The Ant and the Peacock: Altruism and Sexual Selection from Darwin to TodayCambridge University Press, 1991 - 490 síður This book is a success story. It explains two long-running puzzles of the theory of natural selection. How can natural selection favour those, like the ant, that renounce tooth and claw in favour of the public-spirited ways of the commune? How can it explain the peacock's tail, flamboyant and a burden to its bearer; surely selection would act against useless ornamentation? Helena Cronin's enthralling account blends history, science and philosophy in a gripping tale that is scholarly, entertaining and eminently readable. The hardback edition was selected by Nature as one of the best scientific books in 1992. Also the New York Times chose it as one of their best books of 1992. The author divides her time between the Philosophy Department at the London School of Economics and the Zoology Department at Oxford. |
Efni
Walking archives | 3 |
A world without Darwin | 7 |
1859 and beyond | 35 |
Goodbye to all that | 47 |
Darwinism old and new | 53 |
Organism to gene | 59 |
Structures to strategists | 66 |
Complexities and diversities | 79 |
Until careful experiments are made | 205 |
Ghosts of Darwinism surpassed | 231 |
A happy ending to the peacocks tale | 243 |
Altruism now | 253 |
Altruism reanalysed | 264 |
Altruism then | 267 |
Altruism unseen | 274 |
Altruism levelled down | 283 |
Demarcations of design | 81 |
The scrapheap of chance | 87 |
Strange deviations tied together | 93 |
Artefacts of our minds | 106 |
The sting in the peacocks tail | 113 |
The career of a controversy | 118 |
Nothing but natural selection? | 123 |
Coloration for protection | 124 |
Coloration for recognition | 129 |
Explaining away display | 131 |
Coloration without selection | 133 |
Males for Darwin females for Wallace? | 146 |
A century of natural selection | 155 |
Can females shape males? | 165 |
Not choosing just looking | 167 |
The instability of a vicious feminine caprice | 168 |
The trouble with taste | 174 |
Do sensible females prefer sexy males? | 183 |
Not just a pretty tail | 186 |
Is good sense sensible? | 191 |
Good taste makes good sense | 201 |
The social insects Kind kin | 293 |
Make dove not war Conventional forces | 311 |
Human altruism A natural kind? | 325 |
Wise before the event | 353 |
Morality at enmity with nature | 367 |
Darwinian bodies Lamarckian minds | 371 |
Rhetorical skirmishes | 378 |
Breeding between the lines | 381 |
Speciating for the greater good | 387 |
Mating or weaning? | 390 |
The problem for Darwin and Wallace | 395 |
Incidental not endowed | 400 |
Incidental not selected | 402 |
Darwins adaptive interlude | 407 |
The power of natural selection | 416 |
Origins elusive | 425 |
EPILOGUE | 431 |
NOTE ON THE LETTERS OF DARWIN AND WALLACE | 433 |
439 | |
475 | |
Common terms and phrases
adaptationism adaptationist adaptive explanation advantage aesthetic altruism animals antlers apparently argument beauty behaviour Biology birds characteristics chromosomes claimed classical Darwinism colours competition Darwin and Wallace Darwin to Wallace Darwin's theory Darwinian Darwinian theory Dawkins dimorphism evidence evolution evolutionary evolved example explain extended phenotypic favour female choice female preference genes genetic handicap principle human Huxley hybrid idea individual insects interspecific sterility isolating mechanisms John Jenner Weir John Maynard Smith kin selection Kottler Lamarckian Lamarckism London look mate choice Maynard Smith Mayr modern Darwinism moral natural selection natural selection's Naturalist non-adaptive offspring organisms Origin of Species orthogenesis parasites particular peacock Peckham perhaps phenotypic effects pleiotropy pollen population predators principle problem reproductive selection pressures selectionist selective forces Seward sexual selection side effect social Sociobiology speciation strategy structure success survival T. H. Huxley taste theory of sexual University Press utilitarian-creationists variations Wallace to Darwin Wallace's
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