the deep ocean. is the nonlinear component. This component may become very important near the coastal line. After that the theory of the shallow waves is used. This theory yields the linear equation for and the weakly

Creative Work: The Case of Charles Darwin.

Science.gov (United States)

Gruber, Howard E.; Wallace, Doris B.

2001-01-01

Describes the evolving systems approach (ESA) to creative work, which emerged from a case study of Charles Darwin. Explains how the ESA differs from other approaches and describes various facets of creative work (networks of enterprise, uniqueness, insight, pluralism, and evolving belief systems and ensembles of metaphor). Emphasizes the…

Congressional Social Darwinism and the American Indian

Science.gov (United States)

Blinderman, Abraham

1978-01-01

Summarizing a congressional report on civil and military treatment of American Indians, this article asserts that the social Darwinism of the day prevailed among all congressional committee members ("Even friends of the Indian... knew American expansionism, technology, and racial ideology would reduce the Indian to a pitiful remnant...) (JC)

Darwin as a geologist in Africa – dispelling the myths and unravelling a confused knot

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sharad Master

2012-09-01

Full Text Available Two myths persist concerning the role played by Charles Darwin as a geologist in Africa during his epic voyage around the world (1831–1836. The first myth is that Darwin was a completely self-taught geologist, with no formal training. The second myth is that it was Darwin who finally solved the problem of the granite–schist contact at the famous Sea Point coastal exposures in Cape Town, after deliberately setting out to prove his predecessors wrong. These myths are challenged by the now ample evidence that Darwin had excellent help in his geological education from the likes of Robert Jameson, John Henslow and Adam Sedgwick. The story of Darwin and his predecessors at the Sea Point granite contact has become confused, and even conflated, with previous descriptions by Basil Hall (1813 and Clark Abel (1818. Here, the historical record is unravelled and set straight, and it is shown from the evidence of his notebooks that Darwin was quite unaware of the outcrops in Cape Town. His erudite account of the contact was a result of the 8 years spent in writing and correspondence after his return to England and not because of his brilliant insights on the outcrop, as the myth would have it. While there has been little to indicate Darwin’s landfalls in Africa, a new plaque now explains the geology of the Sea Point Contact, and includes a drawing of Darwin’s ship, the Beagle, and quotes from his work.

El camarote de Darwin: un Club de Lectura para aprender sobre la vida de Charles Darwin y su teoría de la evolución

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nicolás Cuvi

2013-01-01

Full Text Available Compartimos la experiencia y el análisis del Club de Lectura "El camarote de Darwin", realizado durante una semana en la isla Floreana, Galápagos, en un ámbito de educación no formal, para promover la alfabetización literaria y científica. Mezclamos la lectura del libro Darwin el viajero con actividades concretas de refuerzo, con el fin de cumplir con tres objetivos: divulgar la historia de Charles Darwin y su relación con Galápagos; familiarizar a los y las participantes con algunos aspectos de la teoría darwiniana de la evolución; y promover el hábito de la lectura y el gusto por los libros y las historias. Evaluamos el cumplimiento de estos objetivos mediante encuestas y observación, en las que incluimos preguntas sobre otros aspectos no considerados en los objetivos generales, como la relación entre ideas evolucionistas y creacionistas. Señalamos algunas modificaciones que requieren ser incorporadas en la actividad para ser replicada en otros contextos.

Darwin's triggering mechanism of volcano eruptions

Science.gov (United States)

Galiev, Shamil

2010-05-01

Charles Darwin wrote that ‘… the elevation of many hundred square miles of territory near Concepcion is part of the same phenomenon, with that splashing up, if I may so call it, of volcanic matter through the orifices in the Cordillera at the moment of the shock;…' and ‘…a power, I may remark, which acts in paroxysmal upheavals like that of Concepcion, and in great volcanic eruptions,…'. Darwin reports that ‘…several of the great chimneys in the Cordillera of central Chile commenced a fresh period of activity ….' In particular, Darwin reported on four-simultaneous large eruptions from the following volcanoes: Robinson Crusoe, Minchinmavida, Cerro Yanteles and Peteroa (we cite the Darwin's sentences following his The Voyage of the Beagle and researchspace. auckland. ac. nz/handle/2292/4474). Let us consider these eruptions taking into account the volcano shape and the conduit. Three of the volcanoes (Minchinmavida (2404 m), Cerro Yanteles (2050 m), and Peteroa (3603 m)) are stratovolcanos and are formed of symmetrical cones with steep sides. Robinson Crusoe (922 m) is a shield volcano and is formed of a cone with gently sloping sides. They are not very active. We may surmise, that their vents had a sealing plug (vent fill) in 1835. All these volcanoes are conical. These common features are important for Darwin's triggering model, which is discussed below. The vent fill material, usually, has high level of porosity and a very low tensile strength and can easily be fragmented by tension waves. The action of a severe earthquake on the volcano base may be compared with a nuclear blast explosion of the base. It is known, that after a underground nuclear explosion the vertical motion and the surface fractures in a tope of mountains were observed. The same is related to the propagation of waves in conical elements. After the explosive load of the base. the tip may break and fly off at high velocity. Analogous phenomenon may be generated as a result of a

Darwin and the geological controversies over the steady-state worldview in the 1830s.

Science.gov (United States)

Gohau, Gabriel

2014-01-01

In the first part of this paper, I will show that although Darwin's geological works only covered the first years of his scientific career, these played a non-negligible role in the earth sciences of the mid-nineteenth century. His intellectual proximity with Charles Lyell often made him his disciple. This is indeed the case with respect to debates over 'gradual' soil movements and 'catastrophic' soil movements, and for 'steady-state' cycles as opposed to 'directionalistic' ones. This being said, it is also true that in South America Darwin saw geological processes which were incompatible with Lyell's explanations. It must therefore be recognized that Darwin held a middle-of-the-road position between uniformitarianism (Lyell) and catastrophism (Humbolt and von Buch), at least as far as some geological questions were concerned. In the second part of the paper, debates on geological issues during Darwin's active years will be put in the methodological context of the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Simulations of electromagnetic effects in high-frequency capacitively coupled discharges using the Darwin approximation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Eremin, Denis; Hemke, Torben; Brinkmann, Ralf Peter; Mussenbrock, Thomas

2013-01-01

The Darwin approximation is investigated for its possible use in simulation of electromagnetic effects in large size, high-frequency capacitively coupled discharges. The approximation is utilized within the framework of two different fluid models which are applied to typical cases showing pronounced standing wave and skin effects. With the first model it is demonstrated that the Darwin approximation is valid for treatment of such effects in the range of parameters under consideration. The second approach, a reduced nonlinear Darwin approximation-based model, shows that the electromagnetic phenomena persist in a more realistic setting. The Darwin approximation offers a simple and efficient way of carrying out electromagnetic simulations as it removes the Courant condition plaguing explicit electromagnetic algorithms and can be implemented as a straightforward modification of electrostatic algorithms. The algorithm described here avoids iterative schemes needed for the divergence cleaning and represents a fast and efficient solver, which can be used in fluid and kinetic models for self-consistent description of technical plasmas exhibiting certain electromagnetic activity. (paper)

HENRY H. CHEEK AND TRANSFORMISM: NEW LIGHT ON CHARLES DARWIN'S EDINBURGH BACKGROUND.

Science.gov (United States)

Jenkins, Bill

2015-06-20

Evidence for the transformist ideas espoused by Henry H. Cheek (1807-33), a contemporary of Charles Darwin's at the University of Edinburgh, sheds new light on the intellectual environment of Edinburgh in the late 1820s and early 1830s. Cheek was the author of several papers dealing with the transmutation of species influenced by the theories of Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772-1844), Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) and the Comte de Buffon (1707-88). Some of these were read to student societies, others appeared in the Edinburgh Journal of Natural and Geographical Science, which Cheek edited between 1829 and 1831. His writings give us a valuable window onto some of the transformist theories that were circulating among Darwin's fellow medical students in the late 1820s, to which Darwin would have been exposed during his time in Edinburgh, and for which little other concrete evidence survives.

Darwin and Wagner: Evolution and Aesthetic Appreciation

Science.gov (United States)

Ostergaard, Edvin

2011-01-01

Two of the most influential works of the Western nineteenth century were completed in 1859: Charles Darwin's "The Origin of Species" and Richard Wagner's opera "Tristan and Isolde." Although created within very different cultural traditions, these works show some striking similarities: both brought about a critical, long-lasting debate and caused…

Los guisantes mágicos de Darwin y Mendel

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Galera, Andrés

2000-12-01

Full Text Available

Presently work analyzes the hereditary models proposed by Darwin and Mendel to explain the evolutionary history of the Earth. The comparison shows us two faced biological theories, governed, one, for the principle of the natural selection, the other for the mutation.

[Anthropology and synthetic Darwinism in the Third Reich: The Evolution of Organisms (1943)].

Science.gov (United States)

Hossfeld, Uwe; Junker, Thomas

2003-03-01

This essay will analyse early attempts to base anthropology on the theoretical model provided by the emerging synthetic Darwinism of the 1940s. In the first section we will investigate the historical context of the publication of one of the central documents of synthetic Darwinism in Germany: Gerhard Heberer's Die Evolution der Organismen (1943). Anthropology was covered extensively in this book. The second section will give an impression of the live and work of the five anthropologists represented in Heberer's book: Christian von Krogh, Wilhelm Gieseler, Otto Reche, Hans Weinert, and Gerhard Heberer. The third part of our paper will clarify whether these anthropologists shared a common theoretical outlook with the founders of synthetic Darwinism, and to what degree they were committed to the racial ideas of the Third Reich.

Dividing Streamline Formation Channel Confluences by Physical Modeling

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Minarni Nur Trilita

2010-02-01

Full Text Available Confluence channels are often found in open channel network system and is the most important element. The incoming flow from the branch channel to the main cause various forms and cause vortex flow. Phenomenon can cause erosion of the side wall of the channel, the bed channel scour and sedimentation in the downstream confluence channel. To control these problems needed research into the current width of the branch channel. The incoming flow from the branch channel to the main channel flow bounded by a line distributors (dividing streamline. In this paper, the wide dividing streamline observed in the laboratory using a physical model of two open channels, a square that formed an angle of 30º. Observations were made with a variety of flow coming from each channel. The results obtained in the laboratory observation that the width of dividing streamline flow is influenced by the discharge ratio between the channel branch with the main channel. While the results of a comparison with previous studies showing that the observation in the laboratory is smaller than the results of previous research.

Social Darwinism in modern China

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

XU Jilin; XIAO Zhiwei

2012-01-01

After evolutionary theory was introduced in China,Herbert Spencer's interpretation of it in the form of social Darwinism persuaded the Chinese that if they wanted to strengthen their nation,they would have to accept the brutal truth of natural selection,in which the principle of survival of the fittest rules.This version of evolutionary theory,when combined with the pragmatic thrust of Confucianism and the realpolitik of legalism from China's indigenous tradition,started a storm of materialism and utilitarianism in modern China.In the process,the traditional social order based on the rule of propriety (li) was completely subverted and replaced by a new order predicated on the rule of competition and power.This development produced a new mental outlook that privileged power over everything else,seriously undermined the rules of ethics and caused serious political consequences in the late Qing and early Republican period.This intellectual development may have contributed to ending the dynastic rule in China,but it was also responsible for ruining the newborn Republican China.The Chinese intellectuals of the May Fourth era critically reflected on this problematic legacy.While still believing in the notion of progress,they abandoned social Darwinism and embraced the idea of evolution through mutual assistance.Thus began a historical shift in modern China from focusing on wealth and power to focusing on civilization as China's salvation.

Is Darwinism past its "sell-by" date? The Origin of Species at 150.

Science.gov (United States)

Ruse, Michael

2011-03-01

Many people worry that the theory of evolution that Charles Darwin gave in his Origin of Species is now dated and no longer part of modern science. This essay challenges this claim, arguing that the central core of the Origin is as vital today as it ever was, although naturally the science keeps moving on. Darwin provided the foundation not the finished product. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Generic emergence of classical features in quantum Darwinism

Science.gov (United States)

Brandão, Fernando G. S. L.; Piani, Marco; Horodecki, Paweł

2015-08-01

Quantum Darwinism posits that only specific information about a quantum system that is redundantly proliferated to many parts of its environment becomes accessible and objective, leading to the emergence of classical reality. However, it is not clear under what conditions this mechanism holds true. Here we prove that the emergence of classical features along the lines of quantum Darwinism is a general feature of any quantum dynamics: observers who acquire information indirectly through the environment have effective access at most to classical information about one and the same measurement of the quantum system. Our analysis does not rely on a strict conceptual splitting between a system-of-interest and its environment, and allows one to interpret any system as part of the environment of any other system. Finally, our approach leads to a full operational characterization of quantum discord in terms of local redistribution of correlations.

Darwin's Final Message: We Have No Honour.

Science.gov (United States)

Miles, James

2000-01-01

Examines current views in Great Britain on the genetic basis of violence and crime. Argues that evolutionary heretics have a flawed understanding of genetics and defend an anti-scientific concept of free will. Maintains that arguments within Darwinism have allowed evolutionary heretics to promote their own agenda and to continue to abuse the most…

Group adaptation, formal darwinism and contextual analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Okasha, S; Paternotte, C

2012-06-01

We consider the question: under what circumstances can the concept of adaptation be applied to groups, rather than individuals? Gardner and Grafen (2009, J. Evol. Biol.22: 659-671) develop a novel approach to this question, building on Grafen's 'formal Darwinism' project, which defines adaptation in terms of links between evolutionary dynamics and optimization. They conclude that only clonal groups, and to a lesser extent groups in which reproductive competition is repressed, can be considered as adaptive units. We re-examine the conditions under which the selection-optimization links hold at the group level. We focus on an important distinction between two ways of understanding the links, which have different implications regarding group adaptationism. We show how the formal Darwinism approach can be reconciled with G.C. Williams' famous analysis of group adaptation, and we consider the relationships between group adaptation, the Price equation approach to multi-level selection, and the alternative approach based on contextual analysis. © 2012 The Authors. Journal of Evolutionary Biology © 2012 European Society For Evolutionary Biology.

Creative work. The case of Charles Darwin.

Science.gov (United States)

Gruber, H E; Wallace, D B

2001-04-01

The evolving systems approach (ESA) addresses the need for direct study of the creative process in recognized creators at work, in contrast to indirect methods, such as those used in psychometric studies. The ESA emerged from H. E. Gruber's prolonged study of Charles Darwin's manuscripts, especially the notebooks he kept after the Beagle voyage. Gruber's interviews with J. Piaget about the latter's creative processes, as well as many doctoral dissertations, also helped shape the authors' approach. Using Gruber's (1974/1981) study of Darwin, the authors describe some facets of creative work identified in the course of their work. Among these are networks of enterprise, ensembles of metaphors, insights, and evolving belief systems. Although the ESA emphasizes cognitive processes, social, affective, and esthetic aspects of the case are not neglected. Each creative case is unique, otherwise the individual would not meet the criterion of originality. Uniqueness does not mean isolation; people who differ must and do work together. The integration of all these facets into a plausible system for each creator remains the authors' central task.

Relativistic quantum Darwinism in Dirac fermion and graphene systems

Science.gov (United States)

Ni, Xuan; Huang, Liang; Lai, Ying-Cheng; Pecora, Louis

2012-02-01

We solve the Dirac equation in two spatial dimensions in the setting of resonant tunneling, where the system consists of two symmetric cavities connected by a finite potential barrier. The shape of the cavities can be chosen to yield both regular and chaotic dynamics in the classical limit. We find that certain pointer states about classical periodic orbits can exist, which are signatures of relativistic quantum Darwinism (RQD). These localized states suppress quantum tunneling, and the effect becomes less severe as the underlying classical dynamics in the cavity is chaotic, leading to regularization of quantum tunneling. Qualitatively similar phenomena have been observed in graphene. A physical theory is developed to explain relativistic quantum Darwinism and its effects based on the spectrum of complex eigenenergies of the non-Hermitian Hamiltonian describing the open cavity system.

Stream-lined Gating Systems with Improved Yield - Dimensioning and Experimental Validation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Tiedje, Niels Skat; Skov-Hansen, Søren Peter

the two types of lay-outs are cast in production. It is shown that flow in the stream-lined lay-out is well controlled and that the quality of the castings is as at least equal to that of castings produced with a traditional lay-out. Further, the yield is improved by 4 % relative to a traditional lay-out.......The paper describes how a stream-lined gating system where the melt is confined and controlled during filling can be designed. Commercial numerical modelling software has been used to compare the stream-lined design with a traditional gating system. These results are confirmed by experiments where...

Joint statistics and conditional mean strain rates of streamline segments

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Schaefer, P; Gampert, M; Peters, N

2013-01-01

Based on four different direct numerical simulations of turbulent flows with Taylor-based Reynolds numbers ranging from Re λ = 50 to 300 among which are two homogeneous isotropic decaying, one forced and one homogeneous shear flow, streamlines are identified and the obtained space curves are parameterized with the pseudo-time as well as the arclength. Based on local extrema of the absolute value of the velocity along the streamlines, the latter are partitioned into segments following Wang (2010 J. Fluid Mech. 648 183–203). Streamline segments are then statistically analyzed based on both parameterizations using the joint probability density function of the pseudo-time lag τ (arclength l, respectively) between and the velocity difference Δu at the extrema: P(τ,Δu), (P(l,Δu)). We distinguish positive and negative streamline segments depending on the sign of the velocity difference Δu. Differences as well as similarities in the statistical description for both parameterizations are discussed. In particular, it turns out that the normalized probability distribution functions (pdfs) (of both parameterizations) of the length of positive, negative and all segments assume a universal shape for all Reynolds numbers and flow types and are well described by a model derived in Schaefer P et al (2012 Phys. Fluids 24 045104). Particular attention is given to the conditional mean velocity difference at the ending points of the segments, which can be understood as a first-order structure function in the context of streamline segment analysis. It determines to a large extent the stretching (compression) of positive (negative) streamline segments and corresponds to the convective velocity in phase space in the transport model equation for the pdf. While based on the random sweeping hypothesis a scaling ∝ (u rms ετ) 1/3 is found for the parameterization based on the pseudo-time, the parameterization with the arclength l yields a much larger than expected l 1/3 scaling. A

Evolutionary plant physiology: Charles Darwin's forgotten synthesis

Science.gov (United States)

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.

Friedrich Albert Lange on neo-Kantianism, socialist Darwinism, and a psychology without a soul.

Science.gov (United States)

Teo, Thomas

2002-01-01

Friedrich Albert Lange was a German philosopher, political theorist, educator, and psychologist who outlined an objective psychology in the 1860s. This article shows how some of the most important worldviews of the nineteenth century (Kantianism, Marxism, and Darwinism) were combined creatively in his thought system. He was crucial in the development of neo-Kantianism and incorporated psycho-physiological research on sensation and perception in order to defend Kant's epistemological idealism. Based on a critique of phrenology and philosophical psychology of his time, Lange developed a program of a psychology without a soul. He suggested that only those phenomena that can be observed and controlled should be studied, that psychology should focus on actions and speech, and that for each psychological event the corresponding physical or physiological processes should be identified. Lange opposed introspection and subjective accounts and promoted experiments and statistics. He also promoted Darwinism for psychology while developing a socialist progressive-democratic reading of Darwin in his social theory. The implications of socialist Darwinism on Lange's conceptualization of race are discussed and his prominence in nineteenth century philosophy and psychology is summarized. Copyright 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Charles Darwin, Imperium Britannicum a Evropa. K Darwinovu dvojitému výročí

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Hermann, Tomáš; Stella, M.

2009-01-01

Roč. 42, č. 2 (2009), s. 103-111 ISSN 0300-4414 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

Application-Tailored I/O with Streamline

NARCIS (Netherlands)

de Bruijn, W.J.; Bos, H.J.; Bal, H.E.

2011-01-01

Streamline is a stream-based OS communication subsystem that spans from peripheral hardware to userspace processes. It improves performance of I/O-bound applications (such as webservers and streaming media applications) by constructing tailor-made I/O paths through the operating system for each

Darwin's legacy and the study of primate visual communication.

Science.gov (United States)

de Waal, Frans B M

2003-12-01

After Charles Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, published in 1872, we had to wait 60 years before the theme of animal expressions was picked up by another astute observer. In 1935, Nadezhda Ladygina-Kohts published a detailed comparison of the expressive behavior of a juvenile chimpanzee and of her own child. After Kohts, we had to wait until the 1960s for modern ethological analyses of primate facial and gestural communication. Again, the focus was on the chimpanzee, but ethograms on other primates appeared as well. Our understanding of the range of expressions in other primates is at present far more advanced than that in Darwin's time. A strong social component has been added: instead of focusing on the expressions per se, they are now often classified according to the social situations in which they typically occur. Initially, quantitative analyses were sequential (i.e., concerned with temporal associations between behavior patterns), and they avoided the language of emotions. I will discuss some of this early work, including my own on the communicative repertoire of the bonobo, a close relative of the chimpanzee (and ourselves). I will provide concrete examples to make the point that there is a much richer matrix of contexts possible than the common behavioral categories of aggression, sex, fear, play, and so on. Primate signaling is a form of negotiation, and previous classifications have ignored the specifics of what animals try to achieve with their exchanges. There is also increasing evidence for signal conventionalization in primates, especially the apes, in both captivity and the field. This process results in group-specific or "cultural" communication patterns.

Conmemoración de Charles Darwin (1882

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Paolo Mantegazza

2014-07-01

Full Text Available Tres semanas después de la muerte del biólogo y naturalista inglés, Paolo Mantegazza pronunció el 21 de mayo de 1882 su "Conmemoración de Charles Darwin celebrada en el Real Instituto de Estudios Superiores en Florencia". Traducción de Juan Pérez Andrés.

Bioturbation: a fresh look at Darwin's last idea

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Meysman, F.J.R.; Middelburg, J.J.; Heip, C.H.R.

2006-01-01

Bioturbation refers to the biological reworking of soils and sediments, and its importance for soil processes and geomorphology was first realised by Charles Darwin, who devoted his last scientific book to the subject. Here, we review some new insights into the evolutionary and ecological role of

Agency and space in Darwin's concept of variation

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Kwa, C.

2010-01-01

In Kwa's discussion of evolutionary time, he positions Darwin's "natural selection" as heir to an 18th Century mechanicist understanding of nature's history, even when taking to account the important innovations that he brought to it. The key to a modern historical understanding of nature was the

Charles Darwin, beetles and phylogenetics

Science.gov (United States)

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

102 Revolutions in Evolutionary Thought: Darwin and After

Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

Admin

Natural Selection, or the Preservation of. Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Charles Darwin. 204. SERIES ARTICLES. 179 Snippets of Physics. The Power of Nothing. T Padmanabhan. 191 Aerobasics – An Introduction to Aeronautics. Airfoils and Wings in Subsonic Flow. S P Govinda Raju. 124. 203. Information and.

Lamarck's and Darwin's theories in text books of Biology in Brazil

OpenAIRE

Almeida, Argus Vasconcelos de; Falcão, Jorge Tarcísio da Rocha

2010-01-01

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 ...

Accelerated Logistics: Streamlining the Army's Supply Chain

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Wang, Mark

2000-01-01

...) initiative, the Army has dramatically streamlined its supply chain, cutting order and ship times for repair parts by nearly two-thirds nationwide and over 75 percent at several of the major Forces Command (FORSCOM) installations...

Non-Markovianity hinders Quantum Darwinism

Science.gov (United States)

Galve, Fernando; Zambrini, Roberta; Maniscalco, Sabrina

2016-01-01

We investigate Quantum Darwinism and the emergence of a classical world from the quantum one in connection with the spectral properties of the environment. We use a microscopic model of quantum environment in which, by changing a simple system parameter, we can modify the information back flow from environment into the system, and therefore its non-Markovian character. We show that the presence of memory effects hinders the emergence of classical objective reality, linking these two apparently unrelated concepts via a unique dynamical feature related to decoherence factors.

DARWIN E IL SUO PUBBLICO. LA TEORIA EVOLUZIONISTICA TRA COMPLESSITÀ E DIVULGAZIONE

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ceccarelli David

2013-12-01

Full Text Available Why the idea of Darwin apparently suffers a lot of interpretative problems? Why the reception of the evolutionary theory is characterized by biases, misunderstandings and exploitations? Why the “false myths” about evolution seem to remain unchanged over decades? Why are they still rooted in our common sense? In this short article I have tried to analyze and describe the differential leak of information between Darwin and his audience, emphasizing the scientific, epistemological, historical, cultural and comunicative issues about the debate over evolutionary theory. At the origin of this leak an ahistorical complexity has been detected. Darwin’s idea, in fact, shows some anti-intuitive theoretic-argumentative characteristics. Along with this, the evolutionary theory determines a clear impact full of philosophical, moral, politic, religious and social implications. These “links” make the idea of Darwin something more than just a “scientific theory”. It is an unique case study, whereas its comunicative filtration, because of the several “epiphenomenal baggage”, becomes more problematic than ever.

China Encounters Darwinism: A Case of Intercultural Rhetoric.

Science.gov (United States)

Xiao, Xiaosui

1995-01-01

Explores how influential works of one culture are adapted to the needs, circumstances and thought patterns of another. Analyzes as a case study Yan Fu's "Heavenly Evolution," a rhetorical translation of Thomas Huxley's "Evolution and Ethics," whose publication resulted in a rapid spread of a version of Darwinism in Confucian…

Darwinism Defined: The Difference Between Fact and Theory.

Science.gov (United States)

Gould, Stephen Jay

1987-01-01

Discusses various developments in both science and theology following the work of Charles Darwin on evolution. Differentiates between the facts regarding evolution and the theory of natural selection as a mechanism for evolutionary change. Warns that the differences between facts and theory have not been adequately emphasized by scientists. (TW)

Streamline-based microfluidic device

Science.gov (United States)

Tai, Yu-Chong (Inventor); Zheng, Siyang (Inventor); Kasdan, Harvey (Inventor)

2013-01-01

The present invention provides a streamline-based device and a method for using the device for continuous separation of particles including cells in biological fluids. The device includes a main microchannel and an array of side microchannels disposed on a substrate. The main microchannel has a plurality of stagnation points with a predetermined geometric design, for example, each of the stagnation points has a predetermined distance from the upstream edge of each of the side microchannels. The particles are separated and collected in the side microchannels.

3D-Reconstruction of recent volcanic activity from ROV-video, Charles Darwin Seamounts, Cape Verdes

Science.gov (United States)

Kwasnitschka, T.; Hansteen, T. H.; Kutterolf, S.; Freundt, A.; Devey, C. W.

2011-12-01

As well as providing well-localized samples, Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) produce huge quantities of visual data whose potential for geological data mining has seldom if ever been fully realized. We present a new workflow to derive essential results of field geology such as quantitative stratigraphy and tectonic surveying from ROV-based photo and video material. We demonstrate the procedure on the Charles Darwin Seamounts, a field of small hot spot volcanoes recently identified at a depth of ca. 3500m southwest of the island of Santo Antao in the Cape Verdes. The Charles Darwin Seamounts feature a wide spectrum of volcanic edifices with forms suggestive of scoria cones, lava domes, tuff rings and maar-type depressions, all of comparable dimensions. These forms, coupled with the highly fragmented volcaniclastic samples recovered by dredging, motivated surveying parts of some edifices down to centimeter scale. ROV-based surveys yielded volcaniclastic samples of key structures linked by extensive coverage of stereoscopic photographs and high-resolution video. Based upon the latter, we present our workflow to derive three-dimensional models of outcrops from a single-camera video sequence, allowing quantitative measurements of fault orientation, bedding structure, grain size distribution and photo mosaicking within a geo-referenced framework. With this information we can identify episodes of repetitive eruptive activity at individual volcanic centers and see changes in eruptive style over time, which, despite their proximity to each other, is highly variable.

Darwinism and cultural struggles in rural Askov and metropolitan Copenhagen in nineteenth-century Denmark

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hjermitslev, Hans Henrik

In the 1870s, when Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species and Descent of Man were translated into Danish by the botanist-turned-poet J. P. Jacobsen, evolutionary thought played a seminal role in the modern breakthrough advocated by the freethinker and literary critic Georg Brandes. A group...... of students and artists assembled around Brandes in the capital of Copenhagen - the only Danish city hosting a university in the late nineteenth century - and used Darwinism in their cultural struggle against what they regarded as reactionary Christian and conservative values which dominated in the country....... At the same time in the village of Askov in rural Jutland, a liberal fraction of the Evangelical-Lutheran State Church, the Grundtvigians, had a stronghold at their high-profile folk high school. Here materialism and Darwinism associated with the Brandes circle were tabooed and later condemned. However...

Streamlining: Reducing costs and increasing STS operations effectiveness

Science.gov (United States)

Petersburg, R. K.

1985-01-01

The development of streamlining as a concept, its inclusion in the space transportation system engineering and operations support (STSEOS) contract, and how it serves as an incentive to management and technical support personnel is discussed. The mechanics of encouraging and processing streamlining suggestions, reviews, feedback to submitters, recognition, and how individual employee performance evaluations are used to motivation are discussed. Several items that were implemented are mentioned. Information reported and the methodology of determining estimated dollar savings are outlined. The overall effect of this activity on the ability of the McDonnell Douglas flight preparation and mission operations team to support a rapidly increasing flight rate without a proportional increase in cost is illustrated.

DARWIN: towards the ultimate dark matter detector

Science.gov (United States)

Aalbers, J.; Agostini, F.; Alfonsi, M.; Amaro, F. D.; Amsler, C.; Aprile, E.; Arazi, L.; Arneodo, F.; Barrow, P.; Baudis, L.; Benabderrahmane, M. L.; Berger, T.; Beskers, B.; Breskin, A.; Breur, P. A.; Brown, A.; Brown, E.; Bruenner, S.; Bruno, G.; Budnik, R.; Bütikofer, L.; Calvén, J.; Cardoso, J. M. R.; Cichon, D.; Coderre, D.; Colijn, A. P.; Conrad, J.; Cussonneau, J. P.; Decowski, M. P.; Diglio, S.; Drexlin, G.; Duchovni, E.; Erdal, E.; Eurin, G.; Ferella, A.; Fieguth, A.; Fulgione, W.; Gallo Rosso, A.; Di Gangi, P.; Di Giovanni, A.; Galloway, M.; Garbini, M.; Geis, C.; Glueck, F.; Grandi, L.; Greene, Z.; Grignon, C.; Hasterok, C.; Hannen, V.; Hogenbirk, E.; Howlett, J.; Hilk, D.; Hils, C.; James, A.; Kaminsky, B.; Kazama, S.; Kilminster, B.; Kish, A.; Krauss, L. M.; Landsman, H.; Lang, R. F.; Lin, Q.; Linde, F. L.; Lindemann, S.; Lindner, M.; Lopes, J. A. M.; Marrodán Undagoitia, T.; Masbou, J.; Massoli, F. V.; Mayani, D.; Messina, M.; Micheneau, K.; Molinario, A.; Morå, K. D.; Morteau, E.; Murra, M.; Naganoma, J.; Newstead, J. L.; Ni, K.; Oberlack, U.; Pakarha, P.; Pelssers, B.; de Perio, P.; Persiani, R.; Piastra, F.; Piro, M. C.; Plante, G.; Rauch, L.; Reichard, S.; Rizzo, A.; Rupp, N.; Dos Santos, J. M. F.; Sartorelli, G.; Scheibelhut, M.; Schindler, S.; Schumann, M.; Schreiner, J.; Scotto Lavina, L.; Selvi, M.; Shagin, P.; Silva, M. C.; Simgen, H.; Sissol, P.; von Sivers, M.; Thers, D.; Thurn, J.; Tiseni, A.; Trotta, R.; Tunnell, C. D.; Valerius, K.; Vargas, M. A.; Wang, H.; Wei, Y.; Weinheimer, C.; Wester, T.; Wulf, J.; Zhang, Y.; Zhu, T.; Zuber, K.

2016-11-01

DARk matter WImp search with liquid xenoN (DARWIN) will be an experiment for the direct detection of dark matter using a multi-ton liquid xenon time projection chamber at its core. Its primary goal will be to explore the experimentally accessible parameter space for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) in a wide mass-range, until neutrino interactions with the target become an irreducible background. The prompt scintillation light and the charge signals induced by particle interactions in the xenon will be observed by VUV sensitive, ultra-low background photosensors. Besides its excellent sensitivity to WIMPs above a mass of 5 GeV/c2, such a detector with its large mass, low-energy threshold and ultra-low background level will also be sensitive to other rare interactions. It will search for solar axions, galactic axion-like particles and the neutrinoless double-beta decay of 136Xe, as well as measure the low-energy solar neutrino flux with detect galactic supernovae. We present the concept of the DARWIN detector and discuss its physics reach, the main sources of backgrounds and the ongoing detector design and R&D efforts.

DARWIN: towards the ultimate dark matter detector

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Aalbers, J.; Breur, P.A.; Brown, A. [Nikhef and the University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam (Netherlands); Agostini, F. [Department of Physics and Astrophysics, University of Bologna and INFN-Bologna, Bologna (Italy); Alfonsi, M.; Beskers, B. [Institut für Physik and Exzellenzcluster PRISMA, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Mainz (Germany); Amaro, F.D. [Department of Physics, University of Coimbra, Coimbra (Portugal); Amsler, C. [Albert Einstein Center for Fundamental Physics, Universität Bern, Bern (Switzerland); Aprile, E. [Physics Department, Columbia University, New York, NY (United States); Arazi, L.; Breskin, A.; Budnik, R. [Department of Particle Physics and Astrophysics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot (Israel); Arneodo, F.; Benabderrahmane, M.L. [New York University Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates); Barrow, P.; Baudis, L. [Physik-Institut, Universität Zürich, Zürich (Switzerland); Berger, T.; Brown, E. [Department of Physics, Applied Physics and Astronomy, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY (United States); Bruenner, S. [Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Heidelberg (Germany); Bruno, G., E-mail: lior.arazi@weizmann.ac.il, E-mail: laura.baudis@physik.uzh.ch, E-mail: amos.breskin@weizmann.ac.il, E-mail: decowski@nikhef.nl, E-mail: marc.schumann@lhep.unibe.ch [INFN-Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso and Gran Sasso Science Institute, L' Aquila (Italy); and others

2016-11-01

DARk matter WImp search with liquid xenoN (DARWIN) will be an experiment for the direct detection of dark matter using a multi-ton liquid xenon time projection chamber at its core. Its primary goal will be to explore the experimentally accessible parameter space for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) in a wide mass-range, until neutrino interactions with the target become an irreducible background. The prompt scintillation light and the charge signals induced by particle interactions in the xenon will be observed by VUV sensitive, ultra-low background photosensors. Besides its excellent sensitivity to WIMPs above a mass of 5 GeV/ c {sup 2}, such a detector with its large mass, low-energy threshold and ultra-low background level will also be sensitive to other rare interactions. It will search for solar axions, galactic axion-like particles and the neutrinoless double-beta decay of {sup 136}Xe, as well as measure the low-energy solar neutrino flux with < 1% precision, observe coherent neutrino-nucleus interactions, and detect galactic supernovae. We present the concept of the DARWIN detector and discuss its physics reach, the main sources of backgrounds and the ongoing detector design and R and D efforts.

Mass conservative fluid flow visualization for CFD velocity fields

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Li, Zhenquan; Mallinson, Gordon D.

2001-01-01

Mass conservation is a key issue for accurate streamline and stream surface visualization of flow fields. This paper complements an existing method (Feng et al., 1997) for CFD velocity fields defined at discrete locations in space that uses dual stream functions to generate streamlines and stream surfaces. Conditions for using the method have been examined and its limitations defined. A complete set of dual stream functions for all possible cases of the linear fields on which the method relies are presented. The results in this paper are important for developing new methods for mass conservative streamline visualization from CFD data and using the existing method

CHARLES R. DARWIN Y EL DESARROLLO DE LA CREATIVIDAD (

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Miranda Garnier Ximena

2010-12-01

Full Text Available Resumen:Los 200 años del nacimiento de Charles R. Darwin y los 150 años de la publicación de su libro “El origen de las especies” recuerdan la importancia de la creatividad y de comprender cómo se desarrolla. En este ensayo, analizo la autobiografía de Charles Darwin y concluyo que la creatividad en su vida surgió por interacción entre cualidades personales y una serie de circunstancias. En el análisis, sobresalen elementos que incluyen curiosidad, crecer cerca de la naturaleza, gusto por la lectura y el aprendizaje autónomo, la presencia de buenos mentores, disciplina, experiencia en los métodos de trabajo científico, disposición para establecer una red de científicos, y pasión por lo que se hace. Estos fueron elementos clave para su impacto en biología, geología, psicología, filosofía e incluso en nuestra percepción general del mundo. Se hacen reflexiones para educadores con la intención de promover el desarrollo de la creatividad en nuestros niños, niñas y jóvenes.Abstract:The 200th anniversary of Charles R. Darwin´s birth and the 150th of the publication of his “Origin of Species” remind us of the importance of creativity, and of understanding its development. In this essay, I analyze the autobiography of Charles Darwin and conclude that his creativity resulted from a series of personal qualities and circumstances. The key elements I found include curiosity, growing near nature, passion for reading and for autonomous learning, the role of good mentors, discipline, a disposition to establish a network with other scientists, experience with scientific methods, and passion for what he did. The presence of these elements in his life resulted in his transforming biology, geology, psychology, philosophy, and even our general perception of the world. Reflections for educators are presented with the intention of promoting the development of creativity in our children and youth.

Ecoimmunity in Darwin's finches: invasive parasites trigger acquired immunity in the medium ground finch (Geospiza fortis.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sarah K Huber

Full Text Available BACKGROUND: Invasive parasites are a major threat to island populations of animals. Darwin's finches of the Galápagos Islands are under attack by introduced pox virus (Poxvirus avium and nest flies (Philornis downsi. We developed assays for parasite-specific antibody responses in Darwin's finches (Geospiza fortis, to test for relationships between adaptive immune responses to novel parasites and spatial-temporal variation in the occurrence of parasite pressure among G. fortis populations. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We developed enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs for the presence of antibodies in the serum of Darwin's finches specific to pox virus or Philornis proteins. We compared antibody levels between bird populations with and without evidence of pox infection (visible lesions, and among birds sampled before nesting (prior to nest-fly exposure versus during nesting (with fly exposure. Birds from the Pox-positive population had higher levels of pox-binding antibodies. Philornis-binding antibody levels were higher in birds sampled during nesting. Female birds, which occupy the nest, had higher Philornis-binding antibody levels than males. The study was limited by an inability to confirm pox exposure independent of obvious lesions. However, the lasting effects of pox infection (e.g., scarring and lost digits were expected to be reliable indicators of prior pox infection. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: This is the first demonstration, to our knowledge, of parasite-specific antibody responses to multiple classes of parasites in a wild population of birds. Darwin's finches initiated acquired immune responses to novel parasites. Our study has vital implications for invasion biology and ecological immunology. The adaptive immune response of Darwin's finches may help combat the negative effects of parasitism. Alternatively, the physiological cost of mounting such a response could outweigh any benefits, accelerating population decline. Tests

Explosive Volcanic Activity at Extreme Depths: Evidence from the Charles Darwin Volcanic Field, Cape Verdes

Science.gov (United States)

Kwasnitschka, T.; Devey, C. W.; Hansteen, T. H.; Freundt, A.; Kutterolf, S.

2013-12-01

Volcanic eruptions on the deep sea floor have traditionally been assumed to be non-explosive as the high-pressure environment should greatly inhibit steam-driven explosions. Nevertheless, occasional evidence both from (generally slow-) spreading axes and intraplate seamounts has hinted at explosive activity at large water depths. Here we present evidence from a submarine field of volcanic cones and pit craters called Charles Darwin Volcanic Field located at about 3600 m depth on the lower southwestern slope of the Cape Verdean Island of Santo Antão. We examined two of these submarine volcanic edifices (Tambor and Kolá), each featuring a pit crater of 1 km diameter, using photogrammetric reconstructions derived from ROV-based imaging followed by 3D quantification using a novel remote sensing workflow, aided by sampling. The measured and calculated parameters of physical volcanology derived from the 3D model allow us, for the first time, to make quantitative statements about volcanic processes on the deep seafloor similar to those generated from land-based field observations. Tambor cone, which is 2500 m wide and 250 m high, consists of dense, probably monogenetic medium to coarse-grained volcaniclastic and pyroclastic rocks that are highly fragmented, probably as a result of thermal and viscous granulation upon contact with seawater during several consecutive cycles of activity. Tangential joints in the outcrops indicate subsidence of the crater floor after primary emplacement. Kolá crater, which is 1000 m wide and 160 m deep, appears to have been excavated in the surrounding seafloor and shows stepwise sagging features interpreted as ring fractures on the inner flanks. Lithologically, it is made up of a complicated succession of highly fragmented deposits, including spheroidal juvenile lapilli, likely formed by spray granulation. It resembles a maar-type deposit found on land. The eruption apparently entrained blocks of MORB-type gabbroic country rocks with

The prominent absence of Alfred Russel Wallace at the Darwin anniversaries in Germany in 1909, 1959 and 2009.

Science.gov (United States)

Hossfeld, Uwe; Olsson, Lennart

2013-12-01

It is well known that the contribution of Alfred Russell Wallace (1823-1913) to the development of the "Darwinian" principle of natural selection has often been neglected. Here we focus on how the three anniversaries to celebrate the origin of the Darwin-Wallace theory in Germany in 1909, in 1959 in the divided country, as well as in 2009, have represented Charles Robert Darwin's and Alfred Russell Wallace's contributions. We have analyzed books and proceedings volumes related to these anniversaries, and the main result is that Wallace was almost always ignored, or only mentioned in passing. In 1909, Ernst Haeckel gave a talk in Jena, later published under the title The worldview of Darwin and Lamarck (Das Weltbild von Darwin und Lamarck), but not as the Darwin-Wallace concept. Haeckel mentions Wallace only once. In two important proceedings volumes from the 1959 anniversaries, Wallace was ignored. The only fair treatment of Wallace is given in another book, a collection of documents edited by Gerhard Heberer, for which the author selected nine key documents and reprinted excerpts (1959). Three of them were articles by Wallace, including the Sarawak- and Ternate-papers of 1855 and 1858, respectively. An analysis of the dominant themes during the celebrations of 2009 shows that none of the six topics had much to do with Wallace and his work. Thus, the tendency to exclude Alfred Russell Wallace is an international phenomenon, and largely attributable to the "Darwin industry".

On Darwin's 'metaphysical notebooks'. II: "Metaphysics" and final cause.

Science.gov (United States)

Calabi, L

2001-01-01

The first part of this paper was published in Rivista di Biologia/Biology Forum 94 (2001). In the second part below an examination is made of the meaning of the term Metaphysics in some passages of the Darwinian Notebooks for the years 1836-1844. Metaphysics no longer defines a field of philosophical enquiries mainly concerning the being and the essence after the manner of Aristotle; it now refers to a kind of philosophy of mind after the manner of J. Locke's criticism of the Hypokeimenon. However Aristotle's Metaphysics also encompasses a treatment of the idea of causes, and of final cause particularly, in the explanation of events, and in the explanation of natural phenomena especially. The criticism of the idea of final cause in the interpretation of the world of life is one of Darwin's foundational acts in his early years. When conceiving his Système du monde, in the last years of the XVIII Century, Laplace could think that God is a hypothesis not really needed by science, as we are told. For the knowledge of organic nature to attain the status of science, it remained to be shown that since--certain of the exemplariness of Newton's Principles as much as cautious before the mystery of life--did not need the hypothesis of final ends in order to understand and explain the productions of the living nature: not only in the form of that final cause (the First Cause, the Vera Causa) in which Natural Theology still rested, but also in the form of nature's inner finality which still moulded Whewell's Kantian philosophy. Such demonstration is a very important subject in Darwin's early enquiries, where he criticises finalism as a projection of self-conceiving Man, likely inherited from a knowing of causality in nuce to be found also in animals.

Largest global shark biomass found in the northern Galápagos Islands of Darwin and Wolf

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Pelayo Salinas de León

2016-05-01

Full Text Available Overfishing has dramatically depleted sharks and other large predatory fishes worldwide except for a few remote and/or well-protected areas. The islands of Darwin and Wolf in the far north of the Galapagos Marine Reserve (GMR are known for their large shark abundance, making them a global scuba diving and conservation hotspot. Here we report quantitative estimates of fish abundance at Darwin and Wolf over two consecutive years using stereo-video surveys, which reveal the largest reef fish biomass ever reported (17.5 t ${\\mathrm{ha}}^{-1}$ ha − 1 on average, consisting largely of sharks. Despite this, the abundance of reef fishes around the GMR, such as groupers, has been severely reduced because of unsustainable fishing practices. Although Darwin and Wolf are within the GMR, they were not fully protected from fishing until March 2016. Given the ecological value and the economic importance of Darwin and Wolf for the dive tourism industry, the current protection should ensure the long-term conservation of this hotspot of unique global value.

Some of the Best Online Darwin Resources

Science.gov (United States)

la Velle, Linda

2009-01-01

Ask most men or women in the street who Charles Darwin was and the chances are that they will know something of the work he did: the work that has revolutionised our understanding of the living world and our place in it. The 200th centenary of his birth was in February 2009. Over the 150 years since the publication of his seminal work On the…

On the validity of microscopic calculations of double-quantum-dot spin qubits based on Fock-Darwin states

Science.gov (United States)

Chan, GuoXuan; Wang, Xin

2018-04-01

We consider two typical approximations that are used in the microscopic calculations of double-quantum dot spin qubits, namely, the Heitler-London (HL) and the Hund-Mulliken (HM) approximations, which use linear combinations of Fock-Darwin states to approximate the two-electron states under the double-well confinement potential. We compared these results to a case in which the solution to a one-dimensional Schr¨odinger equation was exactly known and found that typical microscopic calculations based on Fock-Darwin states substantially underestimate the value of the exchange interaction, which is the key parameter that controls the quantum dot spin qubits. This underestimation originates from the lack of tunneling of Fock-Darwin states, which is accurate only in the case with a single potential well. Our results suggest that the accuracies of the current two-dimensional molecular- orbit-theoretical calculations based on Fock-Darwin states should be revisited since underestimation could only deteriorate in dimensions that are higher than one.

A finite element formulation of the Darwin electromagnetic PIC model for unstructured meshes of triangles

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sonnendrucker, E.; Ambrosiano, J.; Brandon, S.

1993-01-01

The Darwin model for electromagnetic simulation is a reduced form of the Maxwell-Vlasov system that retains all essential physical processes except the propagation of light waves. It is useful in modeling systems for which the light-transit timescales are less important than Alfven wave propagation, or quasistatic effects. The Darwin model is elliptic rather than hyperbolic as are the full set of Maxwell's equations. Appropriate boundary conditions must be chosen for the problems to be well-posed. Using finite element techniques to apply this method for unstructured triangular meshes, a mesh made up of unstructured triangles allows realistic device geometries to be modeled without the necessity of using a large number of mesh points. Analyzing the dispersion relation allows us to validate the code as well as the Darwin approximation

Spin currents, relativistic effects and the Darwin interaction in the theory of hole superconductivity

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hirsch, J.E.

2005-01-01

The existence of macroscopic spin currents in the ground state of superconductors is predicted within the theory of hole superconductivity. Here it is shown that the electromagnetic Darwin interaction is attractive for spin currents and repulsive for charge currents. It is also shown that the mere existence of spin currents implies that some electrons are moving at relativistic speeds in macroscopic superconductors, which in turn implies that the Darwin interaction plays a fundamental role in stabilizing the superconducting state

Darwin's Invention: Inheritance & the "Mad Dream" of Pangenesis

Science.gov (United States)

McComas, William F.

2012-01-01

This article recounts the story of the development of pangenesis, a principle proposed by Charles Darwin to describe the rules of inheritance and the source of new variation, two concepts vital to his proposal of evolution by natural selection. Historical accounts such as this are infrequently included in texts and classroom discussions but can…

Social Darwinism, Scientific Racism, and the Metaphysics of Race.

Science.gov (United States)

Dennis, Rutledge M.

1995-01-01

Maintains that science is often used as a justification to propose, project, and enact racist social policies. The philosophy of Social Darwinism is reviewed, and its assumptions about race and human abilities is discussed. The consequences of scientific racism for dominant groups are analyzed. (GR)

From Darwin to Internet at the speed of light

Science.gov (United States)

2002-11-01

Data moving around the Internet are like road traffic in that a car can be driven fast down a straight road but has to slow down a great deal when changing direction at a junction. The same thing happens on information highways. Beams of light carry data along fibre-optic cables at very high speeds. When the data arrive at computers, known as servers, the servers redirect them to their final destinations. Presently, you need to convert the light signals into electricity, and that slows everything down. Electrons move at a speed of a few kilometres per second through a circuit, whereas light travels at nearly 300 000 kilometres per second. Integrated optics would leave the data as light and simply channel it through the chip, in the right direction. Scientists call this area integrated optics, referring to the integrated circuit board on which chips are mounted. Instead of miniaturised electronics, however, miniaturised optics are placed on a microchip. ESA has a strategy to enable more sophisticated searches for extra-solar planets in the future. Two planned developments rely on combining the light from such planets in a number of different telescopes. These are the Darwin mission and its precursor, the ESA/ESO Ground-based European Nulling Interferometer Experiment (GENIE). When you combine light beams, you traditionally need moving mirrors and lenses to divert the light beams to where you want them. However, if the system moves, it can break. As Malcolm Fridlund, Project Scientist for Darwin and GENIE says, “To change to integrated optics, which is much smaller and has no moving parts, would be highly desirable.” Desirable certainly, but also difficult. At present, integrated optics is a science that is far behind integrated circuit technology. For this reason, ESA is funding two studies. Astrium has been asked to study a traditional optics approach and Alcatel is investigating an integrated-optics solution. “We shall take the decision on whether GENIE will

Darwin and Lincoln: their legacy of human dignity.

Science.gov (United States)

Earls, Felton

2010-01-01

The legacy of Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln is to champion the dignity inherent in every human being. The moment of the bicentennial of their births provides an opportunity to celebrate and reflect on ways they have shaped our understanding and commitment to human rights. The naturalist and the constitutional lawyer, so different in circumstance and discipline, were morally allied in the mission to eradicate slavery. The profound lessons to be extracted from the lives of these two icons bind us to the agonizing reality that nearly 150 years after Gettysburg and the publication of the Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, there remains much work to do toward advancing the security, respect, and equality of our species. This article describes how Darwin and Lincoln's inspiring legacies guided the author's personal choices as a scientist and activist. The essay concludes with a set of questions and challenges that confront us, foremost among which is the need to balance actions in response to the violation of negative rights by actions in the pursuit of positive rights.

Darwinian hydrology: can the methodology Charles Darwin pioneered help hydrologic science?

Science.gov (United States)

Harman, C.; Troch, P. A.

2013-05-01

There have been repeated calls for a Darwinian approach to hydrologic science or for a synthesis of Darwinian and Newtonian approaches, to deepen understanding the hydrologic system in the larger landscape context, and so develop a better basis for predictions now and in an uncertain future. But what exactly makes a Darwinian approach to hydrology "Darwinian"? While there have now been a number of discussions of Darwinian approaches, many referencing Harte (2002), the term is potentially a source of confusion while its connections to Darwin remain allusive rather than explicit. Here we discuss the methods that Charles Darwin pioneered to understand a variety of complex systems in terms of their historical processes of change. We suggest that the Darwinian approach to hydrology follows his lead by focusing attention on the patterns of variation in populations, seeking hypotheses that explain these patterns in terms of the mechanisms and conditions that determine their historical development, using deduction and modeling to derive consequent hypotheses that follow from a proposed explanation, and critically testing these hypotheses against new observations. It is not sufficient to catalogue the patterns or predict them statistically. Nor is it sufficient for the explanations to amount to a "just-so" story not subject to critical analysis. Darwin's theories linked present-day variation to mechanisms that operated over history, and could be independently test and falsified by comparing new observations to the predictions of corollary hypotheses they generated. With a Darwinian framework in mind it is easy to see that a great deal of hydrologic research has already been done that contributes to a Darwinian hydrology - whether deliberately or not. The various heuristic methods that Darwin used to develop explanatory theories - extrapolating mechanisms, space for time substitution, and looking for signatures of history - have direct application in hydrologic science. Some

Quantum Darwinism in Quantum Brownian Motion

Science.gov (United States)

Blume-Kohout, Robin; Zurek, Wojciech H.

2008-12-01

Quantum Darwinism—the redundant encoding of information about a decohering system in its environment—was proposed to reconcile the quantum nature of our Universe with apparent classicality. We report the first study of the dynamics of quantum Darwinism in a realistic model of decoherence, quantum Brownian motion. Prepared in a highly squeezed state—a macroscopic superposition—the system leaves records whose redundancy increases rapidly with initial delocalization. Redundancy appears rapidly (on the decoherence time scale) and persists for a long time.

Quantum Darwinism for mixed-state environment

Science.gov (United States)

Quan, Haitao; Zwolak, Michael; Zurek, Wojciech

2009-03-01

We exam quantum darwinism when a system is in the presence of a mixed environment, and we find a general relation between the mutual information for the mixed-state environment and the change of the entropy of the fraction of the environment. We then look at a particular solvable model, and we numerically exam the time evolution of the ``mutual information" for large environment. Finally we discuss about the exact expressions for all entropies and the mutual information at special time.

The Comparative Reception of Darwinism: A Brief History

Science.gov (United States)

Glick, Thomas F.

2010-01-01

The subfield of Darwin studies devoted to comparative reception coalesced around 1971 with the planning of a conference on the subject, at the University of Texas at Austin held in April 1972. The original focus was western Europe, Russia and the United States. Subsequently a spate of studies on the Italian reception added to the Eurocentric…

A history of altruism focusing on Darwin, Allee and E.O. Wilson.

Science.gov (United States)

Domondon, Andrew T

2013-06-01

The problem of altruism refers to the apparent difficulty in reconciling the existence of altruists, individuals who reduce their own fitness to increase the fitness of others, with natural selection. A historical and philosophical overview of solutions to this apparent contradiction is presented through a close reading of the key texts of Charles Darwin, Warder C. Allee and Edward O. Wilson. Following an analysis of Darwin's explanation for altruism, I examine the ideas of group selection and kin selection advanced by Allee and Wilson, respectively, Attention is also given to the philosophical implications each associated with their respective solutions. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Effectiveness of and obstacles to antibiotic streamlining to amoxicillin monotherapy in bacteremic pneumococcal pneumonia.

Science.gov (United States)

Blot, Mathieu; Pivot, Diane; Bourredjem, Abderrahmane; Salmon-Rousseau, Arnaud; de Curraize, Claire; Croisier, Delphine; Chavanet, Pascal; Binquet, Christine; Piroth, Lionel

2017-09-01

Antibiotic streamlining is pivotal to reduce the emergence of resistant bacteria. However, whether streamlining is frequently performed and safe in difficult situations, such as bacteremic pneumococcal pneumonia (BPP), has still to be assessed. All adult patients admitted to Dijon Hospital (France) from 2005 to 2013 who had BPP without complications, and were alive on the third day were enrolled. Clinical, biological, radiological, microbiological and therapeutic data were recorded. A first analysis was conducted to assess factors associated with being on amoxicillin on the third day. A second analysis, adjusting for a propensity score, was performed to determine whether 30-day mortality was associated with streamlining to amoxicillin monotherapy. Of the 196 patients hospitalized for BPP, 161 were still alive on the third day and were included in the study. Treatment was streamlined to amoxicillin in 60 patients (37%). Factors associated with not streamlining were severe pneumonia (OR 3.11, 95%CI [1.23-7.87]) and a first-line antibiotic combination (OR 3.08, 95%CI [1.34-7.09]). By contrast, starting with amoxicillin monotherapy correlated inversely with the risk of subsequent treatment with antibiotics other than amoxicillin (OR 0.06, 95%CI [0.01-0.30]). The Cox model adjusted for the propensity-score analysis showed that streamlining to amoxicillin during BPP was not significantly associated with a higher risk of 30-day mortality (HR 0.38, 95%CI [0.08-1.87]). Streamlining to amoxicillin is insufficiently implemented during BPP. This strategy is safe and potentially associated with ecological and economic benefits; therefore, it should be further encouraged, particularly when antibiotic combinations are started for severe pneumonia. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Claiming Darwin: Stephen Jay Gould in contests over evolutionary orthodoxy and public perception, 1977-2002.

Science.gov (United States)

Sheldon, Myrna Perez

2014-03-01

This article analyzes the impact of the resurgence of American creationism in the early 1980s on debates within post-synthesis evolutionary biology. During this period, many evolutionists criticized Harvard biologist Stephen Jay Gould for publicizing his revisions to traditional Darwinian theory and opening evolution to criticism by creationists. Gould's theory of punctuated equilibrium was a significant source of contention in these disputes. Both he and his critics, including Richard Dawkins, claimed to be carrying the mantle of Darwinian evolution. By the end of the 1990s, the debate over which evolutionary thinkers were the rightful heirs to Darwin's evolutionary theory was also a conversation over whether Darwinism could be defended against creationists in the broader cultural context. Gould and others' claims to Darwin shaped the contours of a political, religious and scientific controversy. Copyright © 2014. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Summary of Work for Joint Research Interchanges with DARWIN Integrated Product Team

Science.gov (United States)

Hesselink, Lambertus

1999-01-01

The intent of Stanford University's SciVis group is to develop technologies that enabled comparative analysis and visualization techniques for simulated and experimental flow fields. These techniques would then be made available un- der the Joint Research Interchange for potential injection into the DARWIN Workspace Environment (DWE). In the past, we have focused on techniques that exploited feature based comparisons such as shock and vortex extractions. Our current research effort focuses on finding a quantitative comparison of general vector fields based on topological features. Since the method relies on topological information, grid matching an@ vector alignment is not needed in the comparison. This is often a problem with many data comparison techniques. In addition, since only topology based information is stored and compared for each field, there is a significant compression of information that enables large databases to be quickly searched. This report will briefly (1) describe current technologies in the area of comparison techniques, (2) will describe the theory of our new method and finally (3) summarize a few of the results.

The moral conscience from a neuroethcal Standpoint. From Darwin to Kant

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Adela Cortina

2017-02-01

Full Text Available The personal moral conscience is one of the keystones of moral life. Darwin went as far as to claim that this constitutes the most important difference between man and the lower animals. Yet the most relevant philosophical proposals of our times (Rawls, Habermas do not expressly deal with this, perhaps because, as Aranguren said, they gave priority to intersubjective ethics over intrasubjective ethics. Without reconstructing that intrasubjective ethics, however, both personal and social life is watered down. In this work an attempt is made to explain what personal moral conscience consists of, what its neurobiological foundations are, and whether these are enough to explain its irreplaceable role in moral life. To answer these questions we will have to go from Darwin to Kant.

Looking for Darwin's footprints in the microbial world

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Shapiro, B. Jesse; David, Lawrence A.; Friedman, Jonathan; Alm, Eric J.

2009-03-30

As we observe the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birthday, microbiologists interested in the application of Darwin's ideas to the microscopic world have a lot to celebrate: an emerging picture of the (mostly microbial) Tree of Life at ever-increasing resolution, an understanding of horizontal gene transfer as a driving force in the evolution of microbes, and thousands of complete genome sequences to help formulate and refine our theories. At the same time, quantitative models of the microevolutionary processes shaping microbial populations remain just out of reach, a point that is perhaps most dramatically illustrated by the lack of consensus on how (or even whether) to define bacterial species. We summarize progress and prospects in bacterial population genetics, with an emphasis on detecting the footprint of positive Darwinian selection in microbial genomes.

Darwin and Spencer on the origin of music: is music the food of love?

Science.gov (United States)

Kleinman, Kim

2015-01-01

Finding an evolutionary explanation for the origins of music serves as a rich test of broader ideas on the emergence of mind and the evolution of mental processes. Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer both offered evolutionary explanations for the origins of music, indicating the importance of the question for these two leading nineteenth-century students of "descent with modification." Their discussion unfolded between the publication of Spencer's "The origin and function of music" in 1857 and Darwin's commentaries on music in The Descent of Man in 1871 with an addendum Spencer offered to his original article in light of Darwin's views. They had conflicting views on the lines of causation, asked differing questions, and had fundamentally different approaches. Their exchange laid the foundation for the discussion among contemporary adaptationists and nonadaptationists and contributed to the thinking of those who argue for Mixed Origins of Music or that it is a Transformative Technology of Mind. © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Evolution in a fully constituted world: Charles Darwin's debts towards a static world in the Origin of Species (1859).

Science.gov (United States)

Delisle, Richard G

2014-01-01

The Transformist Revolution was a long intellectual quest that has expanded from the 18th century to today. One area of inquiry after another has confronted the necessity of recasting its object of study under an evolutionary view: human history, geology, biology, astronomy, etc. No single scholar fully managed to make the transition from a static worldview to an evolutionary one during his or her own lifetime; Charles Darwin is no exception. Many versions of evolutionism were proposed during this revolution, versions offering all sorts of compromises between old and new views. Not sufficiently acknowledged in the historiography is the profoundness of Darwin's debts towards the old static view. As a dual child of the Scientific Revolution and natural theology, Darwin inherited key concepts such as stability, completeness, timelessness, unity, permanence, and uniformity. Darwin took these concepts into consideration while erecting his theory of biological evolution. Unsurprisingly, this theory was ill-equipped to embrace the directionality, historicity, and novelty that came along with a new evolutionary world. This paper analyses a fundamental idea at the heart of Darwin's Origins of Species (1859) inherited from a static, stable, and machine-like conception of the world: the notion of a fully constituted world. Although in principle antithetical to the very idea of evolution itself, Darwin found a way to 'loosen up' this notion so as to retain it in a way that allows for some kind of evolutionary change. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

[Darwinism, materialism and the revolution of 1848 in Germany. On the interaction of politics and science].

Science.gov (United States)

Junker, T

1995-01-01

In recent years, the question of national styles in science has received increasing attention. The different forms of Darwinism that emerged in the nineteenth century provide an impressive example of the role of non-scientific factors in the development of scientific ideas. Although the reception of Darwinian theory has been acknowledged to differ according to distinct national traditions even in Darwin's time, there have been few systematic efforts to understand the underlying causal factors. Usually these explanations have conceived of the relationship of science to its social and political context as a distortion of science by ideology. In contrast to this picture, I attempt to demonstrate here how a scientific research program was situated in a concrete historical context. The German tradition of Darwinism in the nineteenth century will be described as a coalition of political liberalism, materialism, and morphology. Whereas the liberals used Darwinism to give their anti-religious and progressive program a naturalistic foundation, the morphologists appreciated that Darwinian theory allowed them to dispense with the idealistic origins of their research program, and the materialist were provided with a naturalistic explanation of the origin of organic form.

Could Charles Darwin Teach Psychology in the 1980s?

Science.gov (United States)

Rigby, Marilyn K.

1988-01-01

Discusses the implications of Charles Darwin's personal and professional history for an academic career in psychology. Relationships between his theoretical position and the content of an introductory psychology course he might teach and how he might fare in a contemporary academic environment are sketched in this fictionalized account.…

DARWIN: analogue circuit synthesis based on a genetic algorithms

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Kruiskamp, M.W.; Leenaerts, D.M.W.

1995-01-01

DARWIN is a synthesis tool for generating sized net lists of CMOS op amps from performance specifications and process parameters. the synthesis process starts with an initial set of randomly generated op amps. Owing to genetic operator ‘crossover’ and ‘mutation’, the population of op amps evolves to

Predicting Precipitation in Darwin: An Experiment with Markov Chains

Science.gov (United States)

Boncek, John; Harden, Sig

2009-01-01

As teachers of first-year college mathematics and science students, the authors are constantly on the lookout for simple classroom exercises that improve their students' analytical and computational skills. In this article, the authors outline a project entitled "Predicting Precipitation in Darwin." In this project, students: (1) analyze…

Darwin als Sehhilfe für die Psychologie - Evolutionspsychologie

Science.gov (United States)

Schwab, Frank

Im Folgenden geht es um Einäugige, stereoskopisches Sehen, weite und enge Horizonte, Monokel und Sonnenbrillen. Der Beitrag versucht die Metapher des Sehens und der Sehhilfen anzuwenden, um so zu verdeutlichen, welchen Gewinn die herkömmliche Psychologie durch die Verwendung einer Darwin'schen Brille erlangen kann.

The New Outlook for Science. Science and Belief: from Copernicus to Darwin, Block VI, Units 15-16.

Science.gov (United States)

Open Univ., Walton, Bletchley, Bucks (England).

This text contains units 15-16 in the Open University course, Science and Belief: from Copernicus to Darwin. It is an inter-faculty second level course in the history of science. Unit 15 is concerned with Nature and History and includes uniformitarianism, human history, evolutionism, and Darwinism. Unit objectives, readings, and questions with the…

Integration of NASA-Developed Lifing Technology for PM Alloys into DARWIN (registered trademark)

Science.gov (United States)

McClung, R. Craig; Enright, Michael P.; Liang, Wuwei

2011-01-01

In recent years, Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) have worked independently on the development of probabilistic life prediction methods for materials used in gas turbine engine rotors. The two organizations have addressed different but complementary technical challenges. This report summarizes a brief investigation into the current status of the relevant technology at SwRI and GRC with a view towards a future integration of methods and models developed by GRC for probabilistic lifing of powder metallurgy (P/M) nickel turbine rotor alloys into the DARWIN (Darwin Corporation) software developed by SwRI.

Ripensare Darwin? Di ex‐aptations e neotenie. E di Topolino, Pippo e simpatiche salamandre messicane

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

AMODIO, PAOLO

2016-12-01

Full Text Available Rethinking Darwin? About Ex‐aptations and Neotenies. Concerning Mickey Mouse, Goofy and likeable mexican Salamanders The theory of evolution by natural selection of Charles Darwin, whose first general exposure dates back to 1859, with the publication of the Origin of Species, is still a matter of intense debate among natural sciences’ scholars and philosophers. After the merger of Darwinian evolutionary research program with the theory of heredity of Gregor Mendel, the mathematical form of population genetics and the analysis of paleontological data (Modern Synthesis and the the important contributions of post-Darwinian authors such as S.J. Gould and N. Eldredge we are entering a new era of great discoveries and news. On the one hand, new data from genetics and paleoanthropology, on the other hand the impetuous development of some fields of applied science such as nanobiotechnology, genetic engineering and synthetic biology put us into the need and the urgency to underline, once again, the relevance and the extraordinary heuristic power of Darwinian research program, an even greater urgency since some authors have announced that we would be at a time to access a post-Darwinian and post-evolutionary era in which man as we actually know it is about to disappear.

Darwin 101 (Enhanced): From Earth to Space

Science.gov (United States)

Rothschild, Lynn J.

2015-01-01

Charles Darwin was a modest man, yet one of the great revolutionaries of intellectual history. Born into a culture wedded to Genesis, he brought biology into the realm of natural world. The implications range from of the "why" questions of biology, to our view societies to our ability to combat AIDS. In our era of genomics and space exploration, these insights are being applied to the age-old question: are we alone?

Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, directional selection, and the evolutionary sciences today.

Science.gov (United States)

Kutschera, Ulrich

2009-11-01

The book On the Origin of Species, published in November 1859, is an "abstract" without references, compiled by Charles Darwin from a much longer manuscript entitled "Natural Selection." Here, I summarize the five theories that can be extracted from Darwin's monograph, explain the true meaning of the phrase "struggle for life" (i.e., competition and cooperation), and outline Darwin's original concept of natural selection in populations of animals and plants. Since neither Darwin nor Alfred R. Wallace distinguished between stabilizing and directional natural selection, the popular argument that "selection only eliminates but is not creative" is still alive today. However, I document that August Weismann (Die Bedeutung der sexuellen Fortpflanzung für die Selektions-Theorie. Gustav Fischer-Verlag, Jena, 1886) and Ivan Schmalhausen (Factors of evolution. The theory of stabilizing selection. The Blackiston Company, Philadelphia, 1949) provided precise definitions for directional (dynamic) selection in nature and illustrate this "Weismann-Schmalhausen principle" with respect to the evolutionary development of novel phenotypes. Then, the modern (synthetic) theory of biological evolution that is based on the work of Theodosius Dobzhansky (Genetics and the origin of species. Columbia University Press, New York, 1937) and others, and the expanded version of this system of theories, are outlined. Finally, I document that symbiogenesis (i.e., primary endosymbiosis, a process that gave rise to the first eukaryotic cells), ongoing directional natural selection, and the dynamic Earth (plate tectonics, i.e., geological events that both created and destroyed terrestrial and aquatic habitats) were the key processes responsible for the documented macroevolutionary patterns in all five kingdoms of life. Since the evolutionary development of the earliest archaic bacteria more than 3,500 mya, the biosphere of our dynamic planet has been dominated by prokaryotic microbes. Eubacteria

Charles Darwin's beagle voyage, fossil vertebrate succession, and "the gradual birth & death of species".

Science.gov (United States)

Brinkman, Paul D

2010-01-01

The prevailing view among historians of science holds that Charles Darwin became a convinced transmutationist only in the early spring of 1837, after his Beagle collections had been examined by expert British naturalists. With respect to the fossil vertebrate evidence, some historians believe that Darwin was incapable of seeing or understanding the transmutationist implications of his specimens without the help of Richard Owen. There is ample evidence, however, that he clearly recognized the similarities between several of the fossil vertebrates he collected and some of the extant fauna of South America before he returned to Britain. These comparisons, recorded in his correspondence, his diary and his notebooks during the voyage, were instances of a phenomenon that he later called the "law of the succession of types." Moreover, on the Beagle, he was following a geological research agenda outlined in the second volume of Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology, which implies that paleontological data alone could provide an insight into the laws which govern the appearance of new species. Since Darwin claims in On the Origin of Species that fossil vertebrate succession was one of the key lines of evidence that led him to question the fixity of species, it seems certain that he was seriously contemplating transmutation during the Beagle voyage. If so, historians of science need to reconsider both the role of Britain's expert naturalists and the importance of the fossil vertebrate evidence in the development of Darwin's ideas on transmutation.

Darwin's "strange inversion of reasoning".

Science.gov (United States)

Dennett, Daniel

2009-06-16

Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection unifies the world of physics with the world of meaning and purpose by proposing a deeply counterintuitive "inversion of reasoning" (according to a 19th century critic): "to make a perfect and beautiful machine, it is not requisite to know how to make it" [MacKenzie RB (1868) (Nisbet & Co., London)]. Turing proposed a similar inversion: to be a perfect and beautiful computing machine, it is not requisite to know what arithmetic is. Together, these ideas help to explain how we human intelligences came to be able to discern the reasons for all of the adaptations of life, including our own.

Streamlined approach to waste management at CRL

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Adams, L.; Campbell, B.

2011-01-01

Radioactive, mixed, hazardous and non-hazardous wastes have been and continue to be generated at Chalk River Laboratories (CRL) as a result of research and development activities and operations since the 1940s. Over the years, the wastes produced as a byproduct of activities delivering the core missions of the CRL site have been of many types, and today, over thirty distinct waste streams have been identified, all requiring efficient management. With the commencement of decommissioning of the legacy created as part of the development of the Canadian nuclear industry, the volumes and range of wastes to be managed have been increasing in the near term, and this trend will continue into the future. The development of a streamlined approach to waste management is a key to successful waste management at CRL. Waste management guidelines that address all of the requirements have become complex, and so have the various waste management groups receiving waste, with their many different processes and capabilities. This has led to difficulties for waste generators in understanding all of the requirements to be satisfied for the various CRL waste receivers, whose primary concerns are to be safe and in compliance with their acceptance criteria and license conditions. As a result, waste movement on site can often be very slow, especially for non-routine waste types. Recognizing an opportunity for improvement, the Waste Management organization at CRL has implemented a more streamlined approach with emphasis on early identification of waste type and possible disposition path. This paper presents a streamlined approach to waste identification and waste management at CRL, the implementation methodology applied and the early results achieved from this process improvement. (author)

Sympathetic science: Charles Darwin, Joseph Hooker, and the passions of Victorian naturalists.

Science.gov (United States)

Endersby, Jim

2009-01-01

This essay examines the complex tangle of emotional and scientific attachments that linked Darwin and botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker. Analyzing their roles as husbands, fathers, and novel readers demonstrates that possessing and expressing sympathy was as important for Victorian naturalists as it was for Victorian husbands. Sympathy was a scientific skill that Victorian naturalists regarded as necessary to fully understand the living world; although sympathy became increasingly gendered as feminine over the course of the century, its importance to male naturalists requires us to rethink the ways gender roles were negotiated in Victorian Britain. Botany was, for men like Darwin and Hooker, an acceptably masculine pursuit that nevertheless allowed--and even required--them to be sensitive and sympathetic.

CHARLES DARWIN: INMORTALIZADO EN EPÓNIMOS DE GEA, FLORA Y FAUNA RECIENTES DE CHILE

OpenAIRE

Pérez, Vicente

2009-01-01

Se presentan epónimos de gea, flora y fauna de Chile, erigidos en honor de Charles Darwin, naturalista a bordo del H.M.S. Beagle (1831-1836), para denominar accidentes geográficos de territorio chileno y nuevas especies de flora y fauna descritas de ejemplares recolectados en Chile por él. Eponyms of gea, flora and fauna, erected in honour of Charles Darwin, naturalist on board of the H.M.S. Beagle (1831-1836), for desígnate geographic accidents and new species of flora and fauna described...

Neoliberalism, Social Darwinism, and Consumerism Masquerading as School Reform

Science.gov (United States)

Tienken, Christopher H.

2013-01-01

Education reform policies harvested from neoliberalism, social Darwinism, consumerism, and free-market ideologies have begun to replace the pragmatic progressivism of the pre-World War II era. In this article, I use three federal and state education reform policies and programs--No Child Left Behind Act, Common Core State Standards Initiative, and…

Streamlining the Bankability Process using International Standards

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Kurtz, Sarah [National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States); Repins, Ingrid L [National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States); Kelly, George [Sunset Technology, Mount Airy, MD; Ramu, Govind [SunPower, San Jose, California; Heinz, Matthias [TUV Rheinland, Cologne, Germany; Chen, Yingnan [CGC (China General Certification Center), Beijing; Wohlgemuth, John [PowerMark, Union Hall, VA; Lokanath, Sumanth [First Solar, Tempe, Arizona; Daniels, Eric [Suncycle USA, Frederick MD; Hsi, Edward [Swiss RE, Zurich, Switzerland; Yamamichi, Masaaki [RTS, Trumbull, CT

2017-09-27

NREL has supported the international efforts to create a streamlined process for documenting bankability and/or completion of each step of a PV project plan. IECRE was created for this purpose in 2014. This poster describes the goals, current status of this effort, and how individuals and companies can become involved.

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

Work plan for improving the DARWIN2.3 depleted material balance calculation of nuclides of interest for the fuel cycle

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rizzo Axel

2017-01-01

Full Text Available DARWIN2.3 is the reference package used for fuel cycle applications in France. It solves the Boltzmann and Bateman equations in a coupling way, with the European JEFF-3.1.1 nuclear data library, to compute the fuel cycle values of interest. It includes both deterministic transport codes APOLLO2 (for light water reactors and ERANOS2 (for fast reactors, and the DARWIN/PEPIN2 depletion code, each of them being developed by CEA/DEN with the support of its industrial partners. The DARWIN2.3 package has been experimentally validated for pressurized and boiling water reactors, as well as for sodium fast reactors; this experimental validation relies on the analysis of post-irradiation experiments (PIE. The DARWIN2.3 experimental validation work points out some isotopes for which the depleted concentration calculation can be improved. Some other nuclides have no available experimental validation, and their concentration calculation uncertainty is provided by the propagation of a priori nuclear data uncertainties. This paper describes the work plan of studies initiated this year to improve the accuracy of the DARWIN2.3 depleted material balance calculation concerning some nuclides of interest for the fuel cycle.

Work plan for improving the DARWIN2.3 depleted material balance calculation of nuclides of interest for the fuel cycle

Science.gov (United States)

Rizzo, Axel; Vaglio-Gaudard, Claire; Martin, Julie-Fiona; Noguère, Gilles; Eschbach, Romain

2017-09-01

DARWIN2.3 is the reference package used for fuel cycle applications in France. It solves the Boltzmann and Bateman equations in a coupling way, with the European JEFF-3.1.1 nuclear data library, to compute the fuel cycle values of interest. It includes both deterministic transport codes APOLLO2 (for light water reactors) and ERANOS2 (for fast reactors), and the DARWIN/PEPIN2 depletion code, each of them being developed by CEA/DEN with the support of its industrial partners. The DARWIN2.3 package has been experimentally validated for pressurized and boiling water reactors, as well as for sodium fast reactors; this experimental validation relies on the analysis of post-irradiation experiments (PIE). The DARWIN2.3 experimental validation work points out some isotopes for which the depleted concentration calculation can be improved. Some other nuclides have no available experimental validation, and their concentration calculation uncertainty is provided by the propagation of a priori nuclear data uncertainties. This paper describes the work plan of studies initiated this year to improve the accuracy of the DARWIN2.3 depleted material balance calculation concerning some nuclides of interest for the fuel cycle.

Discovery of scientific correspondence of P.P.C. Hoek (1851—1914), including three unpublished letters by Charles Darwin

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Pieters, Florence F.J.M.; Winthagen, Diny

1990-01-01

Recently the scientific correspondence of the Dutch zoologist P.P.C. Hoek (1851—1914) turned up in the Artis Library. This collection contains three hitherto unpublished letters from Charles Darwin. It appears that Charles Darwin recommended Hoek to the favour of Sir Charles Wyville Thomson upon

Darwin vs. Wallace: When Poetry Dies and When Poetry Survives in the Not-so-Natural Selection of Memetic Evolution

Science.gov (United States)

Christensen, Bryce

2011-01-01

The theory of memetic evolution--explaining the reproduction of cultural units called "memes"--illuminates the decline of poetry as a cultural presence by clarifying the contrasting attitudes towards poetry manifested by the co-discoverers of natural selection: Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace. Darwin's eventual indifference to poetry…

Deceived by orchids: sex, science, fiction and Darwin.

Science.gov (United States)

Endersby, Jim

2016-06-01

Between 1916 and 1927, botanists in several countries independently resolved three problems that had mystified earlier naturalists - including Charles Darwin: how did the many species of orchid that did not produce nectar persuade insects to pollinate them? Why did some orchid flowers seem to mimic insects? And why should a native British orchid suffer 'attacks' from a bee? Half a century after Darwin's death, these three mysteries were shown to be aspects of a phenomenon now known as pseudocopulation, whereby male insects are deceived into attempting to mate with the orchid's flowers, which mimic female insects; the males then carry the flower's pollen with them when they move on to try the next deceptive orchid. Early twentieth-century botanists were able to see what their predecessors had not because orchids (along with other plants) had undergone an imaginative re-creation: Darwin's science was appropriated by popular interpreters of science, including the novelist Grant Allen; then H.G. Wells imagined orchids as killers (inspiring a number of imitators), to produce a genre of orchid stories that reflected significant cultural shifts, not least in the presentation of female sexuality. It was only after these changes that scientists were able to see plants as equipped with agency, actively able to pursue their own, cunning reproductive strategies - and to outwit animals in the process. This paper traces the movement of a set of ideas that were created in a context that was recognizably scientific; they then became popular non-fiction, then popular fiction, and then inspired a new science, which in turn inspired a new generation of fiction writers. Long after clear barriers between elite and popular science had supposedly been established in the early twentieth century, they remained porous because a variety of imaginative writers kept destabilizing them. The fluidity of the boundaries between makers, interpreters and publics of scientific knowledge was a highly

Charles Darwin and the evolution of human grammatical systems.

Science.gov (United States)

Buckingham, Hugh W; Christman, Sarah S

2010-04-08

Charles Darwin's evolutionary theories of animal communication were deeply embedded in a centuries-old model of association psychology, whose prodromes have most often been traced to the writings of Aristotle. His notions of frequency of occurrence of pairings have been passed down through the centuries and were a major ontological feature in the formation of associative connectivity. He focused on the associations of cause and effect, contiguity of sequential occurrence, and similarity among items. Cause and effect were often reduced to another type of contiguity relation, so that Aristotle is most often evoked as the originator of the associative bondings through similarity and contiguity, contiguity being the most powerful and frequent means of association. Contiguity eventually became the overriding mechanism for serial ordering of mental events in both perception and action. The notions of concatenation throughout the association psychology took the form of "trains" of events, both sensory and motor, in such a way that serial ordering came to be viewed as an item-by-item string of locally contiguous events. Modern developments in the mathematics of serial ordering have advanced in sophistication since the early and middle twentieth century, and new computational methods have allowed us to reevaluate the serial concatenative theories of Darwin and the associationists. These new models of serial order permit a closer comparative scrutiny between human and nonhuman. The present study considers Darwin's insistence on a "degree" continuity between human and nonhuman animal serial ordering. We will consider a study of starling birdsongs and whether the serial ordering of those songs provides evidence that they have a syntax that at best differs only in degree and not in kind with the computations of human grammatical structures. We will argue that they, in fact, show no such thing.

Extensions of the lost letter technique to divisive issues of creationism, darwinism, sex education, and gay and lesbian affiliations.

Science.gov (United States)

Bridges, F Stephen; Anzalone, Debra A; Ryan, Stuart W; Anzalone, Fanancy L

2002-04-01

Two field studies using 1,004 "lost letters" were designed to test the hypotheses that returned responses would be greater in small towns than from a city, that addressees' affiliation with a group either (1) opposed to physical education in schools, (2) supporting gay and lesbian teachers, or (3) advocating Creationism or Darwinism would reduce the return rate. Of 504 letters "lost" in Study A, 163 (32.3%) were returned in the mail from residents of southeast Louisiana and indicated across 3 addressees and 2 sizes of community, addressees' affiLiations were not associated with returned responses. Community size and addressees' affiliations were associated with significantly different rates of return in the city. Return rates from sites within a city were lower when letters were addressed to an organization which opposed (teaching) health education in the schools than to one supporting daily health education. Of 500 letters "lost" in Study B, 95 (19.0%) were returned from residents of northwest Florida and indicated across 5 addressees and 2 sizes of community, addressees' affiliations were significantly associated with returned responses overall (5 addressees) and in small towns (control, Creationism, Darwinism addressees), but not with community size. Community size and addressees' affiliations were associated with significantly different rates of return in small towns, with returns greater than or equal to those in the city (except for the addressee advocating teaching Darwinism in public schools). The present findings appear to show that applications of the lost letter technique to other divisive social issues are useful in assessing public opinion.

"My appointment received the sanction of the Admiralty": why Charles Darwin really was the naturalist on HMS Beagle.

Science.gov (United States)

van Wyhe, John

2013-09-01

For decades historians of science and science writers in general have maintained that Charles Darwin was not the 'naturalist' or 'official naturalist' during the 1831-1836 surveying voyage of HMS Beagle but instead Captain Robert FitzRoy's 'companion', 'gentleman companion' or 'dining companion'. That is, Darwin was primarily the captain's social companion and only secondarily and unofficially naturalist. Instead, it is usually maintained, the ship's surgeon Robert McCormick was the official naturalist because this was the default or official practice at the time. Although these views have been repeated in countless accounts of Darwin's life, this essay aims to show that they are incorrect. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Summary of Work for Joint Research Interchanges with DARWIN Integrated Product Team 1998

Science.gov (United States)

Hesselink, Lambertus

1999-01-01

The intent of Stanford University's SciVis group is to develop technologies that enabled comparative analysis and visualization techniques for simulated and experimental flow fields. These techniques would then be made available under the Joint Research Interchange for potential injection into the DARWIN Workspace Environment (DWE). In the past, we have focused on techniques that exploited feature based comparisons such as shock and vortex extractions. Our current research effort focuses on finding a quantitative comparison of general vector fields based on topological features. Since the method relies on topological information, grid matching and vector alignment is not needed in the comparison. This is often a problem with many data comparison techniques. In addition, since only topology based information is stored and compared for each field, there is a significant compression of information that enables large databases to be quickly searched. This report will briefly (1) describe current technologies in the area of comparison techniques, (2) will describe the theory of our new method and finally (3) summarize a few of the results.

Streamlining Research by Using Existing Tools

OpenAIRE

Greene, Sarah M.; Baldwin, Laura-Mae; Dolor, Rowena J.; Thompson, Ella; Neale, Anne Victoria

2011-01-01

Over the past two decades, the health research enterprise has matured rapidly, and many recognize an urgent need to translate pertinent research results into practice, to help improve the quality, accessibility, and affordability of U.S. health care. Streamlining research operations would speed translation, particularly for multi-site collaborations. However, the culture of research discourages reusing or adapting existing resources or study materials. Too often, researchers start studies and...

Darwin's Difficulties and Students' Struggles with Trait Loss: Cognitive-Historical Parallelisms in Evolutionary Explanation

Science.gov (United States)

Ha, Minsu; Nehm, Ross H.

2014-05-01

Although historical changes in scientific ideas sometimes display striking similarities with students' conceptual progressions, some scholars have cautioned that such similarities lack meaningful commonalities. In the history of evolution, while Darwin and his contemporaries often used natural selection to explain evolutionary trait gain or increase, they struggled to use it to convincingly account for cases of trait loss or decrease. This study examines Darwin's evolutionary writings about trait gain and loss in the Origin of Species (On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. D. Appleton, New York, 1859) and compares them to written evolutionary explanations for trait gain and loss in a large (n > 500), cross-cultural and cross-sectional sample (novices and experts from the USA and Korea). Findings indicate that significantly more students and experts applied natural selection to cases of trait gain, but like Darwin and his contemporaries, they more often applied `use and disuse' and `inheritance of acquired characteristics' to episodes of trait loss. Although the parallelism between Darwin's difficulties and students' struggles with trait loss are striking, significant differences also characterize explanatory model structure. Overall, however, students and scientists struggles to explain trait loss—which is a very common phenomenon in the history of life—appear to transcend time, place, and level of biological expertise. The significance of these findings for evolution education are discussed; in particular, the situated nature of biological reasoning, and the important role that the history of science can play in understanding cognitive constraints on science learning.

The coherence of life: A new physiology challenging (neo)Darwinism

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Jaeken, Laurent

2009-01-01

Schroedinger argued that coherent behaviour is one of the most remarkable properties of life. Despite this, it is one of the most neglected properties, studied only by a few groups of rather independent scientists in the domains of physiology but also of fundamental physics. In contrast, classical cell physiology, built on membrane theory, does not take coherent behaviour into account. Recently several independent approaches to the problem of coherence have been unified yielding a new paradigm for cell physiology, which can be derived from a non-linear Schroedinger equation. The new paradigm replaces outdated membrane theory. Similarly (neo)Darwinism is not firmly grounded on fundamental physics. However, during the eighties (neo)Darwinism was taken up in a broader theory of evolution, based on the non-linear equations of fundamental physics. It is argued here that life's coherent behaviour and the new physiology built on these coherent properties is directly compatible with the modern view on evolution, since both are based on the same principles of non-linearity.

The Darwin Enterprise: From Scientific Icon to Global Product

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kjærgaard, Peter C.

2010-01-01

by comparison to what constitute the bulk of the ‘real’ Darwin Industry that since the 1870s until present day has grown into a multimillion franchise including a wealth of products from postcards and mugs to books, teaching materials,documentaries, major film production and myriads of websites. By 2009 the real...

48 CFR 12.602 - Streamlined evaluation of offers.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... offers. 12.602 Section 12.602 Federal Acquisition Regulations System FEDERAL ACQUISITION REGULATION... for Commercial Items 12.602 Streamlined evaluation of offers. (a) When evaluation factors are used... evaluation factors. (b) Offers shall be evaluated in accordance with the criteria contained in the...

Indication for quantum Darwinism in electron billiards

Science.gov (United States)

Brunner, R.; Akis, R.; Meisels, R.; Kuchar, F.; Ferry, D. K.

2010-02-01

In this paper, we investigate the dynamics in electron billiards by using classical and quantum mechanical calculations. We report on the existence of pointer states in single-dot and double-dot electron billiards. Additionally, we show that the two types of pointer states have the propensity to create offspring, i.e. they can be observed in the individual modes propagating between the external reservoirs. This can be understood as an indication that quantum Darwinism is present in the electron billiards.

Darwin core based data streamlining with digimus 2.0

Digital Repository Service at National Institute of Oceanography (India)

Kakodkar, A.P.; Kerkar, S.S.; Varghese, N.S.; Kavlekar, D.P.; Achuthankutty, C.T.

smaller datasets into a larger information system requires uniformity of data based on a single data standard. In the developing world smaller datasets are maintained by individual researchers or small college and university groups. To standardize data...

The design of the Comet streamliner: An electric land speed record motorcycle

Science.gov (United States)

McMillan, Ethan Alexander

The development of the land speed record electric motorcycle streamliner, the Comet, is discussed herein. Its design process includes a detailed literary review of past and current motorcycle streamliners in an effort to highlight the main components of such a vehicle's design, while providing baseline data for performance comparisons. A new approach to balancing a streamliner at low speeds is also addressed, a system henceforth referred to as landing gear, which has proven an effective means for allowing the driver to control the low speed instabilities of the vehicle with relative ease compared to tradition designs. This is accompanied by a dynamic stability analysis conducted on a test chassis that was developed for the primary purpose of understanding the handling dynamics of streamliners, while also providing a test bed for the implementation of the landing gear system and a means to familiarize the driver to the operation and handling of such a vehicle. Data gathered through the use of GPS based velocity tracking, accelerometers, and a linear potentiometer provided a means to validate a dynamic stability analysis of the weave and wobble modes of the vehicle through linearization of a streamliner model developed in the BikeSIM software suite. Results indicate agreement between the experimental data and the simulation, indicating that the conventional recumbent design of a streamliner chassis is in fact highly stable throughout the performance envelope beyond extremely low speeds. A computational fluid dynamics study was also performed, utilized in the development of the body of the Comet to which a series of tests were conducted in order to develop a shape that was both practical to transport and highly efficient. By creating a hybrid airfoil from a NACA 0018 and NACA 66-018, a drag coefficient of 0.1 and frontal area of 0.44 m2 has been found for the final design. Utilizing a performance model based on the proposed vehicle's motor, its rolling resistance, and

Case studies in geographic information systems for environmental streamlining

Science.gov (United States)

2012-05-31

This 2012 summary report addresses the current use of geographic information systems (GIS) and related technologies by State Departments of Transportation (DOTs) for environmental streamlining and stewardship, particularly in relation to the National...

Marine Sciences: from natural history to ecology and back, on Darwin's shoulders

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ferdinando Boero

2010-12-01

Full Text Available The naturalist Charles Darwin founded modern ecology, considering in a single conceptual framework the manifold aspects regarding the organization of life at various levels of complexity and its relationship with the physical world. The development of powerful analytical tools led to abandon Darwin's natural history and to transform naturalists, as Darwin labelled himself, into the practitioners of more focused disciplines, aimed at tackling specific problems that considered the various aspects of the organization of life in great detail but, also, in isolation from each other. Among the various disciplines that stemmed from the Darwinian method, ecology was further split into many branches, and marine ecology was no exception. The compartmentalization of the marine realm into several sub-domains (e.g., plankton, benthos, nekton led to neglect of the connections linking the various parts that were separated for the ease of analyses that, in this way, prevented synthetic visions. The way marine sciences were studied also led to separate visions depending on the employed tools, so that ship-based biological oceanography developed almost separately from marine station-based marine biology. The necessity of putting together such concepts as biodiversity and ecosystem functioning is rapidly leading to synthetic approaches that re-discover the historical nature of ecology, leading to the dawn of a new natural history.

La creatividad científica de Charles Darwin

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jorge Valenzuela Garcés

2011-05-01

Full Text Available Un reverendo que había sido capellán de la reina Víctoria siente terroral leer a Darwin y, desde su posición en la Iglesia, no duda en combatirlo.Karl Marx, después de leer El origen de las especies (1859, sienteel impulso de dedicarle su ópera magna El capital, pero Darwin declinael honor y aconseja al prusiano rojo que piense en otro intelectual conmás méritos que él. Convencidos de sus tesis, gran cantidad de organizacionesdel movimiento obrero europeo, durante la segunda mitad delsiglo XIX, se doblega ante él y se convierte al darwinismo, no sin antesasumir el nuevo catecismo de la ciencia que su teoría ha traído al mundode los materialistas y desposeídos. Hoy, pasados ciento cincuenta añosde la publicación de su obra cumbre, las diversas comunidades científicasreconocen la importancia de su contribución en campos comola genética, etnobotánica, antropología, teología, biología, geografía,filosofía, neurología, psicoanálisis, psiquiatría o la lingüística.

No Child Left Behind: A Neoliberal Repackaging of Social Darwinism

Science.gov (United States)

Leyva, Rodolfo

2009-01-01

It is widely believed that the end of Nazism, and the postwar era brought an end to academic theories and discourses regarding inherent racial inferiority. There was little tolerance Hawkins (1997) argues, for biological justifications for racism, war, and exploitation. The infamous Social Darwinism of key intellectual Herbert Spencer, and its…

Darwinism without populations: a more inclusive understanding of the "Survival of the Fittest".

Science.gov (United States)

Bouchard, Frédéric

2011-03-01

Following Wallace's suggestion, Darwin framed his theory using Spencer's expression "survival of the fittest". Since then, fitness occupies a significant place in the conventional understanding of Darwinism, even though the explicit meaning of the term 'fitness' is rarely stated. In this paper I examine some of the different roles that fitness has played in the development of the theory. Whereas the meaning of fitness was originally understood in ecological terms, it took a statistical turn in terms of reproductive success throughout the 20th Century. This has lead to the ever-increasing importance of sexually reproducing organisms and the populations they compose in evolutionary explanations. I will argue that, moving forward, evolutionary theory should look back at its ecological roots in order to be more inclusive in the type of systems it examines. Many biological systems (e.g. clonal species, colonial species, multi-species communities) can only be satisfactorily accounted for by offering a non-reproductive account of fitness. This argument will be made by examining biological systems with very small or transient population structures. I argue this has significant consequences for how we define Darwinism, increasing the significance of survival (or persistence) over that of reproduction. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Quantum Darwinism and non-Markovian dissipative dynamics from quantum phases of the spin-1/2 X X model

Science.gov (United States)

Giorgi, Gian Luca; Galve, Fernando; Zambrini, Roberta

2015-08-01

Quantum Darwinism explains the emergence of a classical description of objects in terms of the creation of many redundant registers in an environment containing their classical information. This amplification phenomenon, where only classical information reaches the macroscopic observer and through which different observers can agree on the objective existence of such object, has been revived lately for several types of situations, successfully explaining classicality. We explore quantum Darwinism in the setting of an environment made of two level systems which are initially prepared in the ground state of the XX model, which exhibits different phases; we find that the different phases have different abilities to redundantly acquire classical information about the system, the "ferromagnetic phase" being the only one able to complete quantum Darwinism. At the same time we relate this ability to how non-Markovian the system dynamics is, based on the interpretation that non-Markovian dynamics is associated with backflow of information from environment to system, thus spoiling the information transfer needed for Darwinism. Finally, we explore mixing of bath registers by allowing a small interaction among them, finding that this spoils the stored information as previously found in the literature.

Beating Darwin-Bragg losses in lab-based ultrafast x-ray experiments

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Wilfred K. Fullagar

2017-07-01

Full Text Available The use of low temperature thermal detectors for avoiding Darwin-Bragg losses in lab-based ultrafast experiments has begun. An outline of the background of this new development is offered, showing the relevant history and initiative taken by this work.

Why Darwin would have loved evolutionary game theory

OpenAIRE

Brown, Joel S.

2016-01-01

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 dep...

Erasmus Darwin's Deistic Dissent and Didactic Epic Poetry: Promoting Science Education to a Mixed Audience Under the Banner of Tolerance

Science.gov (United States)

Martin, Kirsten Anne

Erasmus Darwin's task as a Deistic Dissenter poet who wished to promote science education to a mixed audience was complex. There was mainstream concern over what Deists and Dissenters actually believed about God, their involvement in science, and, especially, how their published works, whatever the subject, might affect public morality and politics. I argue that Darwin's poetry is primarily in the genre of Lucretian didactic epic but that it also involves elements of other written traditions (literary and non-literary). I focus on English didactic poetry, the theological written traditions of Dissent and Deism, and a particular tradition of erotic satire. The genre of Lucretian didactic epic and the tradition of English didactic poetry are non-identical. In Darwin's Lucretian didactic epic, resemblances to such poems as Pope's Essay on Man challenge ideas about what kind of narrative a didactic poem in the English language can deliver. Techniques from the theological written traditions of Dissent and Deism reflect Darwin's affiliations, signal that science education fits within a larger debate about intellectual freedom, and promote tolerance for differences of opinion about nature. Mimicry of a particular tradition of erotic satire helps to downplay the address to a mixed audience while satirising some common misconceptions about poetry, botany, and women in the period. Darwin's poetry challenges ideas about what people from his community of belief meant to communicate or transmit by writing for the general public, what the general public was entitled to learn, and what poetry was able to teach. Perhaps Darwin's biggest modification of Lucretian didactic epic was that he did not tell his readers exactly what to think, but how.

Inspiration in the harness of daily labor. Darwin, botany, and the triumph of evolution, 1859-1868.

Science.gov (United States)

Bellon, Richard

2011-09-01

Charles Darwin hoped that a large body of working naturalists would embrace evolution after the Origin of Species appeared in late 1859. He was disappointed. His evolutionary ideas at first made painfully little progress in the scientific community. But by 1863 the tide had turned dramatically, and within five years evolution became scientific orthodoxy in Britain. The Origin's reception followed this peculiar trajectory because Darwin had not initially tied its theory to productive original scientific investigation, which left him vulnerable to charges of reckless speculation. The debate changed with his successful application of evolution to original problems, most notably orchid fertilization, the subject of a well-received book in 1862. Most of Darwin's colleagues found the argument of the Origin convincing when they realized that it functioned productively in the day-to-day work of science-and not before. The conceptual force of the Origin, however outwardly persuasive, acquired full scientific legitimacy only when placed "in the harness of daily labour".

Mean streamline analysis for performance prediction of cross-flow fans

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kim, Jae Won; Oh, Hyoung Woo

2004-01-01

This paper presents the mean streamline analysis using the empirical loss correlations for performance prediction of cross-flow fans. Comparison of overall performance predictions with test data of a cross-flow fan system with a simplified vortex wall scroll casing and with the published experimental characteristics for a cross-flow fan has been carried out to demonstrate the accuracy of the proposed method. Predicted performance curves by the present mean streamline analysis agree well with experimental data for two different cross-flow fans over the normal operating conditions. The prediction method presented herein can be used efficiently as a tool for the preliminary design and performance analysis of general-purpose cross-flow fans

What's Wrong with a Little Social Darwinism (in Our Historiography)?

Science.gov (United States)

Versen, Christopher R.

2009-01-01

The simplest and most widely held definition of Social Darwinism is the application of concepts of biological evolution to social and moral development. More specifically, it is social evolution through "survival of the fittest" in a "struggle for existence" in which the strong prevail and the weak are defeated and disappear.…

An Evaluation of the Acquisition Streamlining Methods at the Fleet and Industrial Supply Center Pearl Harbor Hawaii

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Henry, Mark

1999-01-01

...) Pearl Harbor's implementation of acquisition streamlining initiatives and recommends viable methods of streamlining the acquisition process at FISC Pearl Harbor and other Naval Supply Systems Command...

Neural Darwinism and consciousness.

Science.gov (United States)

Seth, Anil K; Baars, Bernard J

2005-03-01

Neural Darwinism (ND) is a large scale selectionist theory of brain development and function that has been hypothesized to relate to consciousness. According to ND, consciousness is entailed by reentrant interactions among neuronal populations in the thalamocortical system (the 'dynamic core'). These interactions, which permit high-order discriminations among possible core states, confer selective advantages on organisms possessing them by linking current perceptual events to a past history of value-dependent learning. Here, we assess the consistency of ND with 16 widely recognized properties of consciousness, both physiological (for example, consciousness is associated with widespread, relatively fast, low amplitude interactions in the thalamocortical system), and phenomenal (for example, consciousness involves the existence of a private flow of events available only to the experiencing subject). While no theory accounts fully for all of these properties at present, we find that ND and its recent extensions fare well.

Molecular identification of a novel gammaherpesvirus in the endangered Darwin's fox (Lycalopex fulvipes).

Science.gov (United States)

Cabello, Javier; Esperón, Fernando; Napolitano, Constanza; Hidalgo, Ezequiel; Dávila, José Antonio; Millán, Javier

2013-12-01

We report the detection and characterization of a novel gammaherpesvirus in the critically endangered Darwin's fox (Lycalopex fulvipes; syn. Pseudalopex fulvipes) on Chiloé Island, Chile. Out of 28 analysed blood samples stored in alcohol, four were positive for this herpesvirus using a previously described pan-herpesvirus PCR assay targeting the herpesvirus DNA polymerase. Positive samples were subsequently characterized by means of a PCR targeting a 500 bp fragment of the glycoprotein B of the gammaherpesviruses. This novel herpesvirus was most closely related to other gammaherpesviruses from terrestrial carnivores, and is tentatively named Darwin's fox gammaherpesvirus. No apparent lesions were observed in the surveyed foxes. This is the first report of a gammaherpesvirus infecting a canid worldwide, and also of one infecting a carnivore from South America.

The coherence of life: A new physiology challenging (neo)Darwinism

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Jaeken, Laurent [Laboratory of Biochemistry, Department of Industrial Sciences and Technology, Karel de Grote-Hogeschool University College, Salesianenlaan 30, B-2660 Hoboken (Belgium)], E-mail: laurent.jaeken@Kdg.be

2009-10-15

Schroedinger argued that coherent behaviour is one of the most remarkable properties of life. Despite this, it is one of the most neglected properties, studied only by a few groups of rather independent scientists in the domains of physiology but also of fundamental physics. In contrast, classical cell physiology, built on membrane theory, does not take coherent behaviour into account. Recently several independent approaches to the problem of coherence have been unified yielding a new paradigm for cell physiology, which can be derived from a non-linear Schroedinger equation. The new paradigm replaces outdated membrane theory. Similarly (neo)Darwinism is not firmly grounded on fundamental physics. However, during the eighties (neo)Darwinism was taken up in a broader theory of evolution, based on the non-linear equations of fundamental physics. It is argued here that life's coherent behaviour and the new physiology built on these coherent properties is directly compatible with the modern view on evolution, since both are based on the same principles of non-linearity.

Going the whole orang: Darwin, Wallace and the natural history of orangutans.

Science.gov (United States)

van Wyhe, John; Kjærgaard, Peter C

2015-06-01

This article surveys the European discovery and early ideas about orangutans followed by the contrasting experiences with these animals of the co-founders of evolution by natural selection, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. The first non-human great ape that both of them interacted with was the orangutan. They were both profoundly influenced by what they saw, but the contexts of their observations could hardly be more different. Darwin met orangutans in the Zoological Gardens in London while Wallace saw them in the wild in Borneo. In different ways these observations helped shape their views of human evolution and humanity's place in nature. Their findings played a major role in shaping some of the key questions that were pursued in human evolutionary studies during the rest of the nineteenth century. Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Charles Darwin: His Life, Journeys and Discoveries. A Teacher's Guide.

Science.gov (United States)

Overy, Caroline

This handbook aims to: (1) introduce teachers and pupils to Charles Darwin, his life and work at Down House, his voyage on the Beagle, and his evolutionary theory; (2) set his ideas within the wider context of the 19th century; (3) link the subject areas to the British National Curriculum, particularly in history, science, and English at various…

Development of IR single mode optical fibers for DARWIN-nulling interferometry

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Chakkalakkal Abdulla, S.M.; Cheng, L.K.; Bosch, B. van den; Dijkhuizen, N.; Nieuwland, R.A.; Gielesen, W.L.M.; Lucas, J.; Boussard-Plédel, C.; Conseil, C.; Bureau, B.; Carmo, J.P. do

2014-01-01

The DARWIN mission aims to detect weak infra-red emission lines from distant orbiting earth-like planets using nulling interferometry. This requires filtering of wavefront errors using single mode waveguides operating at a wavelength range of 6.5-20 μm. This article describes the optical design of

Raising Darwin's consciousness : Female sexuality and the prehominid origins of patriarchy.

Science.gov (United States)

Hrdy, S B

1997-03-01

Sociobiologists and feminists agree that men in patriarchal social systems seek to control females, but sociobiologists go further, using Darwin's theory of sexual selection and Trivers's ideas on parental investment to explain why males should attempt to control female sexuality. From this perspective, the stage for the development under some conditions of patriarchal social systems was set over the course of primate evolution.Sexual selection encompasses both competition between males and female choice. But in applying this theory to our "lower origins" (prehominid ancestors), Darwin assumed that choices were made by essentially "coy" females. I argue here that female solicitation of multiple males (either simultaneously or sequentially, depending on the breeding system) characterized prehominid females; this prehominid legacy of cyclical sexual assertiveness, itself possibly a female counter-strategy to male efforts to control the timing of female reproduction, generated further male counter-strategies. This dialectic had important implications for emerging hominid mating systems, human evolution, and the development of patriarchal arrangements in some human societies. For hominid males who will invest in offspring, there would be powerful selection for emotions, behaviors, and customs that ensure them certainty of paternity. The sexual modesty that so struck Darwin can be explained as a recent evolved or learned (perhaps both) adaptation in women to avoid penalties imposed by patrilines on daughters and mates who failed to conform to the patriline's prevailing norms for their sex. Other supposedly innate universals, such as female preferences for wealthy husbands, are also likely to be facultative accommodations by women to constraints set up when patrilines monopolized resources needed by females to survive and reproduce, and passed on intergenerational control of these resources preferentially to sons.

DARWIN Y LOS DILEMAS SOCIALES

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Alejandro Rosas

2009-10-01

  I describe the project of a Darwinian explanation of morality following Darwin’s basic ideas as expressed in The Descent of Man. In contrast to the traditional interpretation, I argue that Darwin did not assume, nor is it necessary to assume in a Darwinian perspective, an inevitable conflict between individual and group selection in the explanation of morality. Both operate in synergy to favor traits that support moral behavior. I also argue that two teachings result from this Darwinian project, one for moral philosophy and the other for the theory of natural selection. The first puts social dilemmas in the heart of human morality; the second puts cooperation in the core of natural selection. I illustrate the second point with recent research into the evolution of multi-cellular organisms.

Electron billiards: einselection and quantum Darwinism

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Brunner, R.; Meisels, R.; Kuchar, F.; Akis, R.; Ferry, D.K.

2008-01-01

Full text: The measurement of open quantum systems has been a main topic since the advent of quantum theory. It is a basic ingredient in quantum information processing. Here, the border where the two worlds of classical and quantum mechanics meet is of significant importance due to the problem of measurement. It has been shown by Zurek that in an open system the environment imposes so-called superselection rules leading to environment-induced superselection (einselection). This means that a set of preferred states (pointer states) survive the coupling with the environment. These pointer states are characterized by their robustness and their ability to create offspring. This ability to advertise information about themselves makes it possible for different observers to measure the same information. The natural promotion of certain information in a quantum system is known as quantum Darwinism. The 'fitness' in the Darwinian sense of the selected states is essentially a measure of their classicality. That is in order to measure a quantum system objectively a system has to be designed where the transition between the classical and quantum world is observable. In this respect we show by a combination of experiment and calculation that an array of electron billiards (open quantum dots) is very well suited. We demonstrate that einselection takes place in electron billiards and a set of pointer states arises. We illustrate that beside the 'regular' (single dot) pointer states a new type of einselected states arise when two or more quantum dots are coupled together and to the environment. This new type of states can not be represented by a linear combination of pointer states of the individual dots. Finally, we discuss the propensity of the new type of einselected states to make offspring in order to see if quantum Darwinism is in action in the array of electron billiards.(author)

[Darwinism as a constraint of ecological pluralism].

Science.gov (United States)

Giliarov, A M

2003-01-01

In his respond to critical remarks of Mirkin (2003), the author claims that pluralism in ecology is not only its strength but also a weakness. Contemporary ecology became less pluralistic and this can be considered as good sign of maturing science. Ecological pluralism can be exemplified by the coexistence in 1920-30s of two different approaches to plant community: that of Frederic Clements in USA and that of Josias Braun-Blanquet in France. However the way to progress in this branch of ecology was paved rather by heretical ideas of Henry Gleason in USA and Ramensky in Russia (both authors independently developed non-holistic view of community as an assemblage of individualistically distributed species) than by "peaceful" coexistence of well-established schools, representatives of which tried not to interfere into argumentation of each other. Notable success in ecology of last decades was connected with several new methodologies, e.g. macroecology that concerned large scale of space and time. However Darwinism in its attempt to explain the order of nature referring to its origin remains the most universal and fruitful methodology of ecology. The success of Darwinism in ecology is understandable because this generalizing theory is based on the same universal principles that underlie the survival of any population. Ecologists and evolutionary biologists trying to understand various natural patterns actually deal with the same fundamental laws, i.e. exponential population growth, limitation of this growth by resource shortage and/or press of predators, the existence of individual variability in survival, etc.

Charles Darwin's reputation: how it changed during the twentieth-century and how it may change again.

Science.gov (United States)

Amundson, Ron

2014-01-01

Charles Darwin died in 1882. During the twentieth century his reputation varied through time, as the scientific foundation of evolutionary theory changed. Beginning the century as an intellectual hero, he soon became a virtual footnote as experimental approaches to evolution began to develop. As the Modern Synthesis developed his reputation began to rise again until eventually he was identified as a founding father of the Modern Synthesis itself. In the meantime, developmental approaches to evolution began to challenge certain aspects of the Modern Synthesis. Synthesis authors attempted to refute the relevance of development by methodological arguments, some of them indirectly credited to Darwin. By the end of the century, molecular genetics had given new life to development approaches to evolution, now called evo devo. This must be seen as a refutation of the aforesaid methodological arguments of the Modern Synthesis advocates. By the way, we can also see now how the historiography that credited Darwin with the Synthesis was in error. In conclusion, one more historical revision is suggested. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

"A dedicated missionary". Charles Galton Darwin and the new quantum mechanics in Britain

Science.gov (United States)

Navarro, Jaume

In this paper I discuss the work on quantum physics and wave mechanics by Charles Galton Darwin, a Cambridge wrangler of the last generation, as a case study to better understand the early reception of quantum physics in Britain. I argue that his proposal in the early 1920s to abandon the strict conservation of energy, as well as his enthusiastic embracement of wave mechanics at the end of the decade, can be easily understood by tracing his ontological and epistemological commitments to his early training in the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos. I also suggest that Darwin's work cannot be neglected in a study of quantum physics in Britain, since he was one of very few fellows of the Royal Society able to judge and explain quantum physics and quantum mechanics.

As teorias de Lamarck e Darwin nos livros didáticos de Biologia no Brasil

OpenAIRE

Almeida,Argus Vasconcelos de; Falcão,Jorge Tarcísio da Rocha

2010-01-01

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 ...

CHARLES R. DARWIN Y EL DESARROLLO DE LA CREATIVIDAD

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ximena Miranda Garnier

2010-01-01

Full Text Available Los 200 años del nacimiento de Charles R. Darwin y los 150 años de la publicación de su libro "El origen de las especies" recuerdan la importancia de la creatividad y de comprender cómo se desarrolla. En este ensayo, analizo la autobiografía de Charles Darwin y concluyo que la creatividad en su vida surgió por interacción entre cualidades personales y una serie de circunstancias. En el análisis, sobresalen elementos que incluyen curiosidad, crecer cerca de la naturaleza, gusto por la lectura y el aprendizaje autónomo, la presencia de buenos mentores, disciplina, experiencia en los métodos de trabajo científico, disposición para establecer una red de científicos, y pasión por lo que se hace. Estos fueron elementos clave para su impacto en biología, geología, psicología, filosofía e incluso en nuestra percepción general del mundo. Se hacen reflexiones para educadores con la intención de promover el desarrollo de la creatividad en nuestros niños, niñas y jóvenes.

Test results of the infrared single-mode fiber for the DARWIN mission

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Cheng, L.K.; Faber, A.J.; Gielesen, W.L.M.; Boussard-Plédel, C.; Houizot, P.; Lucas, J.; Do Carmo, J.P.

2005-01-01

Nulling interferometry is the baseline technique for the DARWIN planet finding mission of the European Space Agency. Using this technique it will be possible to cancel, by destructive interference, the light from the bright star and look directly at its surrounding planets and eventually discover

Charles Darwin and the 1835 earthquake at Concepcion, Chile

Science.gov (United States)

Spall, H.

1981-01-01

On a stormy night in October 1836, H.M.S Beagle hove to and dropped anchor at Falmouth, a remote harbor in southwest England. Charles Darwin, the ship's naturalist, came ashore to take the mail coach to Shrewsbury. This was inauspicious end to an epic 5-year voyage around the coast of South America, the results of which were to have a tumultuous impact on scientific thought that has lasted to this day. 

Applicability of market-based instruments for safeguarding water quality in coastal waterways: Case study for Darwin Harbour, Australia

Science.gov (United States)

Greiner, Romy

2014-02-01

Water pollution of coastal waterways is a complex problem due to the cocktail of pollutants and multiplicity of polluters involved and pollution characteristics. Pollution control therefore requires a combination of policy instruments. This paper examines the applicability of market-based instruments to achieve effective and efficient water quality management in Darwin Harbour, Northern Territory, Australia. Potential applicability of instruments is examined in the context of biophysical and economic pollution characteristics, and experience with instruments elsewhere. The paper concludes that there is potential for inclusion of market-based instruments as part of an instrument mix to safeguard water quality in Darwin Harbour. It recommends, in particular, expanding the existing licencing system to include quantitative pollution limits for all significant point polluters; comprehensive and independent pollution monitoring across Darwin Harbour; public disclosure of water quality and emissions data; positive incentives for landholders in the Darwin Harbour catchment to improve land management practices; a stormwater offset program for greenfield urban developments; adoption of performance bonds for developments and operations which pose a substantial risk to water quality, including port expansion and dredging; and detailed consideration of a bubble licensing scheme for nutrient pollution. The paper offers an analytical framework for policy makers and resource managers tasked with water quality management in coastal waterways elsewhere in Australia and globally, and helps to scan for MBIs suitable in any given environmental management situation.

Temperature and Humidity Effects on Hospital Morbidity in Darwin, Australia.

Science.gov (United States)

Goldie, James; Sherwood, Steven C; Green, Donna; Alexander, Lisa

2015-01-01

Many studies have explored the relationship between temperature and health in the context of a changing climate, but few have considered the effects of humidity, particularly in tropical locations, on human health and well-being. To investigate this potential relationship, this study assessed the main and interacting effects of daily temperature and humidity on hospital admission rates for selected heat-relevant diagnoses in Darwin, Australia. Univariate and bivariate Poisson generalized linear models were used to find statistically significant predictors and the admission rates within bins of predictors were compared to explore nonlinear effects. The analysis indicated that nighttime humidity was the most statistically significant predictor (P < 0.001), followed by daytime temperature and average daily humidity (P < 0.05). There was no evidence of a significant interaction between them or other predictors. The nighttime humidity effect appeared to be strongly nonlinear: Hot days appeared to have higher admission rates when they were preceded by high nighttime humidity. From this analysis, we suggest that heat-health policies in tropical regions similar to Darwin need to accommodate the effects of temperature and humidity at different times of day. Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Streamline Patterns and their Bifurcations near a wall with Navier slip Boundary Conditions

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Tophøj, Laust; Møller, Søren; Brøns, Morten

2006-01-01

We consider the two-dimensional topology of streamlines near a surface where the Navier slip boundary condition applies. Using transformations to bring the streamfunction in a simple normal form, we obtain bifurcation diagrams of streamline patterns under variation of one or two external parameters....... Topologically, these are identical with the ones previously found for no-slip surfaces. We use the theory to analyze the Stokes flow inside a circle, and show how it can be used to predict new bifurcation phenomena. ©2006 American Institute of Physics...

Darwin en Colombia

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Alberto Gómez Gutiérrez

2009-01-01

Full Text Available