Evolution Commons^™

Why Animal Welfarism Continues To Fail, Lori Marino

Animal Sentience

Welfarism prioritizes human interests over the needs of nonhuman animals. Despite decades of welfare efforts other animals are mostly worse off than ever before, being subjected to increasingly invasive and harmful treatments, especially in the factory farming and biomedical research areas. A legal rights-based approach is essential in order for other animals to be protected from the varying ethical whims of our species.

End-State Welfarism, Joel Marks

Animal Sentience

Yew-Kwang Ng’s research is the work of an obviously sincere, intelligent, and conscientious animal advocate. But I am unable to accept his starting assumption that animal welfare is an appropriate basis for animal ethics. More specifically I argue that animal welfare as a means to animal liberation is an issue that can be debated, but animal welfare as the ultimate end or goal of animal advocacy is misguided.

Animal Mourning: Précis Of How Animals Grieve (King 2013), Barbara J. King

Animal Sentience

Abstract: When an animal dies, that individual’s mate, relatives, or friends may express grief. Changes in the survivor’s patterns of social behavior, eating, sleeping, and/or of expression of affect are the key criteria for defining grief. Based on this understanding of grief, it is not only big-brained mammals like elephants, apes, and cetaceans who can be said to mourn, but also a wide variety of other animals, including domestic companions like cats, dogs, and rabbits; horses and farm animals; and some birds. With keen attention placed on seeking where grief is found to occur and where it is absent …

Death In The Family, Maria Botero

Animal Sentience

Barbara King presents grief as the result of the capacity of human and non-human animals for social and affectionate bonds. This is a novel approach that provides a context for interpreting behavioral evidence of grief. The book also offers thought-provoking insights into the relationship between emotion and the expression of emotion. The most surprising element of King’s approach is that, throughout the book, her account of non-human animal grief forces us to reassess the way we treat them.

The Object Of Grief, Clark Glymour

Animal Sentience

King’s new book is a wonderful collection of diverse anecdotes illustrating the variety of animal practices that are convincing illustrations of grief. Those who want scientific arguments for that conclusion should, however, read elsewhere.

Understanding Emotional Suffering, Barbara J. King

Animal Sentience

In responding to insightful commentaries from 7 scholars, for which I am grateful, I offer new thoughts on whether animals can conceptualize and express signs of grief. I also discuss why I included both weak and strong examples of animal mourning, and how this work may help us think about enhanced welfare for animals, including freedom from emotional suffering.

Butterfly Biology, Joshua Feingold

Quadrivium: A Journal of Multidisciplinary Scholarship

A photographic exploration of butterflies from larvae to adults in Davie, Florida.

Similarities And Differences Between Heterosexual And Homosexual Couples Based On Marq Data, Kraig S. Shattuck

Wayne State University Theses

There has been a lack of comparative research on homosexual couples, comparing them to heterosexual couples, which is also grounded in solid theory. In order to remedy this, evolutionary theory is used to make predictions on similarities and differences between heterosexual and homosexual couples within three domains, relationship satisfaction, jealousy, and mate guarding. It was predicted that 1) homosexual couples would not differ from heterosexual couples in relationship satisfaction; 2) some gender differences relating to jealousy would be the same and some would be reversed in homosexual individuals; 3) mate guarding would be present, but lower, in homosexual individuals as …

Speed And Resolution In The Age Of Technological Reproducibility, Shawn Taylor

Theses and Dissertations

The rate of acceleration of the biologic and synthetic world has for a while now, been in the process of exponentially speeding up, maxing out servers and landfills, merging with each other, destroying each other. The last prehistoric relics on Earth are absorbing the same oxygen, carbon dioxide and electronic waves in our biosphere as us. A degraded .jpeg enlarged to full screen on a Samsung 4K UHD HU8550 Series Smart TV - 85” Class (84.5” diag.). Within this composite ecology, the ancient limestone of the grand canyon competes with the iMax movie of itself, the production of Mac pros, …

Conservative Evolution, Sustainability, And Culture, Gábor Náray-Szabó

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Conservative Evolution, Sustainability, and Culture" Gábor Náray-Szabó argues that evolution is conservative in the sense that throughout the history of the universe old constructs like elementary particles, amino acids, and living cells remained conserved while the world evolved/evolves in complexity. A similar process can be observed in cultural evolution as components of society and culture continue to evolve. Considering the increasing pressure on natural resources by material consumption, a close alliance between past, present, and future generations is unavoidable and thus Náray-Szabó posits that concepts of conservative evolution and sustainability are related. However, in order to avoid …

Evolution, Snakes, And God: A Brief Argument For Agreement, Jessica Stanze

A with Honors Projects

Comparing the evolution and religious connotations of the snake, this short essay suggests that evolutionists and creationists might reach common ground if they attempted to collaborate.

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 …

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

History Faculty Publications

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

Nietzsche And Darwin, Babette Babich

Working Papers

Abstract

I argue against the popular view of Nietzsche as Darwinist and I concur with other Nietzsche scholars who have also noted that other authors worked in Nietzsche’s thinking in association with Darwin, not only Spencer and Malthus but also Roux and Haeckel among others which also for Nietzsche included Empedocles and other ancient scientists. Nietzsche offers plain condemnation of Darwin’s views but he is also often associated with Darwin owing to Darwin’s racism and his own vision of rank-order. I conclude with an emphasis on style and Nietzsche’s reading of antiquity to highlight the distinction he sought to make …

Staffan Müller-Wille And Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, A Cultural History Of Heredity, Charles H. Pence

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Fall Of "Augustinian Adam": Original Fragility And Supralapsarian Purpose, John Schneider

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

This essay is framed by conflict between Christianity and Darwinian science over the history of the world and the nature of original human personhood. Evolutionary science narrates a long prehuman geological and biological history filled with vast amounts, kinds, and distributions of apparently random brutal and pointless suffering. It has also unveiled an original human person with animal psychosomatic heredity. This narrative seems to discredit Christianity's (Augustinian) metanarrative of the Fall-Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. The author contends that the Augustinian story and its character of Adam are implausible, anyway, for reasons of theology and apologetics. He proposes that Christians …

Scopes, John Thomas, 1900-1970 (Mss 419), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scans (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Collection 419. Letters and clippings removed from a scrapbook belonging to John T. Scopes or his wife and relating primarily to the 1925 Scopes trial, his subsequent notoriety, and later publicity and commemorations surrounding the controversy.

From A Rodent To A Rhetorician: An Ideological Analysis Of George Alexander Kennedy's Comparative Rhetoric, James Begley

Masters Theses

George Alexander Kennedy, a professor of classics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has given birth to a new understanding of rhetorical studies: he argues for the evolution of rhetoric from animals to humans. Using Sonja Foss's methodology of "ideological criticism," this thesis examined Kennedy's case as presented in his book, Comparative Rhetoric: an Historical and Cross-Cultural Introduction. This study discovered that the book was heavily influenced by a secular, pro-evolutionary ideology which dually contributed to its selective use of scientific evidences and production of inconsistent arguments. Evaluated on the basis of Biblical principles, this thesis concluded …

I Also Survived A Debate With A Creationist (With Reflections On The Perils Of Democratic Information), Kelly C. Smith

Publications

A personal narrative is presented which explores the author's experience of debating with a creationist.

Toward The History Of Study Of Symbiogenesis: On The English Translation Of B. M. Kozo-Polyansky’S A New Principle Of Biology (1924), Victor Fet

Biological Sciences Faculty Research

We reproduce the text by Victor Fet, which was read on 6 October 2011 at the Moscow Society of Naturalists during the presentation of new book translation (B.M. Kozo- Polyansky. Symbiogenesis: A New Principle of Evolution / transl. by Victor Fet; ed. by Victor Fet & Lynn Margulis. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010. 138 p.) This half- forgotten book by Boris M. Kozo-Polyansky was known only by name to Western biologists. Victor Fet gives a brief history of this new translation, enthusiastically initiated and supported by Lynn Margulis (1938–2011), a famous naturalist who was always eager to gave credit …

Comparative Developmental Transcriptomics Of Echinoderms, Roy Vaughn

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The gastrula stage represents the point in development at which the three primary germ layers diverge. At this point the gene regulatory networks that specify the germ layers are established and the genes that define the differentiated states of the tissues have begun to be activated. These networks have been well characterized in sea urchins, but not in other echinoderms. Embryos of the brittle star Ophiocoma wendtii share a number of developmental features with sea urchin embryos, including the ingression of mesenchyme cells that give rise to an embryonic skeleton. Notable differences are that no micromeres are formed during cleavage …

On The Origin Of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, And Fiction, Hope Hollocher, Agustín Fuentes, Charles H. Pence, Grant Ramsey, Daniel John Sportiello, Michelle M. Wirth

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Egyptian Body Size: A Regional And Worldwide Comparison, Michelle H. Raxter

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Human body size and limb proportions can provide important information about adaptation, population movements, and health disparities. This study investigated changes in body size and limb proportions of adult Egyptians temporally and geographically in relation to climatological, sociopolitical and economic developments. It was predicted that Egyptian groups that experienced more environmental stress would be shorter and exhibit less sexual dimorphism. It was also predicted that Egyptians would be intermediate between higher and lower latitude populations in body form and limb length ratios. The main skeletal sample consisted of 492 males and 528 females, all adults from the Predynastic and Dynastic …

Darwinian Populations And Natural Selection, Grant Ramsey, Hope Hollocher, Agustín Fuentes, Charles H. Pence, Edwin Siu

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Causal Processes In The Neutral And Nearly Neutral Theories, Michael R. Dietrich, Roberta L. Millstein

Dartmouth Scholarship

The neutral and nearly neutral theories of molecular evolution are sometimes characterized as theories about drift alone, where drift is described solely as an outcome, rather than a process. We argue, however, that both selection and drift, as causal processes, are integral parts of both theories. However, the nearly neutral theory explicitly recognizes alleles and/or molecular substitutions that, while engaging in weakly selected causal processes, exhibit outcomes thought to be characteristic of random drift. A narrow focus on outcomes obscures the significant role of weakly selected causal processes in the nearly neutral theory.

Wallace, Spiritualism, And Beyond: "Change," Or "No Change"?, Charles H. Smith

DLPS Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Darwin And The Gospel Commission: How Does Our View Of Origins Impact The Evangelistic Mission Of The Church?, Stephen Bauer

Journal of the Adventist Theological Society

No abstract provided.

The Emergence Of Sex, Ursula Goodenough

Biology Faculty Research

Biological traits, the foci of natural selection, are by definition emergent from the genes, proteins, and other “nothing-buts” that constitute them. Moreover, and with the exception of recently emergent “spandrels,” each can be accorded a teleological dimension—each is “for” some purpose conducive to an organism's continuation. Sex, which is “for” the generation of recombinant genomes, may be one of the most ancient and ubiquitous traits in biology. In the course of its evolution, many additional traits, such as gender and nurture, have emerged. Patterns of sexual exchange are the basis for patterns of biological evolution and are central to the …

Review Of Jewish Tradition And The Challenge Of Darwinism, Geoffery Cantor And Marc Swetlitz, Eds., Daniel M. Stoebel

All HMC Faculty Publications and Research

This is a book review.