[PDF] Darwinian Sociocultural Evolution eBook

Author : Marion Blute
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 251 pages
File Size : 30,87 MB
Release : 2010-01-14
Category : Science
ISBN : 1139485113

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Social scientists can learn a lot from evolutionary biology - from systematics and principles of evolutionary ecology to theories of social interaction including competition, conflict and cooperation, as well as niche construction, complexity, eco-evo-devo, and the role of the individual in evolutionary processes. Darwinian sociocultural evolutionary theory applies the logic of Darwinism to social-learning based cultural and social change. With a multidisciplinary approach for graduate biologists, philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, social psychologists, archaeologists, linguists, economists, political scientists and science and technology specialists, the author presents this model of evolution drawing on a number of sophisticated aspects of biological evolutionary theory. The approach brings together a broad and inclusive theoretical framework for understanding the social sciences which addresses many of the dilemmas at their forefront - the relationship between history and necessity, conflict and cooperation, the ideal and the material and the problems of agency, subjectivity and the nature of social structure.

Author : Alex Mesoudi
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 281 pages
File Size : 32,35 MB
Release : 2011-07-30
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0226520455

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Charles Darwin changed the course of scientific thinking by showing how evolution accounts for the stunning diversity and biological complexity of life on earth. Recently, there has also been increased interest in the social sciences in how Darwinian theory can explain human culture. Covering a wide range of topics, including fads, public policy, the spread of religion, and herd behavior in markets, Alex Mesoudi shows that human culture is itself an evolutionary process that exhibits the key Darwinian mechanisms of variation, competition, and inheritance. This cross-disciplinary volume focuses on the ways cultural phenomena can be studied scientifically—from theoretical modeling to lab experiments, archaeological fieldwork to ethnographic studies—and shows how apparently disparate methods can complement one another to the mutual benefit of the various social science disciplines. Along the way, the book reveals how new insights arise from looking at culture from an evolutionary angle. Cultural Evolution provides a thought-provoking argument that Darwinian evolutionary theory can both unify different branches of inquiry and enhance understanding of human behavior.

Author : William Kerr
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 239 pages
File Size : 19,33 MB
Release : 2021-07-29
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 3030779998

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This book introduces the value of a Darwinian social evolutionary approach to understanding social change. The chapters discuss several different perspectives on social evolutionary theory, and go on to link these with comparative and historical sociological theory, and two case-studies. Kerr brings together social change theory and theories on nationalism, whilst also providing concrete examples of the theories at work. The book offers a vision of rapprochement between these different areas of theory and study, and to where this could lead future studies of comparative history and sociology. As such, it should be useful to scholars and students of nationalism and social change, sociologists, political scientist and historians.

Author : Antony Flew
Publisher : Transaction Publishers
Page : 180 pages
File Size : 12,37 MB
Release :
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781412821261

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Darwinian Evolution is a study of the historical background of Darwin's ideas, of their logical structure, and of their alleged and actual implications. Flew explores the Scottish Englightenment, an important and often neglected aspect of Darwin's intellectual background. He compares Darwin with such figures as Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, and Karl Marx, emphasizing not the similarities, but the differences between the natural and social sciences. Flew argues that social science must do what natural science does not: take account of individual choice.

Author : Stephen K. Sanderson
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 430 pages
File Size : 32,91 MB
Release : 2001
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780847695355

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This text attempts a broad theoretical synthesis within the field of sociology and its closely allied sister discipline of anthropology. It draws together these disciplines' theoretical approaches into a synthesized theory called Darwinian conflict theory.

Author : Geoffrey M. Hodgson
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 303 pages
File Size : 44,72 MB
Release : 2010-12
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0226346900

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A theoretical study dealing chiefly with matters of definition and clarification of terms and concepts involved in using Darwinian notions to model social phenomena.

Author : Robert Boyd
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 339 pages
File Size : 13,83 MB
Release : 1988-06-15
Category : Science
ISBN : 0226069338

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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.

Author : M. Schmid
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 270 pages
File Size : 40,18 MB
Release : 2012-12-06
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 940094005X

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In retrospect the 19th century tmdoubtedly seems to be the century of evolutionism. The 'discovery of time' and therewith the experience of variability was made by many sciences: not only historians worked on the elaboration and interpretation of this discovery, but also physicists, geographers, biologists and economists, demographers, archaelogists, and even philosophers. The successful empirical fotmdation of evolutive processes by Darwin and his disciples suggested Herbert Spencer's vigorously pursued efforts in searching for an extensive' catalogue of prime and deduced evolutionary principles that would allow to integrate the most different disciplines of natural and social sciences as well as the efforts of philosophers of ethics and epistemologists. Soon it became evident, however, that the claim for integration anticipated by far the actual results of these different disciplines. Darwin I s theory suffered from the fact that in the beginning a hereditary factor which could have his theory could not be detected, while the gainings of grotmd supported in the social sciences got lost in consequence of the completely ahistorical or biologistic speculations of some representatives of the evolutionary research programm and common socialdarwinistic misinterpretations.

Author : Marion Blute
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 251 pages
File Size : 29,8 MB
Release : 2010-01-14
Category : Science
ISBN : 0521768934

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Addresses today's major dilemmas in social scientific theory from the modern Darwinian sociocultural evolutionary approach.