The evolution
In: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.c2737853
Title from caption. ; Published by: A.K. Butts, "A review of politics, religion, science, literature and art." ; Has occasional supplements. ; Mode of access: Internet.
In: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.c2737853
Title from caption. ; Published by: A.K. Butts, "A review of politics, religion, science, literature and art." ; Has occasional supplements. ; Mode of access: Internet.
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Die Begriffsgeschichte der Termini Revolution und Evolution ist bereits ausführlich und vielerorts nachgezeichnet worden. Ins Blickfeld geriet jedoch selten ein Übertragungs-, Rückübertragungs- und Veränderungsprozess, der sich vor allem ab Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts abspielte. Während dieses Zeitraumes prägte die Entdeckung der "geologischen Tiefenzeit" zunehmend den naturhistorischen Diskurs, und diese neue Zeit -Vorstellung überschnitt sich mit jener noch wirkmächtigeren politischen und geschichtsphilosophischen Zeit-Vorstellung, die durch die Französische Revolution ausgelöst wurde. Die Übertragungsprozesse von Revolution und Evolution überkreuzten sich in den Debatten der Aufklärung, und während eines bestimmten historischen Zeitraums strukturierten sie gemeinsam den Diskurs der "Geognosie" bzw. "Geogonie", wie zu dieser Zeit die Geologie avant la lettre zu meist genannt wurde. Die Herder'schen Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit können in diesem Kontext der Umbruchphase der Spätaufklärung als repräsentativ für diese semantischen Übertragungs- und Wanderungsbewegungen gelten, denn Revolution und Evolution sind entscheidende entwicklungslogische Interpretationskategorien in Herders geogonischem und geschichts-philosophischem Entwurf. Da Herder keinen Bruch zwischen Naturentwicklung (-geschichte) und Menschheitsentwicklung (-geschichte) sieht, sondern beides unter der Perspektive einer Fortschrittsidee subsumiert, gibt es bei ihm auch noch keine eindeutige Kategorisierung und Zuordnung von Evolution (zu Natur) und Revolution (zu Geschichte). Zugleich lassen sich die Mehrdeutigkeiten beider Begriffe sowie ihre sich beschleunigenden semantischen Verschiebungen besonders augenfällig am Beispiel des Herder'schen Textkorpus belegen, das aus diesem Grunde im Zentrum des vorliegenden Beitrags steht.
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Abstract Evolution is both a fact and a theory. Evolution is widely observable in laboratory and natural populations as they change over time. The fact that we need annual flu vaccines is one example of observable evolution. At the same time, evolutionary theory explains more than observations, as the succession on the fossil record. Hence, evolution is also the scientific theory that embodies biology, including all organisms and their characteristics. In this paper, we emphasize why evolution is the most important theory in biology. Evolution explains every biological detail, similar to how history explains many aspects of a current political situation. Only evolution explains the patterns observed in the fossil record. Examples include the succession in the fossil record; we cannot find the easily fossilized mammals before 300 million years ago; after the extinction of the dinosaurs, the fossil record indicates that mammals and birds radiated throughout the planet. Additionally, the fact that we are able to construct fairly consistent phylogenetic trees using distinct genetic markers in the genome is only explained by evolutionary theory. Finally, we show that the processes that drive evolution, both on short and long time scales, are observable facts.
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Values are a universal attribute of humankind. All humans have moral values; that is, they accept standards according to which their conduct is judged right or wrong, good or evil. People have also other sorts of values: economic, aesthetic, gastronomic, and so on. Where do moral values come from? Some moral values are widespread and perhaps universal, like not to kill, not to steal, and to honor one's parents. But the moral values by which people judge their behavior vary at present from culture to culture and have changed in important ways through historical times. Different ethnic groups, different nationalities, different tribes, and even different individuals exhibit different moral values and different norms by which they evaluate their actions. Think of the difference between a modern American and an Islamic fundamentalist with respect to the rights of women, or between most modern Americans and the official doctrine of the current Russian government concerning homosexuality.2 Darwin expressed horror at the burning of widows by Hindus and thought absurd the proscription of Muslim women to expose their faces.
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In: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015043511107
Each part preceded by half title not included in paging. ; Leaves inserted to follow p. 16, 22 and 149. ; Ancient and medieval.--American development.--Problematic world development. ; Mode of access: Internet.
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Since the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA's) inception during the Carter Administration in 1979, it has undergone a tumultuous history marked by a series of praised successess and grave failures. In its early stages, it was highly criticized for sluggish responses to crises as well as pervasive mismanagement. James Lee Witt revolutionized the agency, creating one of the most respected and efficient organizations in government. Although many people thought the progress he made would be long-lasting, the agency fell back into public criticism with a series of poor operations after Witt's departure, beginning with the 9/11 attack and peaking with its mismanagement of the Hurricane Katrina response. This paper examines how Witt transformed FEMA into a functional organization, as well as why it fell apart during the Bush Administration. It focuses on the key differences between how James Lee Witt and his successors handled the stages of emergency management strategy
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On December 29, 2016, the Croatian Parliament has bestowed upon our esteemed emeritus professor of economics Soumitra Sharma, the highest State Prize for Life Time Achievement in Social Sciences (2015). Professor Sharma has been one-time teacher of many of us and the founding Editor-in-Chief of ZIREB. Accordingly, as a tribute, I have thought it appropriate and worthwhile to evaluate and present to the readers his lifetime achievement in economics.
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While Unconventional Warfare (UW) remains a viable, low-cost method of indirect warfare, some of the assumptions underpinning traditional UW have diverged from reality in the last two decades. These include the idea that UW occurs mostly within denied areas; the categorisation of resistance movements into underground, auxiliary and guerrilla components; the model of a pyramid of resistance activities becoming larger in scale, more violent and less covert until they emerge 'above ground' into overt combat; and the assumption that the external (non-indigenous) component of UW primarily consists of infiltrated Special Forces elements, or support from governments-in-exile. Arguably these assumptions were always theoretical attempts to model a messy reality. But since the start of this century the evolution of resistance warfare within a rapidly changing environment has prompted the UW community to reconsider their relevance. This article examines that evolution and its implications. It begins with a historical overview, examines how drivers of evolutionary change are manifested in modern resistance warfare and considers the implications for future UW.
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While Unconventional Warfare (UW) remains a viable, low-cost method of indirect warfare, some of the assumptions underpinning traditional UW have diverged from reality in the last two decades. These include the idea that UW occurs mostly within denied areas; the categorisation of resistance movements into underground, auxiliary and guerrilla components; the model of a pyramid of resistance activities becoming larger in scale, more violent and less covert until they emerge 'above ground' into overt combat; and the assumption that the external (non-indigenous) component of UW primarily consists of infiltrated Special Forces elements, or support from governments-in-exile. Arguably these assumptions were always theoretical attempts to model a messy reality. But since the start of this century the evolution of resistance warfare within a rapidly changing environment has prompted the UW community to reconsider their relevance. This article examines that evolution and its implications. It begins with a historical overview, examines how drivers of evolutionary change are manifested in modern resistance warfare and considers the implications for future UW.
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Funder: MIT Media Lab ; Funder: King's College London ; Funder: Ethics and Governance of AI Fund ; Deception plays a critical role in the dissemination of information, and has important consequences on the functioning of cultural, market-based and democratic institutions. Deception has been widely studied within the fields of philosophy, psychology, economics and political science. Yet, we still lack an understanding of how deception emerges in a society under competitive (evolutionary) pressures. This paper begins to fill this gap by bridging evolutionary models of social good-public goods games (PGGs)-with ideas from interpersonal deception theory (Buller and Burgoon 1996 Commun. Theory 6, 203-242. (doi:10.1111/j.1468-2885.1996.tb00127.x)) and truth-default theory (Levine 2014 J. Lang. Soc. Psychol. 33, 378-392. (doi:10.1177/0261927X14535916); Levine 2019 Duped: truth-default theory and the social science of lying and deception. University of Alabama Press). This provides a well-founded analysis of the growth of deception in societies and the effectiveness of several approaches to reducing deception. Assuming that knowledge is a public good, we use extensive simulation studies to explore (i) how deception impacts the sharing and dissemination of knowledge in societies over time, (ii) how different types of knowledge sharing societies are affected by deception and (iii) what type of policing and regulation is needed to reduce the negative effects of deception in knowledge sharing. Our results indicate that cooperation in knowledge sharing can be re-established in systems by introducing institutions that investigate and regulate both defection and deception using a decentralized case-by-case strategy. This provides evidence for the adoption of methods for reducing the use of deception in the world around us in order to avoid a Tragedy of the Digital Commons (Greco and Floridi 2004 Ethics Inf. Technol. 6, 73-81. (doi:10.1007/s10676-004-2895-2)).
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Deception plays a critical role in the dissemination of information, and has important consequences on the functioning of cultural, market-based and democratic institutions. Deception has been widely studied within the fields of philosophy, psychology, economics and political science. Yet, we still lack an understanding of how deception emerges in a society under competitive (evolutionary) pressures. This paper begins to fill this gap by bridging evolutionary models of social good--public goods games (PGGs)--with ideas from Interpersonal Deception Theory and Truth-Default Theory. This provides a well-founded analysis of the growth of deception in societies and the effectiveness of several approaches to reducing deception. Assuming that knowledge is a public good, we use extensive simulation studies to explore (i) how deception impacts the sharing and dissemination of knowledge in societies over time, (ii) how different types of knowledge sharing societies are affected by deception, and (iii) what type of policing and regulation is needed to reduce the negative effects of deception in knowledge sharing. Our results indicate that cooperation in knowledge sharing can be re-established in systems by introducing institutions that investigate and regulate both defection and deception using a decentralised case-by-case strategy. This provides evidence for the adoption of methods for reducing the use of deception in the world around us in order to avoid a Tragedy of The Digital Commons.
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This paper proposes an original formal framework to analyze institutional evolution. Institutions have formal (F) and informal (N) aspects that may evolve at different paces, although eventually converging towards each other through an dynamic interactive process. N evolves with capital accumulation, as in learning by doing, and F is optimally chosen by the government who maximizes output given the social and political costs of changing F. As transaction-cost-reducing mechanisms, F and N together define the production technology and affect the income level. As consistent with the evidence, calibrations of the model reveal that optimum F exhibits a punctuated equilibra.
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Mikhalevich & Powell make a compelling case that some invertebrates may be sentient and that our moral obligations in the context of welfare should hence extend to them. Although the case is similar to that made for fishes, there is one obvious difference in that examples of invertebrate sentience probably arose independently from vertebrate sentience. We have unequivocal proof that complex cognition arose multiple times over evolutionary history. Given that cognition is our best tool for indirectly quantifying sentience, it seems highly likely that this multiple polygenesis may also have occurred for sentience. In acknowledging this, we must accept that the anthropocentric structure-function arguments that have surfaced in the context of pain are almost certainly too simplistic and cannot account for cases of convergent evolution.
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Malcolm Rutherford is Professor of Economics at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, and the leading authority on the history of American institutional economics. He has published widely on this topic in History of Political Economy, Journal of the History of Economic Thought, European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Journal of Economic Perspectives, and Labor History. He is the author of Institutions in Economics: The Old and the New Institutionalism (Cambridge University Press, 1994) and The Institutionalist Movement in American Economics, 1918-1947, Science and Social Control (Cambridge University Press, 2011). Professor Rutherford has served as President of the History of Economics Society and the Association for Evolutionary Economics.
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