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According to Ernst Mayr, professor of zoology at Harvard University, Darwin's most distinct contributions to evolutionary biology and ecology are as follows: "The first is the non-constancy of species, or the modern conception of evolution itself. The second is the notion of branching evolution, implying the common descent of all species of ...
Typically, five such ranks are recognized. The first one, the unique beginner, is extremely broad and has categories like plant or animal. Next is the life form level; life form taxa typically have names composed of a single word. The generic level is known to be the most important level of biological folk taxonomy.
A developmental model of the evolution of the mind, culture, and society was the result, paralleling the evolution of the human species: [23] "Modern savages [sic] became, in effect, living fossils left behind by the march of progress, relics of the Paleolithic still lingering on into the present."
Cultural transmission, also known as cultural learning, is the process and method of passing on socially learned information. [28] Within a species, cultural transmission is greatly influenced by how adults socialize with each other and with their young. Differences in cultural transmission across species have been thought to be largely ...
Cultural ecology as developed by Steward is a major subdiscipline of anthropology. It derives from the work of Franz Boas and has branched out to cover a number of aspects of human society, in particular the distribution of wealth and power in a society, and how that affects such behaviour as hoarding or gifting (e.g. the tradition of the potlatch on the Northwest North American coast).
Cultural group selection is an explanatory model within cultural evolution of how cultural traits evolve according to the competitive advantage they bestow upon a group. . This multidisciplinary approach to the question of human culture engages research from the fields of anthropology, behavioural economics, evolutionary biology, evolutionary game theory, sociology, and psycho
For example, a group where altruism was universal would indeed outcompete a group where every creature acted in its own interest, so group selection might seem feasible; but a mixed group of altruists and non-altruists would be vulnerable to cheating by non-altruists within the group, so group selection would collapse.
The science of classification, in biology the arrangement of organisms into a classification [4] "The science of classification as applied to living organisms, including the study of means of formation of species, etc." [5] "The analysis of an organism's characteristics for the purpose of classification" [6]