Sociobiology and the Arts
Author: Bedaux
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2023-11-27
Total Pages: 298
ISBN-13: 9004651381
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Sociobiology and the Arts
Author: Jan Baptist Bedaux
Publisher: Rodopi
Published: 1999
Total Pages: 308
ISBN-13: 9789042006843
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Artful Species: Aesthetics, Art, and Evolution
Author: Stephen Davies
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2012-11-29
Total Pages: 310
ISBN-13: 0191633119
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Artful Species explores the idea that our aesthetic responses and art behaviors are connected to our evolved human nature. Our humanoid forerunners displayed aesthetic sensibilities hundreds of thousands of years ago and the art standing of prehistoric cave paintings is virtually uncontested. In Part One, Stephen Davies analyses the key concepts of the aesthetic, art, and evolution, and explores how they might be related. He considers a range of issues,including whether animals have aesthetic tastes and whether art is not only universal but cross-culturally comprehensible. Part Two examines the many aesthetic interests humans take in animals and how these reflect our biological interests, and the idea that our environmental and landscape preferences arerooted in the experiences of our distant ancestors. In considering the controversial subject of human beauty, evolutionary psychologists have traditionally focused on female physical attractiveness in the context of mate selection, but Davies presents a broader view which decouples human beauty from mate choice and explains why it goes more with social performance and self-presentation. Part Three asks if the arts, together or singly, are biological adaptations, incidental byproducts of nonartadaptations, or so removed from biology that they rate as purely cultural technologies. Davies does not conclusively support any one of the many positions considered here, but argues that there are grounds, nevertheless, for seeing art as part of human nature. Art serves as a powerful and complexsignal of human fitness, and so cannot be incidental to biology. Indeed, aesthetic responses and art behaviors are the touchstones of our humanity.
The Social Conquest of Earth
Author: Edward O. Wilson
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2012-04-09
Total Pages: 330
ISBN-13: 0871403307
DOWNLOAD EBOOKNew York Times Bestseller and Notable Book of the Year A Kirkus Reviews Book of the Year (Nonfiction) Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence (Nonfiction) From the most celebrated heir to Darwin comes a groundbreaking book on evolution, the summa work of Edward O. Wilson's legendary career. Sparking vigorous debate in the sciences, The Social Conquest of Earth upends “the famous theory that evolution naturally encourages creatures to put family first” (Discover). Refashioning the story of human evolution, Wilson draws on his remarkable knowledge of biology and social behavior to demonstrate that group selection, not kin selection, is the premier driving force of human evolution. In a work that James D. Watson calls “a monumental exploration of the biological origins of the human condition,” Wilson explains how our innate drive to belong to a group is both a “great blessing and a terrible curse” (Smithsonian). Demonstrating that the sources of morality, religion, and the creative arts are fundamentally biological in nature, the renowned Harvard University biologist presents us with the clearest explanation ever produced as to the origin of the human condition and why it resulted in our domination of the Earth’s biosphere.
Carnival and the Carnivalesque
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 1999
Total Pages: 286
ISBN-13: 9004647198
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFrom the Fool to the Wildman, from the irate Reformer to the festive Masqueraders, this collection of articles offers a variety of topics, approaches, and agendas in the study of early modern European theatre. With samplings from Scandinavia, Germany, England, France, the Iberian peninsula, and even the New World, this collection also spans time, from the late fifteenth century to the present. In the process, Carnival and the carnivalesque are examined from archival, Bakhtinian, cultural, and even political points of view. The articles in this collection reveal the variety and inherent vitality of scholarship in early modern theatre. The thirteen essays have been selected from presentations made at the Eighth Triennial Congress of the Société Internationale pour l'Etude du Théâtre Médiéval held in Toronto (1995), under the auspices of the Records of Early English Drama project and Victoria University in the University of Toronto.
Dutch Contributions to the Twelfth International Congress of Slavists
Author: Willem G. Weststeijn
Publisher: Rodopi
Published: 1999
Total Pages: 260
ISBN-13: 9789042007154
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFrom the contents: The world is vast (Bulgarian exile writers between two cultures) (Elka Agoston-Nikolova). - The charge against Andrej Sinjavskij (Martine Artz). - Some remarks on Valerij Brjusov's reputation as a 'poet without poetry' (Otto Boele). - Visions and hallucinations in Elena Guro's Bednyj rycar' (M.G. de Bruin). - Idalia's role in the semiotic space of Slowacki's Fantazy (A.G.F. van Holk). - Politika partii v oblasti literatury v SSSR (1934-1982) (Marina Konstantinova).
Science Fact and Science Fiction
Author: Brian Stableford
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2006-09-06
Total Pages: 758
ISBN-13: 1135923736
DOWNLOAD EBOOKScience fiction is a literary genre based on scientific speculation. Works of science fiction use the ideas and the vocabulary of all sciences to create valid narratives that explore the future effects of science on events and human beings. Science Fact and Science Fiction examines in one volume how science has propelled science-fiction and, to a lesser extent, how science fiction has influenced the sciences. Although coverage will discuss the science behind the fiction from the Classical Age to the present, focus is naturally on the 19th century to the present, when the Industrial Revolution and spectacular progress in science and technology triggered an influx of science-fiction works speculating on the future. As scientific developments alter expectations for the future, the literature absorbs, uses, and adapts such contextual visions. The goal of the Encyclopedia is not to present a catalog of sciences and their application in literary fiction, but rather to study the ongoing flow and counterflow of influences, including how fictional representations of science affect how we view its practice and disciplines. Although the main focus is on literature, other forms of science fiction, including film and video games, are explored and, because science is an international matter, works from non-English speaking countries are discussed as needed.
Culture and the Evolutionary Process
Author: Robert Boyd
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 1988-06-15
Total Pages: 339
ISBN-13: 0226069338
DOWNLOAD EBOOKHow do biological, psychological, sociological, and cultural factors combine to change societies over the long run? Boyd and Richerson explore how genetic and cultural factors interact, under the influence of evolutionary forces, to produce the diversity we see in human cultures. Using methods developed by population biologists, they propose a theory of cultural evolution that is an original and fair-minded alternative to the sociobiology debate.
Literary Darwinism
Author: Joseph Carroll
Publisher: Psychology Press
Published: 2004
Total Pages: 304
ISBN-13: 9780415970136
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn Literary Darwinism , Carroll presents a comprehensive survey of this new movement with a collection of his most important previously published work, along with three new essays. The essays and reviews give commentary on all the major contributors to the field, situate the field as a whole in relation to historical trends and contemporary schools, provide Darwinist readings of major literary texts such as Pride and Prejudice and Tess of the d'Urbervilles , and analyze literary Darwinism in relation to the affiliated fields of evolutionary metaphysics, cognitive rhetoric, and ecocriticism. Collecting the essays in a single volume will provide a central point of reference for scholars interested in consulting what the "foremost practicioner" ( New York Times ) of Darwinian literary criticism has to say about his field.
Does Altruism Exist?
Author: David Sloan Wilson
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2015-01-01
Total Pages: 190
ISBN-13: 0300189494
DOWNLOAD EBOOKArgues that altruism is an inherent factor of group functionality and discusses how studying group function can promote positive changes to the human condition.
