Theory Of Organic Evolution Research Articles

The aim of extended synthesis is to include semiosis.

The theory of organic evolution is incomplete until it can explain life's meaningmaking capacity and its role in the evolutionary processes, i.e. until semiosis is included. The extended synthesis theory of evolution has made a decisive step towards such an integrative theory, yet the explicit inclusion of semiotics of life is still to come. Here, we describe the steps made towards the semiotics-based theory of evolution, as the next stage after evo-devo and eco-evo-devo approaches. This includes demonstration of independent roles that natural selection, plastic adjustment, and interpretative choice have in adaptive evolution, and the distinction between adaptive and neutral modifications in genetic, plastic and interpretative mechanisms. Real meaning-making takes place only due to organism's interpretative processes. It should be complemented with a description of the ways by which knowledge (defined as products of semiotic learning), or rather the constraints of semiosis, can be inherited. This will complete the inclusion of semiosis into the extended mechanism of evolution.

Еволюційні погляди С.А. Подолинського та І.Я. Франка

The article is devoted to the evolutionary views analysis of S. A. Podolynskyi and I.Ya. Franco. These scientists were among the first to respond on Charles Darwin’s theory of organic evolution in Ukraine. It has been shown that their scientific ideas were much ahead of their time and in the crucible of the struggle for evolutionary theory they weren’t always understandable to contemporaries. Especially it is necessary to note ecological and economic concept of S. A. Podolynskyi, who highlighted for descendants the issue of the labor role in solar energy distribution. His work “Citizenship and the theory of Darwin” (1880) is being analyzed in details. I. Ya. Franco was a vivid propagandist of the Darwinism in Western Ukraine. His article “Dumas on Evolution in the History of Humanity” (1882) and “The Creation of the World” (1912) are being considered in details.

“According to His Own Judgment”: The American Catholic Encounter with Organic Evolution, 1875–1896

AbstractBetween 1875 and 1896, the response of American Catholic thinkers to theories of organic evolution was characterized by little rancor and discord. Among the small number of clergy and lay intellectuals who addressed the subject, there existed a wide variety of positions on the scientific plausibility of such theories. These prominent Catholics were not deeply wedded to their views, however, and few saw any significant conflict between their religious commitments and biological evolution. This state of affairs stemmed from several elements of Catholic thought, particularly as it existed in the late-nineteenth-century United States: the conviction that church authority could mediate any apparent tension between science and Scripture; the affirmation that theories of organic evolution would not undermine existing theological tenets about the relationship between religion and science, as well as that between First Cause and secondary causes in nature; the belief that Catholic intellectuals since the time of Augustine had endorsed a system of natural development that closely resembled modern conceptions of evolution; and, most important, the insistence that the theory could be reconciled with the resurgent neo-Scholasticism that had come to dominate Catholic thought. Organic evolution proved far less significant in discussions of the relationship between religion and science among American Catholics than it did among Protestants, and it did little to contribute to the split of Catholics into liberal and conservative groups.

Gemmules and Elements: On Darwin’s and Mendel’s Concepts and Methods in Heredity

Inheritance and variation were a major focus of Charles Darwin’s studies. Small inherited variations were at the core of his theory of organic evolution by means of natural selection. He put forward a developmental theory of heredity (pangenesis) based on the assumption of the existence of material hereditary particles. However, unlike his proposition of natural selection as a new mechanism for evolutionary change, Darwin’s highly speculative and contradictory hypotheses on heredity were unfruitful for further research. They attempted to explain many complex biological phenomena at the same time, disregarded the then modern developments in cell theory, and were, moreover, faithful to the widespread conceptions of blending and so-called Lamarckian inheritance. In contrast, Mendel’s approaches, despite the fact that features of his ideas were later not found to be tenable, proved successful as the basis for the development of modern genetics. Mendel took the study of the transmission of traits and its causes (genetics) out of natural history; by reducing complexity to simple particulate models, he transformed it into a scientific field of research. His scientific approach and concept of discrete elements (which later gave rise to the notion of discrete genes) also contributed crucially to the explanation of the existence of stable variations as the basis for natural selection.

Piaget e as teorias da evolução orgânica

Theories of organic evolution, mainly those proposed by Darwin, have strongly influenced human sciences in general, and psychology in particular. Piaget has brought from biology several theoretical proposals which gave support to his formulations concerning human ontogenetic development. The theoretical link between biological and psychological formulations was based on the proposition of correspondences and partial isomorphism between evolutionary biology and cognitive development. However, Piaget's ideas about phylogenetic evolution of live organisms have had little influence over current biology. Nevertheless, epigenetic contemporary theories of biological evolution make use of Piaget's propositions, in theoretical opposition to the neo-Darwinist views. Because of that, it is proposed in this paper the crucial contribution of Piaget in terms of the proposition of a common theoretical ground for psychogenesis and organic evolution.

Robert Broom's theory of evolution

Robert Broom (1866–1951) was one of South Africa's most distinguished scientists, a multi-faceted genius who contributed to many scientific disciplines, most notably to comparative anatomy, palaeontology and physical anthropology. This paper investigates the least known aspect of Broom's scientific output, his views on the mechanisms of evolutionary change. Broom believed that spiritual forces were behind evolution and that the creation of superhuman individuals and immortal souls was the ultimate end of evolution. This explanation was one of many similar attempts by scientists to incorporate into a theory of organic evolution some of the religious beliefs and values that seemed to be undermined by Darwinism. Speculative and unscientific from the perspective of contemporary science, Broom's theory of evolution gains different meaning if perceived within the intellectual context of the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century from which it originated.

Social isolation and sociocultural diversity

One of the major phenomena which has to be explained by any theory of organic evolution is biological diversity; and, similarly, sociocultural diversity must be explained by any satisfactory theory of sociocultural evolution. In both cases, isolation (between biological species or between human groups) is the key. Unlike biological isolation between species, social isolation is an active force because human groups can choose to increase or decrease the extent of their differentiation from other specific groups. This gives it an evolutionary potential that biological isolation does not have. Each evolutionary human group may be classified by its primary characteristic: territory, descent, occupation, interest, language or idea, and examples of each type are discussed. Each isolate develops secondary attributes which distinguish it from other equivalent isolates, and it is these attributes which constitute sociocultural diversity. The whole system is energized by competition for prestige between equivalent groups. Non-violent forms of this competition are discussed, as are the development of new social isolates and the role of diffusion. The positive side of social isolation is the production of diversity, but its negative side brings conflict and violence which are not considered here.

Coevolution: genes, culture, and human diversity

Charles Darwin's On the Origins of Species had two principal goals: to show that species had not been separately created and to show that natural selection had been the main force behind their proliferation and descent from common ancestors. In Coevolution, the author proposes a powerful new theory of cultural evolution--that is, of the descent with modification of the shared conceptual systems we call cultures--that is parallel in many ways to Darwin's theory of organic evolution. The author suggests that a process of cultural selection, or preservation by preference, driven chiefly by choice or imposition depending on the circumstances, has been the main but not exclusive force of cultural change. He shows that this process gives rise to five major patterns or in which cultural change is at odds with genetic change. Each of the five modes is discussed in some detail and its existence confirmed through one or more case studies chosen for their heuristic value, the robustness of their data, and their broader implications. But Coevolution predicts not simply the existence of the five modes of gene-culture relations; it also predicts their relative importance in the ongoing dynamics of cultural change in particular cases. The case studies themselves are lucid and innovative reexaminations of an array of oft-pondered anthropological topics--plural marriage, sickle-cell anemia, basic color terms, adult lactose absorption, incest taboos, headhunting, and cannibalism. In a general case, the author's goal is to demonstrate that an evolutionary analysis of both genes and culture has much to contribute to our understanding of human diversity, particularly behavioral diversity, and thus to the resolution of age-old questions about nature and nurture, genes and culture.

Biology and Social Theory: Parsons's Evolutionary Theme

The evolutionary theme of Parsons's sociology relates his theory of sociocultural evolution to the theory of organic evolution and to the general theory of action systems. To grasp both relationships, the immanence and Darwinian interpretations of Parsonsian evolutionism must be rejected. Parsons's assumptions about the nature of change and the nature of what is changing follow from the use of Emerson's model of group selection as his source analogy. Its holistic conception of the part-whole relationship explains the theoretical fit between Parsonsian evolutionism and the general theory of action systems, and Parsons's exclusion of action from his evolutionary theory. This limitation and Parsons's restricted focus on the course of evolution can both be corrected by introducing individual selection as a source analogy for sociological evolutionism.

The Neglected (II) Kropotkin

PETER ALEKSEYEVICH KROPOTKIN WAS BORN IN MOSCOW IN 1842, the youngest son of a noble Russian family whose origins could be traced back to the Middle Ages. He died in 1921 in a small village some forty miles to the north of that city, a radical critic of the Bolshevik regime and a symbol for all those who believed that the Bolsheviks had perverted the original aims of the Russian Revolution. In the course of his life he had spent a long period of exile in Western Europe, had been imprisoned both in Russia and in France and had achieved international celebrity in two separate fields. The first was geography, where in particular his research on the structure of the mountain ranges of Northern Asia radically changed the received views of the scientific community. The second was the European anarchist movement, in which Kropotkin played a prominent role both as a revolutionary activist and a theoretician. Indeed these two careers were not as mutually irrelevant as they might at first appear, since the most distinctive feature of Qopotkin's anarchism was the attempt he made to place anarchist ideas on a scientific foundation, borrowing especially from the then-fashionable theory of organic evolution. In the assessment that follows I shall look first at his exposition and defence of anarchist principles, then at his efforts to place those principles in a framework borrowed from the natural sciences and finally offer a critical verdict both on the principles themselves and on the attempt to use evolutionary theory to back them up.

Creationists Change Their Strategy

Fundamentalist creationists have succeeded in having a law passed in Louisiana requiring balanced treatment of “creation-science” and “evolution-science” in Louisiana public schools. A similar effort is under way to obtain passage of such laws in other states. Creationists seem to have changed their legislative strategy to sidestep the legal issue of Church and State. Without mentioning God, the Bible, or Divine Creation, they are prepared to introduce in schools “scientific” evidence of the “sudden” and “relatively recent” creation of the universe, solar system, and life on earth. Their most recent gambit is a suggestion that the theory of organic evolution is, in fact, a religious concept and, as such, should be banned from presentation in government-supported educational institutions.

Darwin and Social Theory

It has been argued repeatedly that the modern study of social and cultural evolution took its inspiration and form from Charles Darwin's Origin of Species and Descent of Man. In 1920, Robert H. Lowie (27; pp. 55–56) observed that it was after evolutionary principles had been accepted in biology that they were applied to social phenomena, and that Lewis Henry Morgan was among the first to make the application. Sir James George Frazer (16; p. 581), at about the same time, dated the birth of anthropology from the promulgation of the evolution theory of Darwin and Wallace in 1859 and maintained that “this conception of evolution … supplies a basis for the modern science of anthropology.” Harry Elmer Barnes (1; pp. 25–26) similarly traced the development of anthropology from the theory of organic evolution and advised the student that he “need not concern himself with the history of method in sociology before the entry of Darwinian concepts.”

How Animals Develop

EMBRYOLOGY until very recently was almost entirely a descriptive science?a branch of morphology. It dealt with change of form during the progress of development. As is well known, the study received a. great impetus from the theory of organic evolution, for it was in the light of that theory that many of the characteristics of the developmental processes began to become intelligible. Knowledge of embryology in pre-Darwinian days was fragmentary, but it grew enormously as a result of the compelling interest awakened in it by the application of the biogenetic law of development enunciated in slightly different forms by von Baer, Haeckel and others. Stated in its more extravagant and picturesque form, as Milnes Marshall stated it?that an animal in the progress of its development climbs up its own genealogical tree?the law of recapitulation’ is pretty generally rejected by biologists. But to say that an animal during its growth passes through stages which are similar to those which its ancestors passed through in individual development is a statement which no modern biologist would deny. In the light of this law, the theory of organic evolution has given an intelligibility to the facts of development just as it has to many other facts of morphology. But the recapitulation theory does nothing to elucidate the causes of development or of the differentiation which accompanies it. Similarly, until embryology began to be studied experimentally it tended to remain at the descriptive level, like the comparative accounts of the oestrous cycle before the discovery of the chemical substances which are now known to initiate and regulate it. How Animals Develop By C. H. Waddington. Pp. 128 + 7 plates. (London: George Alien and Unwin, Ltd., 1935.) Paper, 3s. 6d. net; cloth, 4s. 6d. net.

A Brief Survey of the Field of Organic Evolution

Readers of the popular scientific magazines and papers of today are often confronted with the statement of the downfall of evolution; and, though this statement is usually not made in a way that carries conviction, there is a growing feeling among the educated public that behind all this smoke there is some fire. It is the object of this article to make clear the real grounds for this suspicion, and at the same time to give a brief survey of the present state of the theory of organic evolution.

An Outline of the Theory of Organic Evolution, with a Description of some of the Phenomena which it explains . Second Edition, revised. By Maynard M. Metcalf. New York, The Macmillan Company. 1906. 8vo.

<i>An Outline of the Theory of Organic Evolution, with a Description of some of the Phenomena which it explains</i> . Second Edition, revised. By Maynard M. Metcalf. New York, The Macmillan Company. 1906. 8vo.

: An Outline of the Theory of Organic Evolution, with a Description of Some of the Phenomena Which it Explains . Maynard M. Metcalf.

: An Outline of the Theory of Organic Evolution, with a Description of Some of the Phenomena Which it Explains . Maynard M. Metcalf.

The psychological theory of organic evolution

The psychological theory of organic evolution

XIV.—The inconsistencies of utilitarianism as the exclusive Theory of Organic Evolution

(1890). XIV.—The inconsistencies of utilitarianism as the exclusive Theory of Organic Evolution. Annals and Magazine of Natural History: Vol. 6, No. 32, pp. 125-139.