Sex, Gender, Ethics and the Darwinian Evolution of Mankind
150 years of Darwin’s ‘Descent of Man’
- 294 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Sex, Gender, Ethics and the Darwinian Evolution of Mankind
150 years of Darwin’s ‘Descent of Man’
About this book
Sex, Gender, Ethics and the Darwinian Evolution of Mankind examines the impact of Darwin's Descent of Man on contemporary biology and the humanities.
Its publication in 1871 was a founding event in anthropology. Its content was primarily concerned with the development of sexual life, social life and intellectual life, not only as outcomes of evolution, but as components that have actively intermixed over time with the evolutionary mechanism of natural selection. The stamp of Darwinism on modern thought is still very important and brings novelties to academic studies. Several fields influenced by Darwinian anthropology developed in recent decades, including evolutionary ethics, the evolution of sociality and sexual communication in animal and plant species. Sociobiology and evolutionary psychology are topics that draw heavily on Darwin's Descent of Man. The understanding of Darwin's thought has also progressed greatly in recent decades, following the systematic study of Darwin's correspondence and notebooks, leading to a reassessment of the development of his thought on humans, social groups and heredity, and how they come together in his theory of evolution.
The book combines a historical perspective on Darwin's achievement and his legacy. It will be of interest to students and scholars in a variety of fields, from experimental biology to the social and historical sciences.
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Half-Title Page
- Series Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Table of Contents
- List of Contributors
- Preface
- 1 Darwin and the Descent of Man: Great revolutionary but no rebel
- 2 Reason and morality in the Descent of Man
- 3 Virtues according to Darwin: An unfinished and challenging journey 150 years later
- 4 Selections and analogies in Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) and Descent of Man (1871)
- 5 Sexual selection, by Jean Gayon: An interview with Victor Petit
- 6 What distinctions are usefully drawn today between natural and sexual selection?
- 7 Sexual selection, aesthetic choice and agency
- 8 Natural selection and the proportion of the sexes: The two conflicting versions (1871 and 1874)
- 9 Darwin’s model of sex ratio evolution in the first edition of Descent of Man and his mysterious retraction in the second
- 10 Darwin’s retraction on natural selection and sexes in the Descent of Man: A case study of Darwin’s use of statistical methodology to advance his evolutionary ideas
- 11 How Darwin dismissed his own discoveries about inbreeding and sex ratio
- 12 Darwin on the African ancestry of humans: Deduction and intuition
- 13 Darwin’s Descent, prehistoric archaeology and the origin of gender
- 14 “As man advances in civilisation …”: Darwin on the expanding circle of moral regard, from his day to ours
- 15 Psychology and social sciences: Darwinism within the limits of simple reason?
- 16 Evolutionary psychology from The Descent of Man to generalized Darwinism
- Index