Dinesh

Dinesh club

Posted: 01 Apr 2021


Taken: 06 Mar 2021

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From
Evolution - The triumph of an idea
Carl Zimmer
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Edward O. Wilson

Edward O. Wilson
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 Dinesh
Dinesh club
Edward O. Wilson of Harvard opened up this psychological can of worms in his landmark 1975 book Sociobiology. Most of his book surveyed the great success that scientists were having in using evolutionary theory to understand the social lives of animals. What at first seemed like evolutionary paradoxes turned out, after some careful study, to make sense. Sterile worker ants can help pass on their own genes because they are closely related. When a male lion takes over a pride and kills the cubs, he brings their mothers into estrus so that they can bear his own offspring.

“Let us consider man.” Wilson wrote in the opening of the last chapter of ‘Sociobiology, “as though we were zoologists from another planet competing a catalogue of social species on Earth. Human beings are primates living in big societies. They descend from hominids who probably evolved reciprocal altruism and food sharing. Barter, exchange and favors became a crucial part of early human society, just as did deception and subterfuge. Males and females had specific roles in these early societies, the males killing game and the females rising children and gathering plants. Sexual selection Wilson speculated, must have helped drive human evolution. “Aggressiveness was constrained and old forms of primate dominance replaced by complex social skills,” he wrote. “Young males found it profitable to fit into the group, controlling their sexuality and aggression and awaiting their turn at leadership.”

By trying to turn psychology into evolutionary biology, Wilson created a sensation. “Sociobiology” became a best-seller and inspired a front page article in ‘The New York Times’. Human behavior, the newspaper declared, “may be much a product of evolution as is the structure of the hand or the size of the brain.” . . . Page 273
3 years ago.
 Dinesh
Dinesh club
Sociobiology
3 years ago.
 Dinesh
Dinesh club
Image and excerpt from:

Evolution
3 years ago.
 J.Garcia
J.Garcia club
Very interesting!
Thanks for sharing!
3 years ago.

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