The Taming of Evolution

The theory of evolution has clearly altered our views of the biological world, but in the study of human beings, evolutionary and preevolutionary views continue to coexist in a state of perpetual tension. The Taming of Evolution addresses the questions of how and why this is so. Davydd Greenwood off...

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Päätekijä: Greenwood, Davydd
Aineistotyyppi: Online
Kieli:englanti
Julkaistu: Cornell University Press 2022
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Linkit:ONIX_20220715_9781501719943_821
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author Greenwood, Davydd
author_browse Greenwood, Davydd
author_facet Greenwood, Davydd
author_sort Greenwood, Davydd
collection Directory of Open Access Books
description The theory of evolution has clearly altered our views of the biological world, but in the study of human beings, evolutionary and preevolutionary views continue to coexist in a state of perpetual tension. The Taming of Evolution addresses the questions of how and why this is so. Davydd Greenwood offers a sustained critique of the nature/nurture debate, revealing the complexity of the relationship between science and ideology. He maintains that popular contemporary theories, most notably E. O. Wilson’s human sociobiology and Marvin Harris’s cultural materialism, represent pre-Darwinian notions overlaid by elaborate evolutionary terminology. Greenwood first details the humoral-environmental and Great Chain of Being theories that dominated Western thinking before Darwin. He systematically compares these ideas with those later influenced by Darwin’s theories, illuminating the surprising continuities between them. Greenwood suggests that it would be neither difficult nor socially dangerous to develop a genuinely evolutionary understanding of human beings, so long as we realized that we could not derive political and moral standards from the study of biological processes.
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spelling doab-20.500.12854ir-890742024-04-05T12:34:48Z The Taming of Evolution Greenwood, Davydd Evolution thema EDItEUR::P Mathematics and Science::PS Biology, life sciences::PSA Life sciences: general issues::PSAJ Evolution The theory of evolution has clearly altered our views of the biological world, but in the study of human beings, evolutionary and preevolutionary views continue to coexist in a state of perpetual tension. The Taming of Evolution addresses the questions of how and why this is so. Davydd Greenwood offers a sustained critique of the nature/nurture debate, revealing the complexity of the relationship between science and ideology. He maintains that popular contemporary theories, most notably E. O. Wilson’s human sociobiology and Marvin Harris’s cultural materialism, represent pre-Darwinian notions overlaid by elaborate evolutionary terminology. Greenwood first details the humoral-environmental and Great Chain of Being theories that dominated Western thinking before Darwin. He systematically compares these ideas with those later influenced by Darwin’s theories, illuminating the surprising continuities between them. Greenwood suggests that it would be neither difficult nor socially dangerous to develop a genuinely evolutionary understanding of human beings, so long as we realized that we could not derive political and moral standards from the study of biological processes. 2022-07-15T15:20:33Z 2022-07-15T15:20:33Z 2018 book ONIX_20220715_9781501719943_821 9781501719943 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/89074 eng image/jpeg Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International https://muse.jhu.edu/book/57420 Cornell University Press 10.1353/book.57420 10.1353/book.57420 05937e7b-c222-4680-9580-c09c5ce7a11e 9781501719943 228 open access
spellingShingle Evolution
thema EDItEUR::P Mathematics and Science::PS Biology, life sciences::PSA Life sciences: general issues::PSAJ Evolution
Greenwood, Davydd
The Taming of Evolution
title The Taming of Evolution
title_full The Taming of Evolution
title_fullStr The Taming of Evolution
title_full_unstemmed The Taming of Evolution
title_short The Taming of Evolution
title_sort taming of evolution
topic Evolution
thema EDItEUR::P Mathematics and Science::PS Biology, life sciences::PSA Life sciences: general issues::PSAJ Evolution
topic_facet Evolution
thema EDItEUR::P Mathematics and Science::PS Biology, life sciences::PSA Life sciences: general issues::PSAJ Evolution
url ONIX_20220715_9781501719943_821
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