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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

The City In Mind: Environmental Literacy And Adaptation In Nineteenth-Century British Literature, Adam Edward Watkins Oct 2013

The City In Mind: Environmental Literacy And Adaptation In Nineteenth-Century British Literature, Adam Edward Watkins

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation argues that a new paradigm of selfhood emerged in nineteenth-century British literature, one that recognized the individual will and environmental influence not as antithetical but as dialectical forces in the formation of the self. The concept of an externally negotiated subject challenges both the inward and socially determined conceptions of self that have dominated the relevant criticism. Informed by empiricist, associationist, and evolutionary theories of the mind, the portrayals of subject-formation in this study highlight the radical changes occurring in the human environment in nineteenth-century, which catalyzed the conception of a malleable yet self-forming subject. Along with the …


Science Fiction And The Myth Of Trajectory Evolution, Jocelyn D. Pickreign Jun 2013

Science Fiction And The Myth Of Trajectory Evolution, Jocelyn D. Pickreign

The Macalester Review

Stephen Jay Gould first proposed the idea of “iconographies of progress.” Today, one of the most prominent forms of progress iconography is the science fiction story. Science fiction as a genre frequently portrays evolution as a linear trajectory of increasing complexity, and in doing so, furthers a worldview that is not unlike the pre-Darwin understanding of human beings as both the center and the pinnacle of the natural world.


Fitness: Philosophical Problems, Grant Ramsey, Charles H. Pence Jun 2013

Fitness: Philosophical Problems, Grant Ramsey, Charles H. Pence

Faculty Publications

Fitness plays many roles throughout evolutionary theory, from a measure of populations in the wild to a central element in abstract theoretical presentations of natural selection. It has thus been the subject of an extensive philosophical literature, which has primarily centred on the way to understand the relationship between fitness values and reproductive outcomes. If fitness is a probabilistic or statistical quantity, how is it to be defined in general theoretical contexts? How can it be measured? Can a single conceptual model for fitness be offered that applies to all biological cases, or must fitness measures be case-specific? Philosophers have …


(Review) Deep History: The Architecture Of Past And Present, Frederick S. Paxton Feb 2013

(Review) Deep History: The Architecture Of Past And Present, Frederick S. Paxton

History Faculty Publications

The article reviews the book "Deep History: The Architecture of Past and Present," edited by Andrew Shryock and Daniel Lord Smail.


You’Ll Find No Answers Here, Joseph M. Morelli Jan 2013

You’Ll Find No Answers Here, Joseph M. Morelli

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

One Studio Art graduate student's slog through the disciplines of art and science; noting the similarities, overlaps, and differences, and becoming utterly flummoxed in the process. It's about coming to terms with not knowing a whole lot about anything, really, but pressing on regardless.