natural selection

Examples of natural selection in the following topics:

• Sociobiology

  • Sociobiologists believe that human behavior, like nonhuman animal behavior, can be partly explained as the outcome of natural selection.
  • Natural selection is fundamental to evolutionary theory.
  • Following this evolutionary logic, sociobiologists are interested in how behavior can be explained as a result of selective pressures in the history of a species.
  • Discuss the concept of sociobiology in relation to natural selection and Charles Darwin, as well as genetics and instinctive behaviors

• Animals and Culture

  • It especially reinforces the natural selection component.

• Spencer and Social Darwinism

  • Like Comte, Spencer saw in sociology the potential to unify the sciences, or to develop what he called a "synthetic philosophy. " He believed that the natural laws discovered by natural scientists were not limited to natural phenomena; these laws revealed an underlying order to the universe that could explain natural and social phenomena alike.
  • He believed that all natural laws could be reduced to one fundamental law, the law of evolution.
  • Thus, Spencer's synthetic philosophy aimed to show that natural laws led inexorably to progress.
  • But, popular belief to the contrary, Spencer did not merely appropriate and generalize Darwin's work on natural selection; Spencer only grudgingly incorporated Darwin's theory of natural selection into his preexisting synthetic philosophical system.
  • Critics of Spencer's positivist synthetic philosophy argued that the social sciences were essentially different from the natural sciences and that the methods of the natural sciences—the search for universal laws was inappropriate for the study of human society.

• The Development of Sociology in the U.S.

  • Spencer had argued that society would naturally evolve and progress while allowing the survival of the fittest and weeding out the socially unfit.
  • Thus, social ills such as poverty would be naturally alleviated as the unfit poor were selected against; no intervention was necessary.

• Introduction to nodes

  • John has been selected to be in our sample.
  • Network studies are much more likely to include all of the actors who occur within some (usually naturally occurring) boundary.
  • The classroom itself, though, might have been selected by probability methods from a population of classrooms (say all of those in a school).
  • The use of whole populations as a way of selecting observations in (many) network studies makes it important for the analyst to be clear about the boundaries of each population to be studied, and how individual units of observation are to be selected within that population.

• Defining the Sample and Collecting Data

  • A probability sampling is one in which every unit in the population has a chance (greater than zero) of being selected in the sample, and this probability can be accurately determined.
  • Nonprobability sampling is any sampling method where some elements of the population have no chance of selection or where the probability of selection can't be accurately determined.
  • Sampling errors and biases, such as selection bias and random sampling error, are induced by the sample design.
  • Natural scientists collect data by measuring and recording a sample of the thing they're studying, such as plants or soil.
  • Natural scientists collect data by measuring and recording a sample of the thing they're studying, such as plants or soil.

• Populations, samples, and boundaries

  • A list is made of all nodes (sometimes stratified or clustered), and individual elements are selected by probability methods.
  • If one actor happens to be selected, then we must also include all other actors to whom our ego has (or could have) ties.
  • These are naturally occurring clusters, or networks.
  • This type of design (which could use sampling methods to select populations) allows for replication and for testing of hypotheses by comparing populations.

• The Origins of Patriarchy

  • Before the nineteenth century, this conversation was primarily theological and deemed patriarchy to be the "natural order. " This took on a biological trope with Charles Darwin's ideas about evolution in The Origin of Species.
  • With the popularization of the idea of human evolution, what had previously been explained as a "natural order" for the world morphed into a "biological order. "
  • One important female preference in selecting a mate is which males control more resources to assist her and her offspring.
  • This, in turn, causes a selection pressure on men to be competitive and succeed in gaining resources in order to compete with other men.

• Clustering similarities or distances profiles

  • Cluster analysis is a natural method for exploring structural equivalence.
  • In both of these methods, partitions or approximate equivalence classes are set up first (the user selects how many), and the cases are allocated to these classes by numerical techniques designed to maximize similarity within classes.

• Mass Media and Technology

  • Bias exists in the selection of events and stories that are reported and how they are covered.
  • The apparent bias of media is not always specifically political in nature.