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Review Essay Of Two Books On The History Of Science, Charles Kay Smith
Review Essay Of Two Books On The History Of Science, Charles Kay Smith
Charles Kay Smith
Contrary to what I was taught in high school in the mid-1940s, science is no longer defined as an inductive methodology for immaculately conceiving culture-free truth after sifting through a huge data base of objective facts. For without some prior hypothesis to guide her, a scientist would not be able to decide which facts were relevant. Nowadays hypotheses can come from anywhere in the imagination or culture within which the scientist is working. The importance of a scientific hypothesis is that it be framed in such a way that it can be falsified when tested. Science now has a history …
A Model For Understanding The Evolution Of Mammalian Behavior, Raymond P. Coppinger, Charles Kay Smith
A Model For Understanding The Evolution Of Mammalian Behavior, Raymond P. Coppinger, Charles Kay Smith
Charles Kay Smith
Unlike reptiles, who are born with species-specific morphology and behavior that hardly changes as they grow into adults, mammals are born with a class-specific neonatal phase that renders the morphology and behavior of each species different from the physiology and behavior of their species-specific adulthood. Mammals must undergo a transformation phase, called youth, between the neonate and the adult. This youthful metamorphic and meta-behavioral phase is necessary while the mammal is remodeling from sucking milk to munching grass or hunting meat. During its youthful phase a mammal is not simply growing linearly into its adult form and behavior but is …
Degree Of Behavioral Neoteny Differentiates Canid Polymorphs, R Coppinger, J. Glendinning, E. Torop, C. Matthay, M. Sutherland, C. Smith
Degree Of Behavioral Neoteny Differentiates Canid Polymorphs, R Coppinger, J. Glendinning, E. Torop, C. Matthay, M. Sutherland, C. Smith
Charles Kay Smith
As with juvenile wolves or coyotes, adult livestock conducting dogs displayed the first-half segment of a functional predatory system of motor patterns and did not express play or social bonding toward sheep; whereas, like wolf or coyote pups, adult livestock protecting dogs displayed sequences of mixed social, submissive, play and investigatory motor patterns and rarely expressed during ontogeny (even when fully adult) predatory behaviors. The most parsimonious explanation of our findings is that behavioral differences in the two types of livestock dogs are a case of selected differential retardation (neoteny) of ancestral motor pattern development.
Observations On Why Mongrels May Make Effective Livestock Protecting Dogs, R. P. Coppinger, C. K. Smith, L. Miller
Observations On Why Mongrels May Make Effective Livestock Protecting Dogs, R. P. Coppinger, C. K. Smith, L. Miller
Charles Kay Smith
In Canid ontogeny from puppies to adults there is a very young phase before any species-specific predatory behavior has been expressed. This phase has been ontogenetically selected as a breed of neotenic adults which are ideal for protecting sheep. At a more advanced phase of canid ontogeny older puppies have begun to express separate pieces of species-specific predatory behavior, such as eye, stalk and chase but not the complete adult sequence so that crush bite kill and consume is as yet unexpressed. This intermediate phase was also ontogenetically selected as a breed such as border collies used in Britain to …
Logical And Persuasive Structures In Charles Darwin's Prose Style, Charles Kay Smith
Logical And Persuasive Structures In Charles Darwin's Prose Style, Charles Kay Smith
Charles Kay Smith
This paper analyzes Charles Darwin's characteristic writing behavior. Darwin was a more interesting and dedicated writer than he is commonly credited for being. This essay will reassess the importance of his writing. The surface characteristics of Darwin's prose (conventionally referred to as his "style") seem at first glance so plain and ordinary that Darwin's writing rarely interests students of style. Exceptions such as Theodore Baird in an essay entitled "Darwin and the Tangled Bank"1 and Stanley Edgar Hyman in a longer study of Darwin's writing, The Tangled Bank,2 both make a point of the current general disregard of Darwin as …