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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 ...
Memetics models cultural change after population genetics, taking cultural units to be analogous to genes. [1] A good example of this theory is found by looking to the reason large businesses tend to grow larger. The answer includes the benefits of mass production and distribution, international advertising, and more funds for product development.
Julian Steward thus linked multilinear evolution with the idea of cultural ecology. [4] Anthropologists Marshall Sahlins and Elman Service wrote a book, Evolution and Culture, in which they attempted to synthesize White's and Steward's approaches. Sahlins and Service argue that societies develop through a process of specialized adaptions to ...
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 evolution is an evolutionary theory of social change. It follows from the definition of culture as "information capable of affecting individuals' behavior that they acquire from other members of their species through teaching, imitation and other forms of social transmission". [1] Cultural evolution is the change of this information ...
Dual inheritance theory (DIT), also known as gene–culture coevolution or biocultural evolution, [1] was developed in the 1960s through early 1980s to explain how human behavior is a product of two different and interacting evolutionary processes: genetic evolution and cultural evolution.
At the same time, characteristics of a society go beyond technology, into its demographic and genetic characteristics; culture, including material; social organization and institutions. [6] Natural environment also plays a role, as does geographical location in general; as isolated societies have less chance to benefit from interaction with others.
Phylogenetic comparative methods (PCMs) use information on the historical relationships of lineages (phylogenies) to test evolutionary hypotheses.The comparative method has a long history in evolutionary biology; indeed, Charles Darwin used differences and similarities between species as a major source of evidence in The Origin of Species.