evolution

Examples of evolution in the following topics:

• Lenski's Sociological Evolution Approach

  • Lenski's sociological evolution approach views technological progress as the most basic factor in the evolution of societies and cultures.
  • Sociocultural evolution is an umbrella term for theories of cultural evolution and social evolution, describing how cultures and societies have changed over time.
  • Most nineteenth century and some twentieth century approaches aimed to provide models for the evolution of humankind as a whole, argue that different societies are at different stages of social development.
  • He views technological progress as the most basic factor in the evolution of societies and cultures.
  • It is the relationships among population, production, and environment that drive sociocultural evolution.

• Spencer and Social Darwinism

  • He believed that all natural laws could be reduced to one fundamental law, the law of evolution.
  • Spencer believed that this evolutionary mechanism was necessary to explain 'higher' evolution, especially the social development of humanity.
  • Moreover, in contrast to Darwin, Spencer held that evolution had a direction and an endpoint—the attainment of a final state of equilibrium.
  • Evolution meant progress, improvement, and eventually perfection of the social organism.
  • Herbert Spencer built on Darwin's framework of evolution, extrapolating it to the spheres of ethics and society.

• Sociobiology

  • In the course of human evolution, we had to run away from predators.
  • Sociobiology is a field of scientific study which is based on the assumption that social behavior has resulted from evolution.
  • Often considered a branch of biology and sociology, it also draws from ethology, anthropology, evolution, zoology, archaeology, population genetics, and other disciplines.

• The Symbolic Nature of Culture

  • Anthropologists have argued that, through the course of their evolution, human beings evolved a universal human capacity to classify experiences, and encode and communicate them symbolically, such as with written language .
  • Since these symbolic systems were learned and taught, they began to develop independently of biological evolution (in other words, one human being can learn a belief, value, or way of doing something from another, even if they are not biologically related).
  • That this capacity for symbolic thinking and social learning is a product of human evolution confounds older arguments about nature versus nurture.
  • Anthropologists view culture as not only a product of biological evolution, but as a supplement to it; culture can be seen as the main means of human adaptation to the natural world.

• Culture and Biology

  • Just like biological evolution, cultural evolution was thought to be an adaptive system that produced unique results depending on location and historical moment.
  • However, unlike biological evolution, culture can be intentionally taught and thus spread from one group of people to another.
  • Initially, anthropologists believed that culture was a product of biological evolution, and that cultural evolution depended exclusively on physical conditions.

• Judaism

  • Though Jewish views on evolution are varied, most schools of Jewish thought have reconciled Judaism with evolution.
  • A 2009 Harris Poll showed American Jews as the religious group most accepting of evolution, with 80% believing in evolution, compared to 51% for Catholics, 32% for Protestants, and 16% of Born-again Christians.

• Introduction

  • Attentive to the theory of evolution, anthropologists assumed that all human beings are equally evolved, and the fact that all humans have cultures must in some way be a result of human evolution.
  • They were also wary of using biological evolution to explain differences between specific cultures - an approach that either was a form of, or legitimized forms of, racism.
  • They argued that through the course of their evolution, human beings evolved a universal human capacity to classify experiences, and encode and communicate them symbolically.
  • That this capacity for symbolic thinking and social learning is a product of human evolution confounds older arguments about nature versus nurture.
  • Recent research suggests that human culture has reversed the causal direction suggested above and influenced human evolution.

• Competition

  • Many evolutionary biologists view inter-species and intra-species competition as the driving force of adaptation, and, ultimately, of evolution.
  • However, some biologists, most famously Richard Dawkins, prefer to think of evolution in terms of competition between single genes, which have the welfare of the organism "in mind" only insofar as that welfare furthers their own selfish drives for replication.

• Preface

  • The concepts and techniques of social network analysis are informed by, and inform the evolution of these broader fields.

• Cultural Evolution

  • More recent research, however, suggests that human culture has reversed this particular causal direction and, culture can actually influence human evolution.