Search results for "Darwinism"
showing 10 items of 38 documents
The paramount power of selection: From Darwin to Kauffman
1995
For approximately two decades now, the Darwinian interpretation of evolution has now been challenged in many ways. Modern criticisms make it difficult, even for the staunchest Darwinians, not to take a distance from Darwin’s bold phrases on the “power” of natural selection. Let me remind you of some famous declarations of Darwin on the subject: “It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and i…
Die Lust an der Kultur/Theorie. Transdisziplinäre Interventionen. Für Wolfgang Müller-Funk
2013
Out of fuzzy chemistry: from prebiotic chemistry to metabolic networks
2012
The origin of life on Earth was a chemical affair. So how did primitive biochemical systems originate from geochemical and cosmochemical processes on the young planet? Contemporary research into the origins of life subscribes to the Darwinian principle of material causes operating in an evolutionary context, as advocated by A. I. Oparin and J. B. S. Haldane in the 1920s. In its simplest form (e.g., a bacterial cell) extant biological complexity relies on the functional integration of metabolic networks and replicative genomes inside a lipid boundary. Different research programmes have explored the prebiotic plausibility of each of these autocatalytic subsystems and combinations thereof: sel…
ChemInform Abstract: Out of Fuzzy Chemistry: From Prebiotic Chemistry to Metabolic Networks
2012
The origin of life on Earth was a chemical affair. So how did primitive biochemical systems originate from geochemical and cosmochemical processes on the young planet? Contemporary research into the origins of life subscribes to the Darwinian principle of material causes operating in an evolutionary context, as advocated by A. I. Oparin and J. B. S. Haldane in the 1920s. In its simplest form (e.g., a bacterial cell) extant biological complexity relies on the functional integration of metabolic networks and replicative genomes inside a lipid boundary. Different research programmes have explored the prebiotic plausibility of each of these autocatalytic subsystems and combinations thereof: sel…
Social Darwinism, the British Labour Party, and the First World War
2021
This article investigates whether the doctrine of social Darwinism had any bearing on the Labour Party’s decision to support Britain’s participation in the First World War. Many socialist intellect...
La Educación Física Escolar en Tres Centros Educativos de Chile: una Caracterización de sus Prácticas Docentes
2016
Physical Education (PE) generally, and Chilean one, specifically, is in the middle of an identity crisis. There is a vision of the body as a production object. This vision has been generated in the light of social Darwinism, and at the same time there are other more conciliatory and global approaches. This investigation tries, with a holistic approach based on participating observation, to look into the practices carried out in relation to PE in schools in the Chilean context. The main conclusion from the analysis carried out is that in schools, PE is mainly focused on “doing” and on the production of results that can later on be assessed with objectivity. This means that schools are still …
El darwinismo social y la filología decimonónica: rastreo de la ideología a través de la prensa histórica
2021
espanolEn este trabajo, se persigue demostrar que el pensamiento darwiniano estaba enraizado en concepciones supremacistas y que este pensamiento no solo marco la biologia decimononica, sino tambien el resto de disciplinas sociales y humanas al convertirse la biologia como maximo exponente de lo que se entendia como ciencia. No solo se tomaron como premisas los presupuestos metodologicos de la biologia, sino tambien su concepcion supremacista. Y la filologia no fue una excepcion. A traves del rastreo en la prensa historica decimononica, queremos demostrar que estas ideas calaron en la sociedad, pero tambien en el pensamiento filologico hispanico del siglo XIX. La reconstruccion de la preten…
‘Happy amicable co-operation’: mutual aid, anarchism and the image of the bee in the work of Louisa Sarah Bevington
2017
AbstractThe poet and political activist Louisa Sarah Bevington has been largely ignored in accounts of late Victorian literary and cultural history, even though her work presents a singular nexus of scientific, socio-cultural and poetical perspectives. This essay will show how Bevington juxtaposes Social Darwinist interpretations of the theory of evolution, which foreground the idea of human life as a struggle for existence, with the anarcho-communist view proposed by Peter Kropotkin, which foregrounds the human capacity for sympathy and mutual aid as the driving forces in social development. After situating Kropotkin’s ideas within the larger context of anarchist and evolutionist thinking,…
Spanish Darwinian iconography: Darwin and evolutionism portrayed in Spanish press cartoons.
2013
The theory of evolution has played a major role in the press since it was put forward by Charles Darwin in 1859. Its key role in biology and human philosophy is reflected by its presence in press cartoons, sections where the image of social reality is depicted in a more direct and satirical light. Through cartoons, artists have used their ingenuity or wit to portray one of the most controversial scientific figures of the past two centuries. This study examines the views portrayed by Spanish cartoonists about Charles Darwin and evolutionary theory in 2009, the bicentenary of the naturalist’s birth and the celebration of 150 years since the publication of On the Origin of Species. These cart…
Evolutionary biology and beliefs : how ideology can draw different social stances from science
2016
Agreeing that there are often strong connections between fields of science and the ideological convictions of those producing the science, this essay shows that the connections are often complex and rarely straightforward. Taking the example of evolutionary biology, by looking at three key figures ? Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace ? it is shown how very different social beliefs can lead to very different social conclusions being drawn from one?s science. It is argued that this message should be kept firmly in mind by those who today would draw social conclusions from science, for instance suggesting that Darwinian evolutionary biology leads straight to the social p…