Killer Instinct
Killer Instinct

Author: Nadine Weidman

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2021-10-19

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 0674983475

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A historian of science examines key public debates about the fundamental nature of humans to ask why a polarized discourse about nature versus nurture became so entrenched in the popular sciences of animal and human behavior. Are humans innately aggressive or innately cooperative? In the 1960s, bestselling books enthralled American readers with the startling claim that humans possessed an instinct for violence inherited from primate ancestors. Critics responded that humans were inherently loving and altruistic. The resulting debateÑfiercely contested and highly publicÑleft a lasting impression on the popular science discourse surrounding what it means to be human. Killer Instinct traces how Konrad Lorenz, Robert Ardrey, and their followers drew on the sciences of animal behavior and paleoanthropology to argue that the aggression instinct drove human evolutionary progress. Their message, spread throughout popular media, brought pointed ripostes. Led by the anthropologist Ashley Montagu, opponents presented a rival vision of human nature, equally based in biological evidence, that humans possessed inborn drives toward love and cooperation. Over the course of the debate, however, each side accused the other of holding an extremist position: that behavior was either determined entirely by genes or shaped solely by environment. Nadine Weidman shows that what started as a dispute over the innate tendencies of animals and humans transformed into an opposition between nature and nurture. This polarized formulation proved powerful. When E. O. Wilson introduced his sociobiology in 1975, he tried to rise above the oppositional terms of the aggression debate. But the controversy over WilsonÕs workÑled by critics like the feminist biologist Ruth HubbardÑwas ultimately absorbed back into the nature-versus-nurture formulation. Killer Instinct explores what happens and what gets lost when polemics dominate discussions of the science of human nature.

Nature...Human Nature...Animal Instinct
Nature...Human Nature...Animal Instinct

Author: Subbiah Sridhar

Publisher: Blue Rose Publishers

Published: 2023-04-15

Total Pages: 164

ISBN-13:

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The human race is considered the ‘Wise Creature’ and superior to other living beings, but are we really Wise compared to other living creatures? This book covers negative traits prevalent among Humans which prove detrimental to the lives of even other living beings. The book also mentions about so-called achievements made by humans, in spite of which our knowledge about the eternal soul, formation processes of life, and other mysteries shrouding the Universe remain meager. A human being is on a collision course with Mother Nature and damage to the environment has become the greatest bane of our times. Man in his endeavor to usurp the role of God should not attempt to play with Mother Nature which will lead to a cataclysm.

The Free Animal
The Free Animal

Author: Lee MacLean

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2013-01-01

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 1442644958

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Featuring careful analyses and an extensive engagement with the secondary literature, The Free Animal offers a novel interpretation of the changing nature and complexity of Rousseau's intention.

Eugenics and the Nature-Nurture Debate in the Twentieth Century
Eugenics and the Nature-Nurture Debate in the Twentieth Century

Author: A. Gillette

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2007-10-29

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0230608906

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Gillette shows that the sciences of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology were undergoing rapid development in the early Twentieth century. However, many of the early researchers in these sciences were also eugenicists. With the rise of behaviourism and the reaction against eugenics in the 1930s, any scientific claims that behaviour might be influenced by heredity were suppressed for ideological reasons.

The Marvelous Learning Animal
The Marvelous Learning Animal

Author: Arthur W. Staats

Publisher: Prometheus Books

Published: 2012-06-12

Total Pages: 499

ISBN-13: 1616145986

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What makes us human? In recent decades, researchers have focused on innate tendencies and inherited traits as explanations for human behavior, especially in light of groundbreaking human genome research. The author thinks this trend is misleading. As he shows in great detail in this engaging, thought-provoking, and highly informative book, what makes our species unique is our marvelous ability to learn, which is an ability that no other primate possesses. In his exploration of human progress, the author reveals that the immensity of human learning has not been fully understood or examined. Evolution has endowed us with extremely versatile bodies and a brain comprised of one hundred billion neurons, which makes us especially suited for a wide range of sophisticated learning. Already in childhood, human beings begin learning complex repertoires—language, sports, value systems, music, science, rules of behavior, and many other aspects of culture. These repertoires build on one another in special ways, and our brains develop in response to the learning experiences we receive from those around us and from what we read and hear and see. When humans gather in society, the cumulative effect of building learning upon learning is enormous. The author presents a new way of understanding humanness—in the behavioral nature of the human body, in the unique human way of learning, in child development, in personality, and in abnormal behavior. With all this, and his years of basic and applied research, he develops a new theory of human evolution and a new vision of the human being. This book offers up a unified concept that not only provides new ways of understanding human behavior and solving human problems but also lays the foundations for opening new areas of science.

The Human Instinct
The Human Instinct

Author: Kenneth R. Miller

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Published: 2019-04-23

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 1476790272

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From one of America’s best-known biologists, a revolutionary new way of thinking about evolution that shows “why, in light of our origins, humans are still special” (Edward J. Larson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evolution). Once we had a special place in the hierarchy of life on Earth—a place confirmed by the literature and traditions of every human tribe. But then the theory of evolution arrived to shake the tree of human understanding to its roots. To many of the most passionate advocates for Darwin’s theory, we are just one species among multitudes, no more significant than any other. Even our minds are not our own, they tell us, but living machines programmed for nothing but survival and reproduction. In The Human Instinct, Brown University biologist Kenneth R. Miller “confronts both lay and professional misconceptions about evolution” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), showing that while evolution explains how our bodies and brains were shaped, that heritage does not limit or predetermine human behavior. In fact, Miller argues in this “highly recommended” (Forbes) work that it is only thanks to evolution that we have the power to shape our destiny. Equal parts natural science and philosophy, The Human Instinct makes an “absorbing, lucid, and engaging…case that it was evolution that gave us our humanity” (Ursula Goodenough, professor of biology at Washington University in St. Louis).

Not So Different
Not So Different

Author: Nathan H. Lents

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 9780231178327

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With evidence from psychology, evolutionary biology, cognitive science, anthropology and ethnolgy, the biologist Nathan H. Lents argues that the same evolutionary forces of cooperation and competition have shaped both humans and animals.

The Nature Instinct
The Nature Instinct

Author: Tristan Gooley

Publisher: The Experiment

Published: 2019-08-20

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 1615195912

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From the New York Times-bestselling author of The Secret World of Weather and The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs, learn to notice nature’s hidden clues all around you “A captivating guide to finding one’s way in the wild.”—The Wall Street Journal Publisher's note: The Nature Instinct was published in the UK under the title Wild Signs and Star Paths. Master outdoorsman Tristan Gooley was just about to make camp when he sensed danger—but couldn’t say why. After sheltering elsewhere, Gooley returned to investigate: What had set off his subconscious alarm? Suddenly, he understood: All of the tree trunks were slightly bent. The ground had already shifted once and could easily become treacherous in a storm. The Nature Instinct shows how we, too, can unlock this intuitive understanding of our surroundings. Learn to sense the forest’s edge from deep in the woods, or whether a wild animal might pose danger—before you even know how you know.

Animals, Animality, and Literature
Animals, Animality, and Literature

Author: Bruce Boehrer

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-09-20

Total Pages: 775

ISBN-13: 1108581161

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Animals, Animality, and Literature offers readers a one-volume survey of the field of literary animal studies in both its theoretical and applied dimensions. Focusing on English literary history, with scrupulous attention to the interplay between English and foreign influences, this collection gathers together the work of nineteen internationally noted specialists in this growing discipline. Offering discussion of English literary works from Beowulf to Virginia Woolf and beyond, this book explores the ways human/animal difference has been historically activated within the literary context: in devotional works, in philosophical and zoological treatises, in plays and poems and novels, and more recently within emerging narrative genres such as cinema and animation. With an introductory overview of the historical development of animal studies and afterword looking to the field's future possibilities, Animals, Animality, and Literature provides a wide-ranging survey of where this discipline currently stands.

THE Interview That Solves The Human Condition And Saves The World!
THE Interview That Solves The Human Condition And Saves The World!

Author: Jeremy Griffith

Publisher: WTM Publishing and Communications PTY Limited

Published: 2020-06-30

Total Pages: 82

ISBN-13: 1741290570

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The best introduction to biologist Jeremy Griffith’s world-saving explanation of the human condition! The transcript of acclaimed British actor and broadcaster Craig Conway’s astonishing, world-changing and world-saving 2020 interview with Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith about his book FREEDOM: The End Of The Human Condition which presents the completely redeeming, uplifting and healing understanding of the core mystery and problem about human behaviour of our so-called good and evil -stricken human condition thus ending all the conflict and suffering in human life at its source, and providing the now urgently needed road map for the complete rehabilitation and transformation of our lives and world! In fact, a former President of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, Professor Harry Prosen, has described it as the most important interview of all time! This world-saving interview was broadcast across the UK in 2020 and is being replayed on radio & TV stations around the world. This book is supported by a very informative website at www.humancondition.com, where you can watch the video of the interview.