Nature humaine et évolution bio-culturelle PDF Download

Author:
Publisher: Librairie Droz
ISBN: 9782600042260
Category : Behavior evolution
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Author: Timothy H. Goldsmith
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019535754X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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In this stimulating book, Goldsmith argues that biology has a great deal to say that should be of interest to social scientists, historians, philosophers, and humanists in general. He believes that anyone studying the social behavior of humans must take into consideration both proximate cause--the physiology, biochemistry, and social mechanisms of behavior--and ultimate cause--how the behavior came to exist in evolutionary time. Goldsmith, a neurobiologist, draws examples from neurobiology, psychology, and ethology (behavioral evolution). The result is a work that overcomes many of the misconceptions that have hindered the rich contributions the biological sciences have to offer concerning the evolution of human society, behavior, and sense of identity. Among the key topics addressed are the nature of biological explanation, the relationship between genes and behavior, those aspects of behavior most likely to respond to natural selection, the relationship between evolution and learning, and some probable modes of interaction between cultural and biological evolution. By re-examining the role of biological explanation in the domain of social development, the author has significantly advanced a more well-rounded view of human evolution and shed new light on the perennial question of what it means to be human. His book will appeal to biologists, social scientists, traditional humanists, and interested general readers.

Author: Jonathan H. Turner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100021365X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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In this book, Jonathan H. Turner combines sociology, evolutionary biology, cladistic analysis from biology, and comparative neuroanatomy to examine human nature as inherited from common ancestors shared by humans and present-day great apes. Selection pressures altered this inherited legacy for the ancestors of humans—termed hominins for being bipedal—and forced greater organization than extant great apes when the hominins moved into open-country terrestrial habitats. The effects of these selection pressures increased hominin ancestors’ emotional capacities through greater social and group orientation. This shift, in turn, enabled further selection for a larger brain, articulated speech, and culture along the human line. Turner elaborates human nature as a series of overlapping complexes that are the outcome of the inherited legacy of great apes being fed through the transforming effects of a larger brain, speech, and culture. These complexes, he shows, can be understood as the cognitive complex, the psychological complex, the emotions complex, the interaction complex, and the community complex.

Author: Carel P. Van Schaik
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470147636
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 546

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The Primate Origins of Human Nature (Volume 3 in The Foundations of Human Biology series) blends several elements from evolutionary biology as applied to primate behavioral ecology and primate psychology, classical physical anthropology and evolutionary psychology of humans. However, unlike similar books, it strives to define the human species relative to our living and extinct relatives, and thus highlights uniquely derived human features. The book features a truly multi-disciplinary, multi-theory, and comparative species approach to subjects not usually presented in textbooks focused on humans, such as the evolution of culture, life history, parenting, and social organization.

Author: Elizabeth D. Whitaker
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315451719
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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The Trouble with Human Nature brings together biological and cross-cultural evidence to critically examine common preconceptions and challenge popular assumptions about human nature. It sets out to counter genetic and evolutionary myths about human variation and behavior, drawing on both biological and cultural anthropology, as well as from other disciplines including psychology, economics, and sociology. The chapters address the interrelated topics of health and disease, gender and other differences, and violence and conflict. The analysis calls into question the presumed natural foundation for social inequalities and sheds light on both the constraints and possibilities inherent in the human condition. This book provides students of human diversity and evolution with an excellent resource to better approach questions relating to human nature. It will also be of interest to those taking courses in social, cultural, and biological anthropology, as well as public health, medical anthropology, sociology, gender studies, psychology, and kinship studies.

Author: Peter Weingart
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 1134799543
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 511

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Representing a wide range of disciplines -- biology, sociology, anthropology, economics, human ethology, psychology, primatology, history, and philosophy of science -- the contributors to this book recently spent a complete academic year at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) discussing a plethora of new insights in reference to human cultural evolution. These scholars acted as a living experiment of "interdisciplinarity in vivo." The assumption of this experiment was that the scholars -- while working and residing at the ZiF -- would be united intellectually as well as socially, a connection that might eventually enhance future interdisciplinary communication even after the research group had dispersed. An important consensus emerged: The issue of human culture poses a challenge to the division of the world into the realms of the "natural" and the "cultural" and hence, to the disciplinary division of scientific labor. The appropriate place for the study of human culture, in this group's view, is located between biology and the social sciences. Explicitly avoiding biological and sociological reductionisms, the group adopted a pluralistic perspective -- "integrative pluralism" -- that took into account both today's highly specialized and effective (sub-)disciplinary research and the possibility of integrating the respective findings on a case-by-case basis. Each sub-group discovered its own way of interdisciplinary collaboration and submitted a contribution to the present volume reflecting one of several types of fruitful cooperation, such as a fully integrated chapter, a multidisciplinary overview, or a discussion between different approaches. A promising first step on the long road to an interdisciplinarily informed understanding of human culture, this book will be of interest to social scientists and biologists alike.

Author: Paul R. Ehrlich
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0142000531
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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Why do we behave the way we do? Biologist Paul Ehrlich suggests that although people share a common genetic code, these genes "do not shout commands at us...at the very most, they whisper suggestions." He argues that human nature is not so much result of genetic coding; rather, it is heavily influenced by cultural conditioning and environmental factors. With personal anecdotes, a well-written narrative, and clear examples, Human Natures is a major work of synthesis and scholarship as well as a valuable primer on genetics and evolution that makes complex scientific concepts accessible to lay readers.

Author: Joan Ryan
Publisher: University of Ottawa Press
ISBN: 1772822248
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
This volume contains papers presented at the Fifth Annual Congress of the Canadian Ethnology Society (London, 1978) with a particular emphasis on matters relating to ethnicity.

Author: Gregory F. Tague
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004319484
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Evolution and Human Culture argues that values, beliefs, and practices are expressions of individual and shared moral sentiments. Much of our cultural production stems from what in early hominins was a caring tendency, both the care to share and a self-care to challenge others. Topics cover prehistory, mind, biology, morality, comparative primatology, art, and aesthetics. The book is valuable to students and scholars in the arts, including moral philosophers, who would benefit from reading about scientific developments that impact their fields. For biologists and social scientists the book provides a window into how scientific research contributes to understanding the arts and humanities. The take-home point is that culture does not transcend nature; rather, culture is an evolved moral behavior.

Author: Wendy Wheeler
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Arguing that humans are, in a fundamental sense, social beings, this book articulates that this can be grasped from understanding the complex social processes of evolution. It shows that through looking at the complex emergence of human society and culture, we can get a better understanding of how 'the whole creature' operates.