Peter J. Richerson

Robert Boyd

Humans are a striking anomaly in the natural world. While we are similar to other mammals in many ways, our behavior sets us apart. Our unparalleled ability to adapt has allowed us to occupy virtually every habitat on earth using an incredible variety of tools and subsistence techniques. Our societies are larger, more complex, and more cooperative than any other mammal's. In this stunning exploration of human adaptation, Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd argue that only a Darwinian theory of cultural evolution can explain these unique characteristics. Not by Genes Alone offers a radical interpretation of human evolution, arguing that our ecological dominance and our singular social systems stem from a psychology uniquely adapted to create complex culture. Richerson and Boyd illustrate here that culture is neither superorganic nor the handmaiden of the genes. Rather, it is essential to human adaptation, as much a part of human biology as bipedal locomotion. Drawing on work in the fields of anthropology, political science, sociology, and economics—and building their case with such fascinating examples as kayaks, corporations, clever knots, and yams that require twelve men to carry them—Richerson and Boyd convincingly demonstrate that culture and biology are inextricably linked, and they show us how to think about their interaction in a way that yields a richer understanding of human nature. In abandoning the nature-versus-nurture debate as fundamentally misconceived, Not by Genes Alone is a truly original and groundbreaking theory of the role of culture in evolution and a book to be reckoned with for generations to come. “I continue to be surprised by the number of educated people (many of them biologists) who think that offering explanations for human behavior in terms of culture somehow disproves the suggestion that human behavior can be explained in Darwinian evolutionary terms. Fortunately, we now have a book to which they may be directed for enlightenment . . . . It is a book full of good sense and the kinds of intellectual rigor and clarity of writing that we have come to expect from the Boyd/Richerson stable.”—Robin Dunbar, Nature “Not by Genes Alone is a valuable and very readable synthesis of a still embryonic but very important subject straddling the sciences and humanities.”—E. O. Wilson, Harvard University

How Culture Transformed Human Evolution

Not By Genes Alone

How 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.

Culture and the Evolutionary Process

Michelle Fink

This is a collection of travel letters written by the textile merchant John (Jack) McCaldin Loewenthal, known as JMcC, to his mother Jane at their home in Lennoxvale, Belfast, between 1889 and 1895. They were written during his journeys to South America and the West Indies, where he was securing commercial contracts, whilst representing the firm “Moore and Weinberg”, Linen and Jute traders, based in Dundee and Belfast, in which his father Julius Loewenthal was a senior partner. The reason these letters survived for posterity is that he had specifically asked his mother to keep them as a record of his travels, for him to look back on after his return home to Belfast. The letters are a diary-like account of his travels and travel impressions, also containing little anecdotes, as well as more personal interactions with his mother to do with family and friends in Belfast and Dundee, as well as social chit chat. They were part of a regular correspondence between him and Jane.

Letters Home from a Victorian Commercial Traveller, 1889 – 1895

John McCaldin Loewenthal

Or, The Sinner's Only Hope

None But Christ

The Office, Powers, and Jurisdiction, of His Majesty's Justices of the Peace and Commissioners of Supply

The Office, Powers, and Jurisdiction, of His Majesty's Justices of the Peace and Commissioners of Supply, for Scotland

The Streets Don't Love You Back, A Story of Strength, Prayer, and Perseverance by Robert D. Boyd Jr. Rob grew up in an eastside ghetto of Detroit Michigan. His father a prominent Reverend and well known Author chose not to be a part of his life. His stepfather was a good man and treated him and siblings as his own. One day when Rob was nine years old he watched his grandfather stab his stepfather to death and that changed his life forever. By the age of 10 he was involved in the gang, drug and violent street life. Rob eventually became a Boss and Drug Kingpin, he spent time in and out of jail and watched many friends get killed and many friends go to prison. This manuscript is definitely a story of Hope, Change, Healing and Forgiveness. After reading this book you will see that crime doesn't pay and "The Streets Don't Love You Back"".

The Streets Don't Love You Back

Professor of Anthropology Robert Boyd

How Humans Evolved

Joan Silk

Préfacé par Yves Coppens, ce superbe ouvrage abondamment illustré intègre dans une parfaite harmonie l'étude de l'histoire de l'évolution de notre espèce (approche anthropologique) et celle du fonctionnement de cette évolution (approche biologique). Découvrez quelques pages en cliquant ici. Ses quatre subdivisions principales (les mécanismes de l'évolution, le comportement et l'écologie des primates, l'histoire de la lignée humaine et l'évolution de l'homme moderne), abordent notamment des questions aussi diverses et essentielles que la sélection naturelle, la phylogénie, l'écologie, le comportement social et la reproduction. L’étude des témoins fossiles de la lignée humaine, les techniques utilisées de nos jours pour reconstruire et mieux comprendre le comportement de nos ancêtres et les environnements dans lesquels ils vivaient nous sont clairement exposées. Ce livre dont le point fort est sans conteste la vision pluridisciplinaire de l’évolution de notre espèce s’adresse à un public très varié. Il apportera, tant aux étudiants des 1e, 2e et 3e cycles universitaires en sciences naturelles et sociales qu’aux enseignants du secondaire et du premier cycle universitaire, une vision panoramique des outils d’approche de cette discipline. D’une lecture aisée, cet ouvrage nous raconte une histoire passionnante... Celle de notre propre Aventure, qui donne vie aux fossiles et nous révèle les mystères des processus qui génèrent les changements, créent les adaptations, façonnent les êtres humains et leurs comportements...

Des molécules à la culture

L'aventure humaine

Oxford presents, in one convenient and coherently organized volume, 20 influential but until now relatively inaccessible articles that form the backbone of Boyd and Richerson's path-breaking work on evolution and culture. Their interdisciplinary research is based on two notions. First, that culture is crucial for understanding human behavior; unlike other organisms, socially transmitted beliefs, attitudes, and values heavily influence our behavior. Secondly, culture is part of biology: the capacity to acquire and transmit culture is a derived component of human psychology, and the contents of culture are deeply intertwined with our biology. Culture then is a pool of information, stored in the brains of the population that gets transmitted from one brain to another by social learning processes. Therefore, culture can account for both our outstanding ecological success as well as the maladaptations that characterize much of human behavior. The interest in this collection will span anthropology, psychology, economics, philosophy, and political science.

The Origin and Evolution of Cultures

Philosophically Thinking about World Religions is different from other works in the discipline today. It deviates from the typical approaches used for the study of world religions. Its goal is to engage readers in thinking hard about world religions, not about the data surrounding those traditions. By focusing on philosophical questions, each reader should be challenged to do their own investigations that may reveal the heart of these traditions. Another stance that this project takes that distinguishes it from other texts in the discipline is that it advocates an inclusivist perspective regarding the world religions. Pluralism, which is the predominate assumption today, ends either in contradiction or in the development of a metatheory that dismisses crucial distinctions between the various traditions or eliminates some ancient religions because they do not fit the metatheory. By taking an open inclusivist approach, all religious traditions may engage at the table of dialogue. The final essay is about justice and social affairs. While that discussion is couched within the context of a particular tradition, each religious tradition must have the discussion. But it must be more than an intrareligious dialogue; it must become an interreligious dialogue.

Philosophically Thinking about World Religions

Approaching the World’s Religions, Volume 1

Joan B. Silk

The most complete introduction to the science of human evolution.With a signature blend of evolutionary theory, population genetics, and behavioral ecology, How Humans Evolved teaches the science and history behind human evolution. Thoroughly updated with coverage of recent research and new discoveries, the Eighth Edition offers the most visual, dynamic, and effective learning tools in its field. The Eighth Edition also includes an expanded suite of animations that help students better visualize and understand tricky concepts, as well as real-world videos and InQuizitive adaptive learning.

Contemporary Nonlinear Optics discusses the different activities in the field of nonlinear optics. The book is comprised of 10 chapters. Chapter 1 presents a description of the field of nonlinear guided-wave optics. Chapter 2 surveys a new branch of nonlinear optics under the heading optical solitons. Chapter 3 reviews recent progress in the field of optical phase conjugation. Chapter 4 discusses ultrafast nonlinear optics, a field that is growing rapidly with the ability of generating and controlling femtosecond optical pulses. Chapter 5 examines a branch of nonlinear optics that may be termed nonlinear quantum optics. Chapter 6 reviews the new field of photorefractive adaptive neural networks. Chapter 7 presents a discussion of recent successes in the development of nonlinear optical media based on organic materials. Chapter 8 reviews the field of nonlinear optics in quantum confined structures. Chapter 9 reviews the field of nonlinear laser spectroscopy, with emphasis on advances made during the 1980s. Finally, Chapter 10 reviews the field of nonlinear optical dynamics by considering nonlinear optical systems that exhibit temporal, spatial, or spatio-temporal instabilities. This book is a valuable source for physicists and other scientists interested in optical systems and neural networks.

Contemporary Nonlinear Optics

Richard McElreath

Over the last several decades, mathematical models have become central to the study of social evolution, both in biology and the social sciences. But students in these disciplines often seriously lack the tools to understand them. A primer on behavioral modeling that includes both mathematics and evolutionary theory, Mathematical Models of Social Evolution aims to make the student and professional researcher in biology and the social sciences fully conversant in the language of the field. Teaching biological concepts from which models can be developed, Richard McElreath and Robert Boyd introduce readers to many of the typical mathematical tools that are used to analyze evolutionary models and end each chapter with a set of problems that draw upon these techniques. Mathematical Models of Social Evolution equips behaviorists and evolutionary biologists with the mathematical knowledge to truly understand the models on which their research depends. Ultimately, McElreath and Boyd’s goal is to impart the fundamental concepts that underlie modern biological understandings of the evolution of behavior so that readers will be able to more fully appreciate journal articles and scientific literature, and start building models of their own.

A Guide for the Perplexed

Mathematical Models of Social Evolution

Robert Thomas Boyd

In the late 1700s, when Euro-Americans began to visit the Northwest Coast, they reported the presence of vigorous, diverse cultures--among them the Tlingit, Haida, Kwakwaka'wakw (Kwakiutl), Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka), Coast Salish, and Chinookans--with a population conservatively estimated at over 180,000. A century later only about 35,000 were left. The change was brought about by the introduction of diseases that had originated in the Eastern Hemisphere, such as smallpox, malaria, measles, and influenza. The Coming of the Spirit of Pestilence examines the introduction of infectious diseases among the Indians of the Northwest Coast culture area (present-day Oregon and Washington west of the Cascade Mountains, British Columbia west of the Coast Range, and southeast Alaska) in the first century of contact and the effects of these new diseases on Native American population size, structure, interactions, and viability. The emphasis is on epidemic diseases and specific epidemic episodes. In most parts of the Americas, disease transfer and depopulation occurred early and are poorly documented. Because of the lateness of Euro-American contact in the Pacific Northwest, however, records are relatively complete, and it is possible to reconstruct in some detail the processes of disease transfer and the progress of specific epidemics, compute their demographic impact, and discern connections between these processes and culture change. Boyd provides a thorough compilation, analysis, and comparison of information gleaned from many published and archival sources, both Euro-American (trading-company, mission, and doctors' records; ships' logs; diaries; and Hudson's Bay Company and government censuses) and Native American (oral traditions and informant testimony). The many quotations from contemporary sources underscore the magnitude of the human suffering. The Coming of the Spirit of Pestilence is a definitive study of introduced diseases in the Pacific Northwest. For more information on the author go to http: //roberttboyd.com/

Introduced Infectious Diseases and Population Decline Among Northwest Coast Indians, 1774-1874

The Coming of the Spirit of Pestilence

The World's Hope, Or, The Rock of Ages

The Origin and Evolution of Cultures presents articles based on two notions. That culture is crucial for understanding human behaviour; and that culture is part of biology. Interest in this collection will span anthropology, psychology, economics, philosophy, and political science.

How our ability to learn from each other has been the essential ingredient to our remarkable success as a species Human beings have evolved to become the most dominant species on Earth. This astonishing transformation is usually explained in terms of cognitive ability—people are just smarter than all the rest. But Robert Boyd argues that culture—our ability to learn from each other—has been the essential ingredient of our remarkable success. He shows how a unique combination of cultural adaptation and large-scale cooperation has transformed our species and assured our survival—making us the different kind of animal we are today. Based on the Tanner Lectures delivered at Princeton University, A Different Kind of Animal features challenging responses by biologist H. Allen Orr, philosopher Kim Sterelny, economist Paul Seabright, and evolutionary anthropologist Ruth Mace, as well as an introduction by Stephen Macedo.

Robert Boyd

Books

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