Authors & Works cited in this section (citations below):
Abbo, Shahal & Gopher. “Near Eastern
Plant Domestication: A History of Thought. "One can imagine forms of reciprocal altruism in which the time-delay between the exchanged services is short, hence the need for record keeping minimal. Individual recognition is perhaps not necessary in such cases. This mechanism would approach mutualism as the time interval between exchanged favors becomes shorter.... This means that not all forms of reciprocal altruism require the cognition we tend to associate with it, such as scorekeeping, punishment of cheaters, attribution of intentions, and awareness of the respective costs of behavioral currencies." De Waal, Frans & S. Brosnan. 2006. "Simple and complex reciprocity in primates." Pp. 85-105. From Kappeler, P. & C. van Schaik (Eds). Cooperation in primates and humans: Mechanism and Evolutions. Springer. P. 86.
"The cognitively least demanding explanation of reciprocal altruism is that individuals interact based on symmetrical features of dyadic relationships which cause both parties to behave similarly to each other. This mechanism requires no scorekeeping since reciprocation is based on pre-existing features of the relationship, such as kinship, mutual association, and similarities in age or sex. It produces reciprocity without a strong contingency between given and received behavior. A certain mutuality in the exchange of benefits is probably required for the stability of any social relationship, but this can be achieved without careful record keeping. All that is required is an aversion to major, lasting imbalances in incoming and outgoing benefits. We believe that such moderately conditional mutual aid is common in primates, including people, not only among kin but also among close friends and associates.... "The second proposed mechanism is attitudinal reciprocity in which an individual’s willingness to cooperate cofluctuates with the attitude the partner shows or has recently shown. This ‘If you’re nice, I’ll be nice’ principle divorces cooperative interactions from the symmetrical state of the relationship, making them contingent upon the partner’s immediately preceding behavior. The principle appears to approximate mutualism, but with the difference that both parties do not benefit at the same time. The involvement of memory and scorekeeping seems rather minimal, as the critical variable is general social disposition rather than specific costs and benefits of exchanged behavior. "The third and final mechanism is calculated reciprocity, in which individuals reciprocate on a behavioral one-on-one basis with a significant time interval. This requires memory of previous events, some degree of scorekeeping, partner-specific contingency between favors given and received, and perhaps also punishment of cheaters." De Waal, Frans & S. Brosnan. 2006. "Simple and complex reciprocity in primates." Pp. 85-105. From Kappeler, P. & C. van Schaik (Eds). Cooperation in primates and humans: Mechanism and Evolutions. Springer. Pp. 103-4.
"... I argue that semantics develop as an interplay between communicative acts, in particular speech acts and already existing meaning conventions. From this perspective, we can draw no sharp boundary between pragmatics and semantics: semantics can be characterized as conventionalized pragmatics." Gärdenfors, Peter. 2014. Geometry of Meaning. MIT Press. P. 4. "According to the realistic approach to semantics, the meaning of a word or expression is something in the external world .... "According to the cognitive tradition, meanings are mental entities. The prime slogan for cognitive semantics has been meanings are in the head." Gärdenfors, Peter. 2014. Geometry of Meaning. MIT Press. P. 5.
"... a semantic theory based on meetings of minds will be presented. According to this view, the meanings of expressions do not reside in the world or (solely) in the image schemas of individual users but emerge from the communicative interactions of language users. Consequently, meanings are in the heads of the users." Gärdenfors, Peter. 2014. Geometry of Meaning. MIT Press. P. 18.
"There are two basic types of meetings of minds: one slow and one faster. The slow one concerns how a community adjusts its uses of words, gestures, and so on, so that they obtain relatively fixed meanings within the community that are largely independent of any particular communicative context.... "The fast type of meetings of minds concerns expressions that obtain their meaning during a communicative interaction.... "The fast process concerns the development of a shared world–common ground–during a dialogue or a similar exchange of communicative acts." Gärdenfors, Peter. 2014. Geometry of Meaning. MIT Press. P. 19.
"In connection with the dimensions of the color space [hue, saturation, and brightness], I would like to comment on their ontological status. I view them as theoretical constructs that are instrumental in systematizing and explaining the color similarity judgments. Other accounts of the color space use other dimensions, and the question of which model provides the best description of the data is still debated. I should also emphasize that the dimensions are seen in cognitive constructs, and they should not be mapped onto wavelengths or any other physical properties. The dimensions of the other domain that I discuss here have the same status. Whether the dimensions have a correspondence in the brain in the sense that they correspond to some neural structure or neural mechanism is a different question that I will not attempt to answer." Gärdenfors, Peter. 2014. Geometry of Meaning. MIT Press. P. 24.
"... our conceptual knowledge is organized into domains. This organization is necessary to make language learning possible. There is a difference in cognitive effort: grasping a new domain is a cognitively much more difficult step that adding new terms to an already established one.... "The main thesis is that a close parallel exists between the development of intersubjectivity and the development of semantic domains." Gärdenfors, Peter. 2014. Geometry of Meaning. MIT Press. P. 54.
"However, seeing language as a cause of human thinking is like seeing money as a cause of human economics. As long as humans have existed, they have been trading goods. But when a monetary system does emerge, it makes economic transactions more efficient. The same applies to language: hominins have been communicating since long before they had a language, but language makes the exchange of meanings more effective. "The analogy carries further: when money is introduced in a society, a relatively stable system of prices emerges. Similarly, when linguistic communication develops, individuals will come to share a relatively stable system of meanings, that is, components in their conceptual spaces, which communicators can exchange between each other. In game-theoretical terms, meanings are equilibrium points in a system of exchanges just as prices are. In this way, language fosters a common structure of the mental spaces of the individuals in a society: it leads to a meeting of minds." Gärdenfors, Peter. 2014. Geometry of Meaning. MIT Press. Pp. 72-3.
"... the evolution of meaning is best explained by assuming a coevolution of intersubjectivity, cooperation, and communication. Along similar lines, my aim here is to show that sharing meaning in different domains makes possible various new forms of cooperation. I take this as the central selective advantage of sharing semantic domains." Gärdenfors, Peter. 2014. Geometry of Meaning. MIT Press. P. 73.
"The possibility of achieving joint attention to absent entities via communication opens up new forms of cooperation–in particular toward future states." Gärdenfors, Peter. 2014. Geometry of Meaning. MIT Press. P. 73.
"In summary, my position is that intersubjectivity and the sharing of the corresponding semantic domains together constitute the decisive characteristics of human cooperation,..." Gärdenfors, Peter. 2014. Geometry of Meaning. MIT Press. P. 75.
"Ongoing research on linguistic interaction suggests that two or more individuals can sometimes form adaptive and cohesive systems... an alignment system – a loosely interconnected set of cognitive processes that have evolved to facilitate social interactions." Tollefsen, Deborah, R. Dale & A. Paxton. 2013. "Alignment, Transactive Memory, and Collective Cognitive Systems." Rev Phil Psych. 4:49-64. P. 50.
"Through processes of alignment participants in social interactions (such as conversation and joint action) become increasingly coupled, integrating subjects along multiple levels of cognition." Tollefsen, Deborah, R. Dale & A. Paxton. 2013. "Alignment, Transactive Memory, and Collective Cognitive Systems." Rev Phil Psych. 4:49-64. P. 50.
"In this study, the researchers video- and audio-recorded two people interacting while one directed another in a navigational task. Videos were coded for communicative behaviors across dozens of dimensions spanning a range of complexity, from low-level facial expressions (e.g., furrowing the eyebrows, smiling) to high-level linguistic contexts (e.g., explanation, asking questions). The researchers found that, on average, partners exhibited systematic temporal alignment across many of the channels. In addition, the extent of that alignment predicted how long they had been interacting (i.e., the longer the interaction, the higher the alignment) and task difficulty (i.e., the more difficult the directions, the higher the alignment). Put simply, the human interactive system becomes a more tightly coupled multichannel system as time goes on, potentially adapting over time and in the face of challenges." Tollefsen, Deborah, R. Dale & A. Paxton. 2013. "Alignment, Transactive Memory, and Collective Cognitive Systems." Rev Phil Psych. 4:49-64. P. 52.
"The webs of action and perception, memory and history, items and ideas that humans are entangled in is a dynamic and fundamental constituent of a human niche that is simultaneously constructed by and constructing of this human experience and is thus highly evolutionarily relevant.... "Human cultures are more than perceptions, beliefs, and behaviors–they are also rules, organizations, and so forth, with concrete structures and specified consequences. Cultural systems are interlaced with patterns of social constraint and facilitation, and this is potentially an evolutionary force." Fuentes, Augustin. 2016. "The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, Ethnography, and the Human Niche: Toward an Integrated Anthropology." Current Anthropology. V. 57. Supplement 13. S13-S26. Pp. S16-S17.
"The human niche framework I propose consists of three components that interface with evolutionary processes and that have mutual influence on one another: the individual, the group, and the community." Fuentes, Augustin. 2016. "The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, Ethnography, and the Human Niche: Toward an Integrated Anthropology." Current Anthropology. V. 57. Supplement 13. S13-S26. P. S18.
"Each core component in the human niche has its own evolutionarily relevant internal feedback processes. Within the individual, this feedback is across the life span between morphology, development, and behavior. For the social group, it is the feedback created by social relationships between members of the group, sexual interactions, and behaviors that occur at the group level via the coordination and relationships of the members. For the community, it is the feedback processes inherent in the relations between demography, institutions, beliefs, norms, and shared knowledge characterizing the community of interest." Fuentes, Augustin. 2016. "The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, Ethnography, and the Human Niche: Toward an Integrated Anthropology." Current Anthropology. V. 57. Supplement 13. S13-S26. Pp. S18-S19.
"The enculturation hypothesis assumes that other apes might share the basic neural architecture for cognitive capacities, such as theory of mind, but require a particular environment rich in dyadic interactions in order for these capacities to be fully realized. This hypothesis initially received strong support from studies indicating that apes reared by humans displayed stronger evidence for social learning, theory of mind, and other cognitive skills. However, when revisited years later, the growing ‘evidence’ for equivalent capacities in nonenculturated apes called the emphasis on rearing environment into question." Vonk, Jennifer, M. McGuire & Z. Johnson-Ulrich. 2015. "The Evolution of Social Cognition." Pp. 81-94. From: Zeigler-Hill, Virgil & L. Welling. Evolutionary Perspectives on Social Psychology. Springer. P. 84.
"The Vygotskian cultural intelligence model suggests that, whereas the development of cognitive abilities among primates in general was probably driven by social competition, the development of humans’ unique cognitive abilities was driven by social cooperation. Humans are equally capable of reasoning about both competitive and cooperative social interactions." Vonk, Jennifer, M. McGuire & Z. Johnson-Ulrich. 2015. "The Evolution of Social Cognition." Pp. 81-94. From: Zeigler-Hill, Virgil & L. Welling. Evolutionary Perspectives on Social Psychology. Springer. P. 84.
"Recently, researchers found that chimpanzees provided help to both humans and conspecifics, but, compared to children, helped less in collaborative compared to noncollaborative tasks. This finding supports the supposition that chimpanzees, unlike young humans, are more prepared to cooperate when focused on their own unique goals, rather than when focused on dyadic interactions." Vonk, Jennifer, M. McGuire & Z. Johnson-Ulrich. 2015. "The Evolution of Social Cognition." Pp. 81-94. From: Zeigler-Hill, Virgil & L. Welling. Evolutionary Perspectives on Social Psychology. Springer. P. 85.
"A subordinate baboon might learn that when hiding out of sight he is less likely to receive retaliation from a dominant male for mating with a female. His reasoning could be based entirely on his own viewpoint (behind an opaque barrier) rather than on making inferences about what the dominant male sees. Thus, he may be successful at manipulating the dominant’s behavior without attempting to alter his thinking." Vonk, Jennifer, M. McGuire & Z. Johnson-Ulrich. 2015. "The Evolution of Social Cognition." Pp. 81-94. From: Zeigler-Hill, Virgil & L. Welling. Evolutionary Perspectives on Social Psychology. Springer. P. 88.
"... it took tens to hundreds of trials for the chimpanzees to become successful at inhibiting nondeceitful information and then to develop misleading communicative cues. In contrast, human children deceive on similar tasks by the age of 5 years." Vonk, Jennifer, M. McGuire & Z. Johnson-Ulrich. 2015. "The Evolution of Social Cognition." Pp. 81-94. From: Zeigler-Hill, Virgil & L. Welling. Evolutionary Perspectives on Social Psychology. Springer. P. 88.
"Somewhat less abstract than inferring the mental states of others is the ability to form and reason about reputations attributed to others (i.e. reputation formation)." Vonk, Jennifer, M. McGuire & Z. Johnson-Ulrich. 2015. "The Evolution of Social Cognition." Pp. 81-94. From: Zeigler-Hill, Virgil & L. Welling. Evolutionary Perspectives on Social Psychology. Springer. P. 88.
"Hermann et al. found that some apes predicted the future behaviors of others based on their direct experience with them as well as the past interactions of another with a third party, preferring to approach an experimenter they had observed behaving generously to another individual over an experimenter that had behaved selfishly." Vonk, Jennifer, M. McGuire & Z. Johnson-Ulrich. 2015. "The Evolution of Social Cognition." Pp. 81-94. From: Zeigler-Hill, Virgil & L. Welling. Evolutionary Perspectives on Social Psychology. Springer. P. 88. Reference: Hermann, E., S. Keupp, B. Hare, A, Vaish & M. Tomasello. 2013. "Direct and indirect reputation formation in nonhuman great apes (Pan paniscus, Pan troglodytes, Gorilla gorilla, Pongo pygmaeus) and human children (Homo sapiens)." Journal of Comparative Psychology. 127:63-75.
"The finding that ‘reputation judgments’ may be widely distributed in the animal kingdom may suggest that there are simpler mechanisms by which animals attend to the past behaviors of others, without inferring that they maintain representations for continuous characteristics in social partners. Indeed, Subiaul et al. found that chimpanzees did not easily generalize selfish and generous behaviors to novel contexts." Vonk, Jennifer, M. McGuire & Z. Johnson-Ulrich. 2015. "The Evolution of Social Cognition." Pp. 81-94. From: Zeigler-Hill, Virgil & L. Welling. Evolutionary Perspectives on Social Psychology. Springer. P. 89. Reference: Subiaul, F., J. Vonk, S. Okamoto-Barth & J. Barth. 2008. "Do chimpanzees learn reputation by observation? Evidence from direct and indirect experience with generous and selfish strangers." Animal Cognition. 11:611-623.
"When given a cooperation task that requires two individuals to work together by simultaneously pulling ropes to obtain a reward, chimpanzees and elephants acted together, and elephants would even delay attempting the rope task until their partner arrived.... African grey parrots were also able to coordinate their actions to solve tasks, but did not inhibit their response when their partner was delayed." Vonk, Jennifer, M. McGuire & Z. Johnson-Ulrich. 2015. "The Evolution of Social Cognition." Pp. 81-94. From: Zeigler-Hill, Virgil & L. Welling. Evolutionary Perspectives on Social Psychology. Springer. P. 90.
"Prosocial preferences encompass behaviors that are intended to benefit others at some cost to the self, and are distinct from kin selection and mutualism." Vonk, Jennifer, M. McGuire & Z. Johnson-Ulrich. 2015. "The Evolution of Social Cognition." Pp. 81-94. From: Zeigler-Hill, Virgil & L. Welling. Evolutionary Perspectives on Social Psychology. Springer. P. 90.
"Even when testing mother-offspring pairs, chimpanzees showed no prosocial tendencies, further calling into question the conclusion that chimpanzees behave prosocially." Vonk, Jennifer, M. McGuire & Z. Johnson-Ulrich. 2015. "The Evolution of Social Cognition." Pp. 81-94. From: Zeigler-Hill, Virgil & L. Welling. Evolutionary Perspectives on Social Psychology. Springer. P. 90.
"Recently, Odling-Smee suggested that Laland et al.’s triple inheritance system is unnecessarily complicated and constraining. Instead, the original cultural and ecological inheritance systems can be collapsed into a single ecological inheritance system consisting of informatic as well as physical material and energy resources." Kendal, Jeremy, J. Tehrani & J. Odling-Smee. 2011. "Human niche construction in interdisciplinary focus." Philosophical Tansactions of the Royal Society: B. 366:785-792. P. 787. References: Odling-Smee, F.J. 2007. "Niche inheritance: a possible basis for classifying multiple inheritance systems in evolution." Biol Theory. 2:276-289. Laland, K.N., J. Odling-Smee & M. Feldman. 2000. "Niche construction, biological evolution, and cultural change." Behav. Brain Sci. 23:131-175.
"Kolb redefines life as a qualitative change in the complexity of organic chemical systems that is characterized by the ability of temporal self-maintenance and self-preservation." Gontier, Nathalie. 2016. "Guest-Editorial Introduction: Converging Evolutionary Patterns in Life and Culture." Evol Biol. 43:427-445. P. 434.
"Today major transition thinking follows a life of its own, but the epistemic tradition does not differ that much from systems and hierarchy theory because they build on the same vocabulary and they follow the diachronic sequence presented by the original hierarchy thinkers, going from individual replicators to unicellular to multicellular life forms and the sociocultural groups they form. Instead of focusing on the entities that make up the hierarchy, and the relations and interactions that exist between them, they often focus more on how the transition in ‘qualitative change’, ‘biological organization’ or ‘complexity’ comes about. While the original hierarchies served to describe the nature of the cosmos and later the evolutionary history of natural kinds in time, transition scholars try to give an explanation for biological organization and the transition from one level to another, by making use of natural selection theory which both implies a reductionist and a causally mechanistic stance." Gontier, Nathalie. 2016. "Guest-Editorial Introduction: Converging Evolutionary Patterns in Life and Culture." Evol Biol. 43:427-445. P. 436.
"Autopoiesis refers to the capacity of organisms to self-maintain and reproduce while ecopoiesis is the process whereby organisms interact with their habitats in such a way that they selectively take up compounds that enable them to self-maintain and excrete metabolic products that in turn modify the environment. Both autopoiesis and ecopoiesis lead to metabolic connectivity between organisms which in turn drives symbiogenesis." Gontier, Nathalie. 2016. "Guest-Editorial Introduction: Converging Evolutionary Patterns in Life and Culture." Evol Biol. 43:427-445. P. 437.
"Modeling these network-like relations or ‘evolutionary connectionism’ as the authors call it, is mathematically isomorphic to how scholars have modelled the evolution of learning systems. Following Hebb’s learning metaphor that states that ‘neurons that fire together wire together’ the authors examine how genes that are selected together are wired together in gene-regulatory networks; how two species that evolve in high density together will strengthen ecological interactions, and the more evolutionary units reproduce together, the more reproductive dependencies arise between them. These ecological interactions and reproductive dependencies include symbiosis and holobiont formation, ...." Gontier, Nathalie. 2016. "Guest-Editorial Introduction: Converging Evolutionary Patterns in Life and Culture." Evol Biol. 43:427-445. P. 438. Reference: "the authors" refers to Watson and coworkers in the same journal issue. Hebb, D. 1949. The Organization of Behavior. Wiley.
"The Pliocene transitions, in as much as the evidence can show it, appears to be related to patterns of locomotion and ranging behaviour, suggesting a novel habitat and ecological niche, arguably as the environment became more dominated by woodland and grassland. Inevitably, there would have been shifts in diet, behaviour and sociecology as the populations responded to the new environments, but the absence of archaeological evidence makes this hard to detect. Some indication of these is provided by the possible change in the reduction of canines and canine/premolar honing relationship (as seen Ardipithecus ramidus), and the change in isotope signature from C3 to mixed C3/C4 in Australopithecus afarensis at the end of this phase. The evidence suggests that the degree of committed terrestrial and arid specialization and adaptation was unique among apes." Foley, Robert. 2016. "Mosaic evolution and the pattern of transitions in the hominin lineage." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371:20150244. Pp. 8-10.
"The Plio-Pleistocene transitions are complex, and far better documented. These would be said to occur across the period from about 3.5 Ma to 1.5 Ma, an enormous span of time. The earliest elements of this transition would be the appearance of stone tools at Lomekwi dated to 3.3 Ma; others would include the first evidence for processing of animals using tools (3.4 Ma); the appearance of the genus Homo, or more precisely, phenotypes associated with the human lineage, namely larger brains, reduced post-canine dentition, less prognathic face and the development of distinctive supra-orbital tori." Foley, Robert. 2016. "Mosaic evolution and the pattern of transitions in the hominin lineage." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371:20150244. P. 10.
"There is little doubt that humans occupy a novel adaptive zone, unexplored before. In this context, it can be safely argued that human evolution comprises to a large extent the third level of evolutionary change, comparable with the first land creatures." Foley, Robert. 2016. "Mosaic evolution and the pattern of transitions in the hominin lineage." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371:20150244. P. 11.
"~5-4 Ma transition 1: time budgets and energetics of foraging in a novel environment... "~3-2 Ma transition 2: technology and new niches for high quality diets... "~0.5-0 Ma transition 3: reproductive ecology and social behaviour, underpinned by cultural and cognitive innovations and processes" Foley, Robert. 2016. "Mosaic evolution and the pattern of transitions in the hominin lineage." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371:20150244. P. 11.
"It is not one phase of becoming human that represents a major transition, but the cumulative effect of them, the processes of mosaic evolution, and the very recent extinction of all other hominins that enhances the distinctiveness of humans. The outcome is a fundamentally different species, whether, as Maynard Smith and Szathmary originally argued, this is one of the major transitions, or, as Szathmary later preferred, that it is, in comparison to other major changes, incomplete, is less important than being able to see in detail how major changes come about through microevolutionary changes." Foley, Robert. 2016. "Mosaic evolution and the pattern of transitions in the hominin lineage." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371:20150244. P. 12.
"While there may be some doubt about human evolution as a genuine radical transformation in evolution, there can be none about its consequences.... Lyons et al. have recently shown that, since the beginning of the Holocene 10,000 years ago, the rate at which patterns of covariation between species, some of which have been stable for as long as 300 Myr, have been broken has greatly increased. It has also been argued that human impact in the Holocene has resulted in the first major restructuring of trophic systems since the establishment of terrestrial herbivory in the late Permian. In that context, the evolution of humans is a major and irreversible transition." Foley, Robert. 2016. "Mosaic evolution and the pattern of transitions in the hominin lineage." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371:20150244. P. 12. Reference: Lyons, K.S. et al. 2015. "Holocene shifts in the assembly of plant and animal communities implicate human impacts." Nature. 529: 80-83.
"Several points emerge. First, if unsurprisingly, that human evolution is a gradual and cumulative process, best described as mosaic evolution. It is worth considering briefly what is meant by mosaic evolution. At the most local level it simply means that within a lineage, different traits evolve independently and at different times; this is the basis of Hublin’s accretion model of Neanderthal evolution. It is likely that within any lineage mosaic evolution at this level will occur, although due to pleiotropic effects there may also be degrees of coevolution, producing a more correlated evolutionary pattern. Thus, different traits appear and change at different times, and the rates of evolution vary not just between periods but also between elements of the hominin phenotype and extended phenotype. At a higher level, though, mosaic evolution is when different domains of evolution change at different times. Thus, one part of a lineage’s history might see rapid changes in dental patterns, while during another phase it is body size that changes. The pattern of hominin evolution described here fits this higher level form of mosaic evolution. The transitions described relate to the different elements of human evolution–ranging behaviour and energetics, foraging and diet, reproduction and life history, and cognition and behavioural transmission." Foley, Robert. 2016. "Mosaic evolution and the pattern of transitions in the hominin lineage." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371:20150244. P. 12.
"Second, the three transitions identified within a broader pattern of change are different elements of the mosaic; at its broades level, the first is about the changes in how hominins ranged across the landscape; the second is about the nature of the resources they acquired, and how they acquired them; and the third is about changes in reproduction and sociality. Only when this last was in place do we observe the full impact of cultural evolution as a rapidly accumulating process. This sequence–ranging, diet breadth and resource extraction, and socioecology–can be seen as the necessary building blocks for being a modern human." Foley, Robert. 2016. "Mosaic evolution and the pattern of transitions in the hominin lineage." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371:20150244. P. 12.
"Approaches to human evolution have traditionally focused on morphology, as fossils have been the source of information, and more recently genes, as these provide excellent markers of evolutionary history, but in each of the major transitions behavioural changes can be seen not just as important, but also chronologically earlier." Foley, Robert. 2016. "Mosaic evolution and the pattern of transitions in the hominin lineage." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371:20150244. P. 12.
"We have now evidence for around 20 fossil hominin species between 7 Ma and 18 Ka...." Haidle, Miriam N., M. Bolus, M. Collard, N. Conard, D. Garofoli, M. Lombard, A. Nowell, C. Tennie & A. Whiten. 2015. "The Nature of Culture: an eight-grade model for the evolution and expansion of cultural capacities in hominins and other animals." Journal of Anthropological Sciences. 93: 43-70. P. 44.
"The proposed integrative concept of cultural behavior and evolution differentiates between empirically traceable behavioral performances and behavioral capacities, as theoretical constructs. "Cultural performances are a subset of the behavioral performances of an individual, group, or population." Haidle, Miriam N., M. Bolus, M. Collard, N. Conard, D. Garofoli, M. Lombard, A. Nowell, C. Tennie & A. Whiten. 2015. "The Nature of Culture: an eight-grade model for the evolution and expansion of cultural capacities in hominins and other animals." Journal of Anthropological Sciences. 93: 43-70. P. 46.
"While cultural perfomances represent the actual sets of cultural attributes expressed by an organism or a group, cultural capacities of a defined analytical unit (species, population, or group) are theoretical constructs and express the potential range of cultural performances in different subunits at a given time." Haidle, Miriam N., M. Bolus, M. Collard, N. Conard, D. Garofoli, M. Lombard, A. Nowell, C. Tennie & A. Whiten. 2015. "The Nature of Culture: an eight-grade model for the evolution and expansion of cultural capacities in hominins and other animals." Journal of Anthropological Sciences. 93: 43-70. P. 49.
"The cultural capacity of, say, Homo heidelbergensis cannot be directly observed. It must be deduced from the sum of quasi-contemporaneous performances observed through the record of material culture preserved at different archaeological sites...." Haidle, Miriam N., M. Bolus, M. Collard, N. Conard, D. Garofoli, M. Lombard, A. Nowell, C. Tennie & A. Whiten. 2015. "The Nature of Culture: an eight-grade model for the evolution and expansion of cultural capacities in hominins and other animals." Journal of Anthropological Sciences. 93: 43-70. P. 50.
"‘Capacity’ in the sense of this paper refers to the maximum range of the evolutionary-biological, historical-social, and ontological-individual dimensions, and the specific functional environment as expressed in the varying performances of the subgroups of the unit under examination." Haidle, Miriam N., M. Bolus, M. Collard, N. Conard, D. Garofoli, M. Lombard, A. Nowell, C. Tennie & A. Whiten. 2015. "The Nature of Culture: an eight-grade model for the evolution and expansion of cultural capacities in hominins and other animals." Journal of Anthropological Sciences. 93: 43-70. P. 50.
"As an integrative structure for a systematic comparability of different archaeological remains and ethological data, we characterize the type of socially transmitted information by analyzing the ‘problem-solution distance’. The problem-solution distance (PSD) represents the behavioral route from perceiving a problem or need to its solution or satisfaction including possible loops or sidetracks.... Differences can be found in the number of active and passive attention foci necessary to solve a problem, and in the number of actions taken to satisfy a need." Haidle, Miriam N., M. Bolus, M. Collard, N. Conard, D. Garofoli, M. Lombard, A. Nowell, C. Tennie & A. Whiten. 2015. "The Nature of Culture: an eight-grade model for the evolution and expansion of cultural capacities in hominins and other animals." Journal of Anthropological Sciences. 93: 43-70. P. 52.
"Thus, the problem-solution capacities identified in tool behavior represent a minimum cultural capacity available to perform different types of cultural behavior." Haidle, Miriam N., M. Bolus, M. Collard, N. Conard, D. Garofoli, M. Lombard, A. Nowell, C. Tennie & A. Whiten. 2015. "The Nature of Culture: an eight-grade model for the evolution and expansion of cultural capacities in hominins and other animals." Journal of Anthropological Sciences. 93: 43-70. P. 52.
"Our model for the evolution and expansion of cultural capacities (EECC model) comprises eight grades. The model does not imply a progressive ladder, the climbing of which leaves the lower steps behind, but focuses on expansion of cultural capacities that extends the behavioral options and repertories while retaining the possibilities of earlier states." Haidle, Miriam N., M. Bolus, M. Collard, N. Conard, D. Garofoli, M. Lombard, A. Nowell, C. Tennie & A. Whiten. 2015. "The Nature of Culture: an eight-grade model for the evolution and expansion of cultural capacities in hominins and other animals." Journal of Anthropological Sciences. 93: 43-70. P. 53.
"The expansion of cultural capacity in eight grades. The basic four grades (‘social information, to ‘basic’) have been documented in some animal species, while the subsequent four (‘modular’ to ‘notional’) have, thus far, only been identified in the course of human evolution. With expanding cultural capacities the prominence of the historical-social dimension increases relative to the biological dimension." Haidle, Miriam N., M. Bolus, M. Collard, N. Conard, D. Garofoli, M. Lombard, A. Nowell, C. Tennie & A. Whiten. 2015. "The Nature of Culture: an eight-grade model for the evolution and expansion of cultural capacities in hominins and other animals." Journal of Anthropological Sciences. 93: 43-70. P. 54.
"Below we discuss the eight grades of expansion within our proposed model. "1. Socially facilitated information capacity.... Thus socially -derived homogeneity is arguably the most fundamental characteristic of ‘culture’. Examples other than joining foraging groupings include attraction to nest sites in colonially nesting birds, and to the mate choices of others (‘mate choice copying’). These phenomena are often referred to as ‘public information use’ or the exploitation of ‘inadvertent social information’... "2. Socially learned information capacity. When the acquisition of information via others has durable effects in an animal’s memory systems, a capacity for social learning is apparent. For example, an animal witnessing another’s successful foraging may learn things that shape its future behavior.... "3. Tradition capacity. Traditions are created when behavioral entities are transmitted through repeated social learning by individuals to become durable characteristics of an identifiable grouping of individuals... The type of socially transmitted information, culminating in traditions, depends on the kind of social learning involved, including mechanisms as imitation and emulation. For example, the transmission of birdsong dialects involves copying of the form of the songs themselves, rather than their results, whereas the transmission of tool use in chimpanzees, such as used in nut-cracking, appears to be focused more on emulative learning of the results of such action.... "4. Basic cultural capacity.... A criterion proposed by Whiten and van Schaik is that ‘cultures’ be recognized as constituted by multiple traditions that incorporate a diversity of behavioral forms. This criterion is evidenced most richly among non-human species in great apes such as chimpanzees and orangutans where variations extend to scores of behaviors spanning food processing, tool use, and aspects of social and sexual behavior.... "In contrast to direct behavior between subject and object, each tool-use event represents an extension of the PSD: instead of approaching a goal directly, at this level of tool behavior, attention has to be switched from the main goal (e.g., a nut) to a means to reach the goal (e.g., a hammerstone).... "5. Modular cultural capacity. This capacity is characterized by the development and use of a set of independent cultural units which can be used as behavioral modules, combined in different ways and put in an effective sequence by acting on and modifying each other. The socially transmitted information extends to behavioral units that are not exclusively bound to specific and acute problems. Instead, the elements of behavioral units (stimulus, concept of solution, goal) are increasingly abstracted and thus become applicable in different contexts.... "An extension of the PSD is represented by the use of one tool to manufacture another, evident already in the oldest known flaked stone tools of about 2.6 Ma. The use of the hammerstone is not directly linked to butchering a carcass to gain food, but it is an effective element in the process of flaking with the products (flakes) used for different cutting tasks.... "The extensive exhaustion of cores, with more than 70 flakes detached, indicates the production of cutting tools independent from an acute need, as does raw material transport over several kilometers. Both of these changes point to an increase in the decoupling of problem and solution in socially transmitted information.... As a consequence of the development of modular cultural capacities, freedom of action did not only broaden in a behavioral sense, but also spatially and temporally." "6. Composite cultural capacity. This capacity is defined by the development and use of a set of cultural modules with specific qualities which are fused to form composites, with new qualities. The socially transmitted information exceeds that of modular cultural capacities through combining separate information... Hafted tools and compound adhesives are typical material examples of such composites... Early evidence of composite cultural capacity reaches back at least 200 ka: At the site 8-B-11 on the Sudanese Nile Island Sai, core axes show micro-wear traces of wooden hafts.... "7. Complementary cultural capacity. Here we see the development and use of a set of cultural modules as an acting entity with two or more interdependent and exchangeable parts, like bow-and-arrow, needle-and-thread, screw-and-screwdriver, key-and-lock etc.... Evidence of complementary cultural capacity currently reaches back at least 64 ka in southern Africa where some Howieson’s Poort backed tools were used to tip arrows.... "8. Notional cultural capacity.... It is characterized by the development of notional concepts as cultural modules. Notional concepts are mentally constructed and socially shared entities and relationships that can be represented in a) the signification of objects/signs (e.g. cross, crescent, and Star of David as symbols of religions), b) systems of ideas (e.g. myths, religious beliefs, philosophical questions, constitutions of states), c) normative definitions (e.g metric and value systems), or d) virtual beings (e.g. angels) and characters (e.g. protecting capacities of an amulet.... "Different from purely physical modules, notional modules unfold their main potential only in social use.... However, notional cultural capacity becomes increasingly visible and powerful when the notional elements are not only socially transmitted, but are also socially applied within a complementary group. A piece of art remains bare ornamental craftsmanship when there is no further meaning linked to it, but its stimulating power is enhanced when its meaning is understood by other individuals. Money is worthless without a share concept of value, and writing not based on a socially accepted symbolic system remains scrawl.... "It is only around 40 ka ago that undisputable elements of figurative art occur in the archaeological record, which are accepted by most archaeologists as carriers of notional information." Haidle, Miriam N., M. Bolus, M. Collard, N. Conard, D. Garofoli, M. Lombard, A. Nowell, C. Tennie & A. Whiten. 2015. "The Nature of Culture: an eight-grade model for the evolution and expansion of cultural capacities in hominins and other animals." Journal of Anthropological Sciences. 93: 43-70. Pp. 53-59. Reference: Whiten, A. & C. van Schaik. 2007. "The evolution of animal ‘cultures’ and social intelligence." Philos Trans R. Soc B. 362:603-620.
"The grades of cultural capacity evolution in the EECC model presented above have been identified on the basis of expansions in the PSD observable in tool behavior. There might be other possible classifications of cultural development, but the later grades defined within our model can be detected in the archaeological record and can be combined with ethological data. It is assumed that each grade is accompanied by an expansion in the evolutionary-biological dimension such as gene expressions in the brain, the biological basis of natural pedagogy, or the different physical and mental properties necessary to perceive and produce language, completed by historical-social extensions." Haidle, Miriam N., M. Bolus, M. Collard, N. Conard, D. Garofoli, M. Lombard, A. Nowell, C. Tennie & A. Whiten. 2015. "The Nature of Culture: an eight-grade model for the evolution and expansion of cultural capacities in hominins and other animals." Journal of Anthropological Sciences. 93: 43-70. P. 60.
"1 Socially facilitated information Immediate response to social stimulus. "2 Social learning Durable response to social stimulus. "3 Tradition Durable transgenerational transmission of single independent behavioral units (stimulus, rough concept of solution, goal) "4 Basic Durable transgenerational transmission of sets of independent behavioral units (specific stimuli, rough concepts of solutions, specific goals) "5 Modular Durable transgenerational transmission of sets of independent cultural units which can be used as modules and combined in different ways in an effective sequence. "6 Composite Durable transgenerational transmission of sets of cultural modules which can be fused to form composites with new qualities. "7 Complementary Durable transgenerational transmission of sets of cultural modules as acting entity with interdependent parts (complementary set). "8 Notional Durable transgenerational transmission of notional concepts as cultural modules." Haidle, Miriam N., M. Bolus, M. Collard, N. Conard, D. Garofoli, M. Lombard, A. Nowell, C. Tennie & A. Whiten. 2015. "The Nature of Culture: an eight-grade model for the evolution and expansion of cultural capacities in hominins and other animals." Journal of Anthropological Sciences. 93: 43-70. P. 61.
"... just as epigenetic inheritance allows the cells in a multicellular organism to differentiate and profit from a division of labour, so language allows human individuals to coordinate and specialize in different tasks, and so also to profit from a division of labour." Powers, Simon, C. van Schaik & L. Lehmann. 2015. "How institutions shaped the last major evolutionary transition to large-scale human societies." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371: 20150098. P. 1.
"We propose to subdivide the major transition to large-scale human societies into four distinct, smaller transitions. (I) The origin of the human hunter-gatherer niche, characterized by large but hard to acquire food packages, allomaternal care and egalitarian social structure. (ii) The origin of language, a novel unlimited inheritance system that strongly facilitates cumulative cultural evolution and negotiation between individuals. (iii) The Neolithic revolution, which involved the shift to agricultural and sedentary populations with hierarchical social organization. (iv) The origin of states, where interactions regularly occur between non-kin who may never meet again." Powers, Simon, C. van Schaik & L. Lehmann. 2015. "How institutions shaped the last major evolutionary transition to large-scale human societies." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371: 20150098. P. 2.
"We will assume that the first transition, from a largely vegetarian primate living in fission-fusion societies in woodland landscapes, to a savannah-living partly carnivorous cooperative hunter type of living, was made possible by changes in social organization not unlike those seen in other lineages that ended up adopting a combination of cooperative breeding and hunting." Powers, Simon, C. van Schaik & L. Lehmann. 2015. "How institutions shaped the last major evolutionary transition to large-scale human societies." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371: 20150098. P. 2.
"Here, we develop the hypothesis that the human capacity to form institutions was a key driver of the transition to large-scale societies." Powers, Simon, C. van Schaik & L. Lehmann. 2015. "How institutions shaped the last major evolutionary transition to large-scale human societies." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371: 20150098. P. 2.
"In game theory, a game form defines the behavioural options–the ‘strategies’–available to each individual, and the relationship between strategies and outcomes." Powers, Simon, C. van Schaik & L. Lehmann. 2015. "How institutions shaped the last major evolutionary transition to large-scale human societies." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371: 20150098. P. 2.
"We follow Hurwicz in considering that an institution is a mechanism whose outcome is a game form. The hallmark of an institution is a sequence of at least two sets of social interactions: "(i) Active genesis of institutional rules through communication and bargaining by the individuals in a group. "(ii) Economic interactions whose outcomes are material, and which are affected by the institutional rules." Powers, Simon, C. van Schaik & L. Lehmann. 2015. "How institutions shaped the last major evolutionary transition to large-scale human societies." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371: 20150098. P. 3. Reference: Hurwicz, L. 1996. "Institutions as families of game forms." Jpn Econ Rev. 47: 113-132.
"We stress that the institution comprises the negotiation process as well as the resulting norms or rules of behaviour. This is in contrast to the cultural evolution literature, which equates institutions with equilibrium norms of behaviour in an economic game form, rather than with a political game form that generates rules for the economic game form." Powers, Simon, C. van Schaik & L. Lehmann. 2015. "How institutions shaped the last major evolutionary transition to large-scale human societies." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371: 20150098. P. 3.
"The formation of institutional rules can transform the ‘Hobbesian’ rules (or default rules) of the game of life into different rules that lead to more cooperative outcomes, but why is this? Since interactions are localized, it is important to realize that social life in hominins largely consists of a repetition of interactions that involve coordination or cooperation problems. For repeated interactions, the fundamental folk theorem of game theory tells us that cooperation can ultimately be sustained in an equilibrium by conditional strategies that respond to players’ past actions (reciprocity)." Powers, Simon, C. van Schaik & L. Lehmann. 2015. "How institutions shaped the last major evolutionary transition to large-scale human societies." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371: 20150098. P. 3.
"There are potentially three kinds of issues that can limit the application of the folk theorem to sustain equilibria with high individual material payoffs. Each of these can be addressed by institutions. The first potential problem stems from the fact that there are infinitely many equilibria with some level of cooperation. But many of these equilibria will give payoffs that are hardly any better than the minimax pay-off, while others will result in much greater pay-offs. If individuals act independently, then they have no means to guarantee that they will coordinate on an equilibrium that gives high individual pay-offs, and are likely to settle on the ‘default equilibrium’ determined by the default Hobbesian rules of interactions. Institutions can resolve this problem, because they provide a means for individuals to amalgamate dispersed information about resources and wants, and hence coordinate their actions to reach an equilibrium that gives higher pay-offs than the default equilibrium. By devising rules of interactions individuals settle on an equilibrium, transforming the social contract from one that gives only the pay-off of the Hobbesian equilibrium, to one where the benefits of cooperation are achieved." "The second issue is that individuals need to value future pay-offs, and the game needs to be indefinitely repeated. Institutional rules can help to make these conditions hold. For example, Casari describes the development of institutional rules to govern the use of common agricultural land in the Italian Alps, between AD 1200 and 1800. The rules which most villages ended up adopting tied families and their future descendants into the group, by requiring that the sale or purchase of rights to use the communal land was subject to a majority vote among the other villagers. This ensured that individuals would then care about their future pay-offs and that there was no simple way to end the game. "The third issue is that individuals need to have sufficient information about the past behaviour of other individuals, a problem which becomes all the more pressing as group size increases. Institutional rules can help to alleviate these problems by facilitating the spread of information between group members. For example, extant groups managing common-pool resources from irrigation systems to shared grazing lands make agreements to appoint individuals to act as monitors and regularly hold assemblies of all group members to share information." Powers, Simon, C. van Schaik & L. Lehmann. 2015. "How institutions shaped the last major evolutionary transition to large-scale human societies." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371: 20150098. Pp. 3-4. Reference: Casari, M. 2007. "Emergence of endogenous legal institutions: property rights and community governance in the Italian alps. J. Econ. Hist. 67: 191-226.
"Institutions involve individuals bargaining over rules to structure their social interactions. This means that they first need to be able to foresee alternative social contracts, and then communicate and negotiate over them in order to improve over the default Hobbesian rules. This requires at least three types of advanced cognitive features. (i) To devise alternative rules of interactions, individuals need to be able to create virtual worlds. This requires planning, imagination, causal understanding, large working memory and the ability to anticipate future rewards. (ii) To communicate and bargain efficiently over their rules of interactions, individuals need language and a motivation to seek out information and knowledge, have shared intentionality, and a fully developed theory of mind. (iii) To reach consensus, individuals need a strong willingness to seek out mutual opportunities, as well as strong inhibitory control." Powers, Simon, C. van Schaik & L. Lehmann. 2015. "How institutions shaped the last major evolutionary transition to large-scale human societies." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371: 20150098. P. 5.
"Comparative studies show that cooperative breeding changes the psychology of primates, and indeed other mammals such as elephants and African wild dogs, when compared to their non-cooperatively breeding sister taxa. These studies imply that cooperative breeding selects for a high social tolerance and prosocial motivations, leading to a marked increase in socio-cognitive abilities. What is unique in homo is that cooperative breeding and the consequent prosocial psychology were added on top of an already existing large-brained ape-like cognitive system, inherited from our earlier hominin (australopithecine) ancestors. This created the potential for a more advanced social cognition than that see in other cooperatively breeding species." Powers, Simon, C. van Schaik & L. Lehmann. 2015. "How institutions shaped the last major evolutionary transition to large-scale human societies." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371: 20150098. Pp. 5-6.
"Both the biased-cultural-transmission and the institutional-path hypotheses rely fundamentally on cultural evolution, and thus involve social learning. The main difference is the conception of rationality with which individuals are endowed. Under the institutional-path hypothesis, individuals are assumed to have high levels of cognition and rationality, enough at least to respond adaptively to their social environment and reinforce individually beneficial actions under most circumstances. But it does not require conformity- or prestige-biased transmission at all. While conformity is surely important in humans and other primates, we also know that humans are flexible with their investment in cooperation depending upon the context and that there is strong within-culture variation in the social learning strategies that individuals employ. The institutional-path hypothesis better fits with these finding, by not requiring within-group homogeneity of behaviour or preferences." Powers, Simon, C. van Schaik & L. Lehmann. 2015. "How institutions shaped the last major evolutionary transition to large-scale human societies." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371: 20150098. P. 8.
"... sociology is becoming more open to biological suggestions, just at a time when biology is becoming more social." Meloni, Maurizio. 2014. "How biology became social, and what it means for social theory." The Sociological Review. 62: 593-614. P. 594.
"In explaining why there are no simple languages, he [Deacon] showed that animal signals, because they are about the here and the now, could be acquired through associative learning. That is not true of words. Names, for example, are not routinely used in the presence of their bearer, so a naive subject could not learn to associate a distinctive sound with the presence of a particular individual." Sterelny, Kim. 2016. "Deacon’s Challenge: From Calls to Words." Topoi. 35: 271-282. P. 271.
"Causal descriptivism recognises the social dimension of meaning and reference. For example, I can talk about Feynman and about hadrosaurs, despite my never having met Feynman or handled a hadrosaur fossil, because I am part of a speech community, part of a network, and so my uses of ‘Feynman’ and ‘hadrosaur’ are causally linked to those who know (or knew) the man and to those who know the fossils. There is a ‘division of linguistic labour’, and that allows my uses of ‘Feynman’ to depend on others, on information-preserving causal chains, in which each link in the chain is a sentence token containing ‘Feynman’ and carrying information about Feynman. The whole network leads back to Feynman and to the use of the name in his presence. The great expressive richness of language depends in part on this division of linguistic labour." Sterelny, Kim. 2016. "Deacon’s Challenge: From Calls to Words." Topoi. 35: 271-282. P. 272.
"Causal descriptivism also recognises the cognitive sophistication of users of a name. For users of referential terms are aware of the causal networks that support their semantic competence, and that awareness is part of their referential competence. Our capacity to use names to index information about spatiotemporally distant places and things–as long-range demonstratives–depends not just on the existence of these linguistic-cum-causal chains that link our use of a name to its referent, but to our recognition of the existence of such chains, and on our intention to use a name in a further extension of the network." Sterelny, Kim. 2016. "Deacon’s Challenge: From Calls to Words." Topoi. 35: 271-282. P. 272.
"Such flexibility is manifest in a marginal way in my creating a nickname for a possum, but it is fundamental to one distinctive and important feature of language. We can routinely expand its expressive powers by coining new lexical items. Ray Jackendoff has pointed out that our indefinitely and readily expandable lexicon is one of the great divides between human language and animal communication systems. This capacity to freely innovate is semantic rather than morphological or phonological. We cannot add new phonemes or make syntactic innovations at will." Sterelny, Kim. 2016. "Deacon’s Challenge: From Calls to Words." Topoi. 35: 271-282. P. 273. Reference: Jackendoff, Ray. 1999. "Possible stages in the evolution of the language capacity." Cogn Sci. 3(7): 272-279.
"Skyrms thus shows that communication can be part of the environmental context in which intelligence evolved, rather than a capacity which depends on the prior existence of intelligent agents,...." Sterelny, Kim. 2016. "Deacon’s Challenge: From Calls to Words." Topoi. 35: 271-282. P. 274. Reference: Skyrms, B. 2010. Signals: evolution, learning and information. Oxford UP.
"As just noted, the emergence of informative signalling, and of adaptive response to informative signals, does not depend on agents recognising their activities as signals or as responses to signals. The entire recognition-signal-reception-action loop can be reflexlike. Language is structured; it is not stimulus bound; it has devices which distinguish imperative from indicative content." Sterelny, Kim. 2016. "Deacon’s Challenge: From Calls to Words." Topoi. 35: 271-282. P. 274.
"First: on a gesture-first view, explaining the emergence of a structured system is much less challenging, for even simple gesture sequences are structured. If I point in the direction of a tree, and flap my arms, one element of the sequence indicates direction, the other, the target. Moreover, once we note that communicative demands were increasing as human technical skills improved, we can begin to explain the emergence of stimulus-independent signals." Sterelny, Kim. 2016. "Deacon’s Challenge: From Calls to Words." Topoi. 35: 271-282. P. 274.
"By the Middle Pleistocene, perhaps even by the early Pleistocene, human artefact production depended on the internal representation and internal control of complex, tightly integrated, and rather error-intolerant sequences of action. In the first instance, these internally initiated and controlled action systems had resource-acquisition upshots; they produced tools rather than communicative displays. However, since their execution was under control of an internal template, not an external stimulus, the sequences could be initiated in the absence of their normal material substrate. Moreover, these skills were transmitted through social learning. Selection for enhanced social learning makes the details of what others were doing with their hands and bodies salient. Given the cognitive mechanisms already in place, those early humans would have only needed relatively modest theory of mind capacities and communicative intent, to turn functional action sequences under the control of inner templates into structured, stimulus independent signals." Sterelny, Kim. 2016. "Deacon’s Challenge: From Calls to Words." Topoi. 35: 271-282. Pp. 274-5.
"Cues can turn into signals without anyone noticing the process. An infant lifts her arms to be picked up, and as that habit is repeated it becomes a signal of the desire for contact, and the signal becomes conventionalised by a quite automatic and unreflective process. Initial stages of planned activities are potential cues, and these too might be recruited and ritualised as signals. Likewise, practice–say, an adolescent practicing spear-throwing at a target–might trigger the desire to actually hunt, both in an audience and in the agent himself, by some contagion-like process, and thus becomes reinforced as a signal to hunt, without reflective understanding being essential to the process." Sterelny, Kim. 2016. "Deacon’s Challenge: From Calls to Words." Topoi. 35: 271-282. Pp. 276-7.
"Once gesture is no longer predominantly iconic, or replaced by arbitrary vocal signals, intention and interpretation seem to be essential." Sterelny, Kim. 2016. "Deacon’s Challenge: From Calls to Words." Topoi. 35: 271-282. P. 277.
"I have argued elsewhere that these foragers [between 1,000 and 500 kya perhaps with the Heidelbergensians] depended on teamwork, not just mobwork, for their foraging economy was based on large game hunting with short-ranged weapons, and for such an enterprise to be regularly successful in delivering resources at tolerable risk levels to the participants, these hunts very likely (1) depended on the mass firepower of the adult males of the band; (2) natural history expertise: both endurance hunting and ambush hunting depend on sophisticated knowledge of targets and terrain; (3) some collective planning and decision making, especially if ambush hunting is important. A band cannot just wander through its territory in the hope of a fortunate encounter, and ambush hunting depends on a division of labour, with some hunters beating and driving potential prey into ambush sites. (4) coordination at the point of contact. This foraging strategy implies reasonably sophisticated theory of mind skills: these foragers needed to know what each other wanted and intended. "Impressive though these ancient foragers were, there remained quite important differences between these half a million years gone foragers and sapiens foragers of the later Pleistocene. These older humans (1) show no signs of lives organised around ritual or religious belief; (2) they did not yet occupy the more challenging terrestrial habitats–the arid lands, the high latitudes; (3) they exploited a narrower range of resources; (4) their material culture was less rich. Given both their quite challenging foraging life-ways, but also their simpler social and economic lives, what were their communicative needs?" Sterelny, Kim. 2016. "Deacon’s Challenge: From Calls to Words." Topoi. 35: 271-282. P. 277.
"In face to face interaction, specific individuals can picked [sic] one another out by pointing, through demonstratives or deictic pronouns. Heidelbergensians, then, might not have needed anything like proper names; they did not have a pressing need to communicate about absent agents. Given rich common knowledge, fairly short time horizons, and the narrow option pool, quite limited communication tools would enable these agents to settle in advance: What shall we go afer: Where shall we go? Who does what? This scenario envisages communicative and theory of mind capacities in advance of any living great apes, but not a saltationist leap from great ape capacities." Sterelny, Kim. 2016. "Deacon’s Challenge: From Calls to Words." Topoi. 35: 271-282. P. 278.
"Ethnolinguistially known foragers develop very rich local flora and faunas. In some cases, foragers are able to recognise thousands of species. No individual invents such a flora herself. These develop across multiple generations, and as these systems of local natural history information became larger and more accurate, this depended increasingly on high volume, high fidelity information flowing between generations. In this process, surely labels help. Labels make small differences between similar species salient, and they serve as memory tags. So while the core foraging adaptation probably depended on a relatively modest advance in communicative capacity, this load on social learning selected for further expansion of communicative capacity." Sterelny, Kim. 2016. "Deacon’s Challenge: From Calls to Words." Topoi. 35: 271-282. P. 278.
"The structured character of a mime makes it possible to extract a stage of one mime, and combine it with another, to create a new routine (harvesting grain; grinding ochre, to grinding grain). The structured nature of mime makes recombination in principle possible." Sterelny, Kim. 2016. "Deacon’s Challenge: From Calls to Words." Topoi. 35: 271-282. P. 278.
"So the core foraging strategy of mutualist foragers living perhaps 600 kya depended only on modest communicative skills, and ones which might have initially expanded from in-the-moment gestural systems by relatively simple, Skyrms-style mechanisms. But if the foraging strategy is supported with active assistance in the acquisition of crucial skills, and with increasingly high volume social learning about the band’s biological and physical environment, those foragers would hit the limits of iconic and quasi-iconic representation. Within those limits, those agents will find it impossible to fully label their world. Since iconicity is a matter of degree, the shift away from an iconic system can be gradual. But a shift from iconic labels–an abbreviated, stylised ‘stott’ for gazelles–to arbitrary signs in turn selects for shift to verbal labels, and locally intelligent tinkering with communicative tools. Verbal labels allow agents to act and communicate at the same time, and they ease the burden on multi-party interactions. Liz Irvine has pointed out to me that gestural interaction is difficult between three or more, for at least one party to the interaction is out of another’s line of sight. Moreover, visual attention is a scarce resource, ... "On this picture, Heidelbergensian foragers evolved from a very limited gestural system depending heavily on iconicity and association towards a cut-down protolanguage-like system, probably based increasingly on verbal signals, and probably requiring intelligent tinkering to extend the repertoire. That shift would be driven by selection to expand their menu of quasi-kind terms to map their environment: for its plants, animals, physical and geographic features." Sterelny, Kim. 2016. "Deacon’s Challenge: From Calls to Words." Topoi. 35: 271-282. P. 279.
"Between 500 and 100 kya there was a technical, economic and social revolution, one demanding upgraded language. These later Pleistocene foragers continued to live in a cooperative social world in which sharing played a central role, but the engine of cooperation was direct and indirect reciprocation. The projectile revolution, and (probably) the depletion of some of their favoured large game targets changed the balance between foraging as a single unit, and splitting into much smaller parties, often with different targets. These later sapiens foragers often lived in more spatially and temporally extended fission-fusion units. Different resources deplete at different rates, so once foragers shift to broad spectrum foraging, there is a tendency to transition from residential mobility (where the whole band moves as a unit) to logistical mobility (where the demographic core of the band moves less often, but work teams harvesting specific resources fission of the from [sic] the band for days or weeks. Reciprocation-based cooperation was still profitable, but more cognitively and motivationally challenging, as agents need to monitor their obligations and rewards over more diverse resources and longer time frames. "These cognitive and motivational changes had communicative implications as well. I have discussed some of these elsewhere. I shall take up just one element of those implications here. The stability of cooperation based on reciprocation depends on accurate information about other agents and their deeds. In spatiotemporally extended fission-fusion social environments, accurate information about third parties requires gossip agents passing on information (perhaps via intermediaries) about others and what they have done. By 100 kya, information-preserving causal chains about specific individuals played a central role in social life, because groups were more spatio-temporally dispersed and because tracking reputation really mattered." Sterelny, Kim. 2016. "Deacon’s Challenge: From Calls to Words." Topoi. 35: 271-282. P. 279.
"He [Gamble] thinks kinship systems and various other cultural institutions emerged through this period, with their linguistic and cultural prerequisites to underwrite the stability of these long-distance social links." Sterelny, Kim. 2016. "Deacon’s Challenge: From Calls to Words." Topoi. 35: 271-282. P. 280. Reference: Gamble, C. 1998. "Palaeolithic society and the release from proximity: a network approach to intimate relations." World Archaeol. 29(3): 426-449.
"The upshot, then, is that history made history contingent (or more contingent), through the historical emergence of hierarchical command-and-control systems. These systems make historical trajectories sensitive to the decisions of a few individuals and to the accidents that place specific individuals, with their idiosyncrasies, in pivotal roles. Moreover, in those cases in which the customary, normative, and institutional constraints on leadership are weak, these command-and-control systems accentuate the tendency for decision making to be erratic and unstable (and hence unpredictable), since these decisions are sensitively dependent on the momentary whims of the great and powerful." Sterelny, Kim. 2016. "Contingency and History." Philosophy of Science. 83. October. Pp. 521-539. P. 536.
"Sometimes, and most obviously in command-and-control institutional settings, the cultural and institutional context amplifies the effects of the decisions of just a few of those agents, making their decisions and actions immensely consequential to the lives of many others, then and later. To the extent that this is true, for this is a matter of degree, historical trajectories are contingent. Moreover, even where they exist and are efficient, hierarchical command-and-control systems have limited scope. In contrast to such command-and-control systems, institutional and cultural factors sometimes result in trajectories that depend on the summed decisions of many agents; these population-based causal trajectories [e.g. continual Nuer depredations on the Dinka in the 19th century because of cultural differences in bridewealth or population decline in industrial Europe in the 19th century because of different economic choices on children for those living in cities] tend to be robust." Sterelny, Kim. 2016. "Contingency and History." Philosophy of Science. 83. October. Pp. 521-539. P. 537.
"We suggest, however, that what constitutes cognition in the organization sciences is too often narrowly construed. This potentially leads to an incomplete understanding of team processes and the many factors leading to successful performance, particularly when teams are made up of a hybrid of humans and technology." Fiore, Stephen & T. Wiltshire. 2016. "Technology as Teammate: Examining the Role of External Cognition in Support of Team Cognitive Processes." Frontiers in Psychology. October. 7: 1531. P. 2.
"In short, we suggest that team cognition research lacks the conceptual scaffolds necessary to examine how artifacts and associated technologies are related to team process and performance." Fiore, Stephen & T. Wiltshire. 2016. "Technology as Teammate: Examining the Role of External Cognition in Support of Team Cognitive Processes." Frontiers in Psychology. October. 7: 1531. P. 2.
"We describe DSA [distributed system awareness], interactive team cognition (ITC) theory, and macrocognition in teams (MiTs) theory from cognitive engineering, and extended cognition theory from cognitive science to better understand the increasingly prevalent role technology plays as a form of external cognition in complex collaborative work domains." Fiore, Stephen & T. Wiltshire. 2016. "Technology as Teammate: Examining the Role of External Cognition in Support of Team Cognitive Processes." Frontiers in Psychology. October. 7: 1531. P. 3.
"Researchers studying cognition embedded in rich, real-world environments, developed the concept of macrocognition, a term that embodies a shift away from the traditional micro-view of cognition to describe how cognition operates when faced with complexity. Broadly, macrocognition includes the ideas that: (a) across natural and artificial cognitive systems, the process and product of cognition will be distributed; (b) cognition is not self-contained and finite, but a continuance of activity; (c) cognition is contextually embedded within a social environment; (d) cognitive activity is not stagnant, but dynamic; and (e) artifacts aid in nearly every cognitive action." Fiore, Stephen & T. Wiltshire. 2016. "Technology as Teammate: Examining the Role of External Cognition in Support of Team Cognitive Processes." Frontiers in Psychology. October. 7: 1531. P. 5.
"Taken together, this research provides a foundation for seeing teams, their technology, and the resultant externalizations, as a distributed cognitive system." Fiore, Stephen & T. Wiltshire. 2016. "Technology as Teammate: Examining the Role of External Cognition in Support of Team Cognitive Processes." Frontiers in Psychology. October. 7: 1531. P. 6. "In the organizational sciences, the concept of materiality and sociomaterial[it]y are often used to capture how some artifact, loosely defined, influences, and is influenced by, work processes." Fiore, Stephen & T. Wiltshire. 2016. "Technology as Teammate: Examining the Role of External Cognition in Support of Team Cognitive Processes." Frontiers in Psychology. October. 7: 1531. P. 6.
"Relevant to this paper, reviews in the organizational sciences note that most studies in areas relevant to cognition (e.g., decision-making, strategic thinking), have not considered how technology influences these complex processes.... "Despite the conceptual connection of such ideas to the notion of artifacts, socio-materiality operates at a level above teamwork. That is, it transcends work in teams and represents objects that connect, not necessarily individuals within a team, but groups of people within an organization, and even entire communities of practice. As such, this body of research has not had an influence on, let alone been integrated with, team cognition. But fields that focus more on technology and its relation to team functions [e.g. Information Systems, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)], come close to addressing this gap through the development of the concept of boundary objects." Fiore, Stephen & T. Wiltshire. 2016. "Technology as Teammate: Examining the Role of External Cognition in Support of Team Cognitive Processes." Frontiers in Psychology. October. 7: 1531. P. 7.
"Early research on boundary objects suggests that they foster cooperation between diverse communities of stakeholders through creation of a shared identity. Additionally, boundary objects were seen as a a means of both knowledge transfer, and a method for translating meaning across an organization utilizing shared information systems." Fiore, Stephen & T. Wiltshire. 2016. "Technology as Teammate: Examining the Role of External Cognition in Support of Team Cognitive Processes." Frontiers in Psychology. October. 7: 1531. P. 7.
"In sum, boundary objects can be characterized as externalizations of cognition and may take the form of drawings, charts, graphs, prototypes, or models generated by team members as well as tools used for project management, such as timelines and Gantt charts, or schedules and tables." Fiore, Stephen & T. Wiltshire. 2016. "Technology as Teammate: Examining the Role of External Cognition in Support of Team Cognitive Processes." Frontiers in Psychology. October. 7: 1531. P. 8.
"Offloading is generally the act of using the environment as a semi-permanent archive for information that can be readily available and accessed when needed, but it also [can be] used to mitigate encoding and short-term memory demands. As such, offloading primarily serves the purpose of a memory aid that can free up cognitive resources that can then be allocated toward other team processes. In this sense, it replaces what was previously an internal form of cognitive processing such as holding an item in working memory or retrieving something from long-term memory." Fiore, Stephen & T. Wiltshire. 2016. "Technology as Teammate: Examining the Role of External Cognition in Support of Team Cognitive Processes." Frontiers in Psychology. October. 7: 1531. P. 11.
"Scaffolding takes the form of externalizations of cognition that directly support team-level processes by helping to mediate and support the interaction between individual and team-level cognitive activity. Scaffolding, in this sense, supports social interaction broadly, as well as the analysis, discussion, debate of items relevant to the team’s task, and the development of the teams shared understanding. Specifically, technological scaffolds can help teams externalize and share knowledge by allowing for the representation and discussion of information and ideas, provide storage and access to team-level information allowing for more informed comparisons and evaluations, and act as a means for social-cognitive interaction that facilitates conversation, communication, and collaboration." Fiore, Stephen & T. Wiltshire. 2016. "Technology as Teammate: Examining the Role of External Cognition in Support of Team Cognitive Processes." Frontiers in Psychology. October. 7: 1531. P. 11.
"In Scott-Phillips’s opinion, in fact, ostensive communication ‘is not only intentional, it is overtly intentional. In other words, not only [is] signal used in a voluntary (i.e., intentional) way, but this fact is made explicit (overt) to the audience, and this explicitness contributes to successful comprehension." Ferretti, Francesco. 2016. "The Social Brain is not enough: On the importance of the ecological brain for the origin of language." Frontiers in Psychology. August. V. 7. 1138. P. 3. Reference: Scott-Phillips, T.C. 2015. "Nonhuman primate communication, pragmatics, and the origins of language. Curr. Anthropol. 56:56-80.
"Studies that demonstrated chimpanzees’ ability to deliberately solicit the attention of others before gesturing evinced that these animals are capable of ostensive communication...." Ferretti, Francesco. 2016. "The Social Brain is not enough: On the importance of the ecological brain for the origin of language." Frontiers in Psychology. August. V. 7. 1138. P. 4.
"According to Bickerton, the selective pressures at the origin of language has to be referred to the type of social relationships (the recruitment) required by scavenging, the prevailing activity of food procurement in the Oldowan niche... Therefore, it is exactly in the activity of recruitment for cooperative purposes that our ancestral relatives have developed increasingly sophisticated forms of communication." Ferretti, Francesco. 2016. "The Social Brain is not enough: On the importance of the ecological brain for the origin of language." Frontiers in Psychology. August. V. 7. 1138. P. 5. Reference: Bickerton, D. 2010. "On two incompatible theories of language evolution." Pp. 199-269. Larson, R., V. Deprez & H. Yamakido (Eds.) The Evolution of Human Language: Biolinguistic Perspectives. Cambridge UP. "... the center of my hypothesis is the idea that ‘global coherence’ (the property at the foundation of narrative) depends on the cognitive systems’ ability to project individuals in time and space and to process the structure of the causal links between events." Ferretti, Francesco. 2016. "The Social Brain is not enough: On the importance of the ecological brain for the origin of language." Frontiers in Psychology. August. V. 7. 1138. P. 6.
"At present, we know that the ability to travel in time is tied to a specific cognitive system. Suddendorf and Corbalis coined the term Mental Time Travel (MTT) to refer to ‘the faculty that allows humans to mentally project themselves backward in time to relive, or forward to prelive events.’" Ferretti, Francesco. 2016. "The Social Brain is not enough: On the importance of the ecological brain for the origin of language." Frontiers in Psychology. August. V. 7. 1138. P. 7. Reference: Suddendorf, T. & M. Corballis. 2007. "The evolution of foresight: what is mental time travel, and is it unique to humans?" Behav. Brain Sci. 30: 299-313.
"According to these authors, the selective pressures driving the transition from iconic gestures toward abstract and arbitrary symbols depend on the difficulties of pantomime in representing events or objects. In Arbib’s opinion ‘it’s hard to pantomime blue’...." Ferretti, Francesco. 2016. "The Social Brain is not enough: On the importance of the ecological brain for the origin of language." Frontiers in Psychology. August. V. 7. 1138. P. 9. References: "these authors" includes Donald, M. 1991. Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Human culture. Harvard UP. Arbib, M. 2012. How the Brain Got Language: The Mirror System Hypothesis. Oxford UP.
"In effect, even if pantomime is marked by ambiguity and inefficiency in representing the details of objects and events, pantomime also permits the inclusion of objects and events in a uniform and coherent frame of reference. So interpreted, pantomime represents the expressive tool that is able to bridge together the narrative character of human representation of reality with the narrative character of human communication of reality." Ferretti, Francesco. 2016. "The Social Brain is not enough: On the importance of the ecological brain for the origin of language." Frontiers in Psychology. August. V. 7. 1138. P. 10.
"The shared-mental-models perspective on team cognition and other similar perspectives such as distributed cognition and transactive memory are knowledge focused. That is, cognition at the team level is conceived of as a repository of knowledge that the team taps to accomplish a task. This is how team cognition has been traditionally conceptualized. But the focus on the knowledge of composition of a team overlooks many other aspects of cognition (decision making, situation assessment, planning, communication) or relegates them to team process behaviors. In addition, this traditional conceptualization of team cognition, with an emphasis on knowledge that is relatively static or unchanging, does not account for the more dynamic cognition of a team in a constantly changing environment. Further, this perspective tends to assume knowledge homogeneity; taken to the extreme, the idea of shared knowledge means that all team members (e.g., a nurse, surgeon, and anesthesiologist) should have the same knowledge, which would render the team unnecessary." Cooke, Nancy. 2015. "Team Cognition as Interaction." Current Directions in Psychological Science. 24(6): 415-419. Pp. 415-6.
"More recently, team cognition has been conceptualized as an activity–the same sort of activity labeled by some as ‘team process. But this newer perspective called interactive team cognition goes beyond a relabeling of behavioral processes as cognitive." Cooke, Nancy. 2015. "Team Cognition as Interaction." Current Directions in Psychological Science. 24(6): 415-419. P. 416.
"Interactive team cognition aligns with recent views of individual cognition (e.g., embodied cognition, activity theory) that recognize that cognition can reside outside of the head." Cooke, Nancy. 2015. "Team Cognition as Interaction." Current Directions in Psychological Science. 24(6): 415-419. P. 416.
"Across studies, we have seen that differences in team process relate to differences in team performance and that this relationship is stronger than that between team knowledge and team performance." Cooke, Nancy. 2015. "Team Cognition as Interaction." Current Directions in Psychological Science. 24(6): 415-419. P. 416.
"I adopt the view of Bourke who suggested that major transitions should typically be cut into three phases: the formation, maintenance, and transformation of ‘social groups.’" Szathmary, Eors. 2015. "Toward major evolutionary transitions theory 2.0" PNAS. August 18. V. 112. No. 33. 10104-10111. P. 10104. Reference: Bourke, AFG. 2011. Principles of Social Evolution. Oxford UP.
"Local interactions in some sorts of groups have played a role in all transitions...." Szathmary, Eors. 2015. "Toward major evolutionary transitions theory 2.0" PNAS. August 18. V. 112. No. 33. 10104-10111. P. 10104.
"As Quellar aptly noted, the major transitions might be regarded as a combination of two books: ‘The Acquisition of Inheritance Characteristics’ and ‘Cooperators since Life Began,’ with overlapping and complementary features." Szathmary, Eors. 2015. "Toward major evolutionary transitions theory 2.0" PNAS. August 18. V. 112. No. 33. 10104-10111. P. 10105. Reference: Quellar, D.C. 1997. "Cooperators since life began." Q. Rev Biol. 72: 184-188.
"Multilevel selection is integral to account for the dynamics of the major transitions. The formation of protocells is a major transition in individuality (MTI)." Szathmary, Eors. 2015. "Toward major evolutionary transitions theory 2.0" PNAS. August 18. V. 112. No. 33. 10104-10111. P. 10106.
"Viewed carefully, the origin of the eukaryotic cell is a prime example of repeated, and sometimes recursive, egalitarian transitions: the origins of mitochondria, meiosis and syngamy, and plastids are variations on this theme." Szathmary, Eors. 2015. "Toward major evolutionary transitions theory 2.0" PNAS. August 18. V. 112. No. 33. 10104-10111. P. 10108.
"A feature of confrontational scavenging is that it links the origins of two human-specific traits [language and general cooperation (not necessarily kin)] closely together in a synergistic fashion where none works without the other, and, if they do not, the cost in fitness is substantial." Szathmary, Eors. 2015. "Toward major evolutionary transitions theory 2.0" PNAS. August 18. V. 112. No. 33. 10104-10111. P. 10109.
"Language allows for something unprecedented: negotiated division of labor." Szathmary, Eors. 2015. "Toward major evolutionary transitions theory 2.0" PNAS. August 18. V. 112. No. 33. 10104-10111. P. 10109.
"Grandmothers carry not only related genes but also relevant cultural information. With the gradual complexification of protolanguage, this trait was reinforced. Ultimately, it may have been critical for the origin of efficient teaching (as opposed to learning, which is common), which, in turn, was necessary for cumulative cultural adaptation. According to a recent model, fertile females could transfer resources to grandmothers, enabling the latter to redirect their efforts from inefficient foraging to grandchildren care. During this time, fertile females would have been free from caring, and they could have gone to forage with higher efficiency than grandmothers. This situation is synergistic through intergenerational division of labor whereby everyone does the task she is the most efficient in." Szathmary, Eors. 2015. "Toward major evolutionary transitions theory 2.0" PNAS. August 18. V. 112. No. 33. 10104-10111. P. 10110.
"As recognized by Boyd and Richerson, language and cooperation within groups allows for group selection of coherent cultural content, and mechanisms like imitation and in-group bias can maintain cultural diversity among groups. Groups can flourish or decline depending on such cultural content. Intergroup competition and prestige-biased imitation of more successful groups offer the mechanism. The dynamics of group cultural content is somewhat similar to the phase of bacterial evolution with frequent horizontal gene transfer. This process has helped build complex societies where genetic relatedness did matter even less than before." Szathmary, Eors. 2015. "Toward major evolutionary transitions theory 2.0" PNAS. August 18. V. 112. No. 33. 10104-10111. P. 10110. Reference: Boyd, R. & P. Richerson. 1985. Culture and the Evolutionary Process. Univ of Chicago Press.
"We see key elements [in human evolution] that are high-lighted in other transitions: cooperation (including reproductive leveling and food sharing), a form of eusociality, a powerful novel inheritance system, and living in groups. ‘Although a cultural group behaves like a well-integrated individual, some of the ‘parts’ of this individual, such as some behaviors or products of behavior, are potentially independent and ‘mobile’ ... it is the cultural traditions, language, rules and laws that are the cohesiveness maintaining mechanisms that integrate the ‘cultural individual’" It sounds just right: biology gives room to technological and communal cultural evolution. Due to social care (including medicine) and agriculture, the biology of humans has become gradually de-Darwinized. It is culture where the main action is going on." Szathmary, Eors. 2015. "Toward major evolutionary transitions theory 2.0" PNAS. August 18. V. 112. No. 33. 10104-10111. P. 10110. Subquote: Jablonka, E. 1994. "Inheritance systems and the evolution of new levels of individuality." J. Theor Biol. 170(3): 301-309.
"However, transition theory strongly suggests that, if we see, even in rudimentary form, that originally independently reproducing units join, somehow use functional synergies among the units, and that there is some novelty in the inheritance system as well, then the population is definitely on its way to a ‘major transition.’" Szathmary, Eors. 2015. "Toward major evolutionary transitions theory 2.0" PNAS. August 18. V. 112. No. 33. 10104-10111. P. 10110.
"Central here is an understanding of both things and theories as simultaneously events and effects rather than as passive objects, active subjects, or caught up somehow in the spectral webs of networks, meshworks, or dialectical relations." Hicks, Dan. 2010. "The Material-Cultural Turn: Event and Effect." Pp. 25-98. From: Hicks, Dan & M. Beaudry. The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies. Oxford UP. P. 30.
"Bourdieu’s term habitus referred to human dispositions gained through living in the material environment, which he understood as central to the reproduction of social structures." Hicks, Dan. 2010. "The Material-Cultural Turn: Event and Effect." Pp. 25-98. From: Hicks, Dan & M. Beaudry. The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies. Oxford UP. P. 58.
"Material culture studies documented, to use the standard parlance, ‘relational’ processes; that is, it was concerned with the relationships between objects and people. The physical form of things was thus reduced to a distinctive kind of conduit for social relations, which were the proper object of enquiry..." Hicks, Dan. 2010. "The Material-Cultural Turn: Event and Effect." Pp. 25-98. From: Hicks, Dan & M. Beaudry. The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies. Oxford UP. P. 69. "Unlike ANT, Gell’s argument did not extend agency to non-humans, but instead suggested that objects could be deployed by social actors as secondary agents; ‘indexes’ of human agency." Hicks, Dan. 2010. "The Material-Cultural Turn: Event and Effect." Pp. 25-98. From: Hicks, Dan & M. Beaudry. The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies. Oxford UP. P. 77. Reference: Gell, A. 1992. "The technology of enchantment and the enchantment of technology. Pp. 40-63. From Coote, J. & A. Shelton (Eds). Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics. Clarendon Press.
"The idea of material agency has been criticized by anthropologist Tim Ingold, as part of his concerns about the ideas of material culture and ‘materiality’. In the ‘materiality debate’ between Ingold and Miller, Ingold has built on his earlier complaints that the very idea of material culture studies relied upon ‘the Cartesian ontology ... that divorces the activity of the mind from that of the body in the world’.... Ingold’s alternative to models of material agency is to see ‘things in life’ rather than ‘life in things’...." Hicks, Dan. 2010. "The Material-Cultural Turn: Event and Effect." Pp. 25-98. From: Hicks, Dan & M. Beaudry. The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies. Oxford UP. P. 77. Subquote: Ingold, Tim. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. Routledge. P. 165.
"Ingold’s interest is in phenomena such as ‘skill’ rather than ‘agency’ is required, since ‘to attribute agency to objects that do not grow or develop that consequently develop no skill and whose movement is not therefore coupled to their perception, is ludicrous." Hicks, Dan. 2010. "The Material-Cultural Turn: Event and Effect." Pp. 25-98. From: Hicks, Dan & M. Beaudry. The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies. Oxford UP. P. 78.
"Both objectification and subjectification require work; such processes must be made to happen and maintained. In this sense, things are always events–more or less visible depending on the constant change in the human and non-human world." Hicks, Dan. 2010. "The Material-Cultural Turn: Event and Effect." Pp. 25-98. From: Hicks, Dan & M. Beaudry. The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies. Oxford UP. P. 84.
"Where archaeology used to be a discipline that examined particular key sites or objects, the ‘canon’ of archaeological material is broken down by the extension of the field into the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries: there is simply too much for any such definition to have coherence. Either archaeology is no longer a useful idea, or we must look at archaeological practices–how archaeology enacts things–to understand what archaeology is." Hicks, Dan. 2010. "The Material-Cultural Turn: Event and Effect." Pp. 25-98. From: Hicks, Dan & M. Beaudry. The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies. Oxford UP. P. 87.
"Field sciences, such as archaeology, anthropology, geography, and science and technology studies (STS), enact knowledge. We cannot, therefore, fail to theorize methodology... This implication of the fieldworker in the emergence of the material studies, and the definition of material culture studies as a series of practices for enacting knowledge about things, requires an extension of that argument,..." Hicks, Dan. 2010. "The Material-Cultural Turn: Event and Effect." Pp. 25-98. From: Hicks, Dan & M. Beaudry. The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies. Oxford UP. P. 89.
"If we understand things as events and effects, rather than fixed and solid, then ‘material culture’ has unfolded to the point that material culture studies can no longer be defined by its object. The ‘materiality debate’ sketched above demonstrates that the idea that material culture might represent ‘the concrete counterpoint to the abstractions of culture’ is long behind us. Along with it, however, any unifying model of networks and relations between bounded entities is also lost. The material effects highlighted above demonstrate how permeabilities, as well as just relations, constitute the emergence of the world as assemblage." Hicks, Dan. 2010. "The Material-Cultural Turn: Event and Effect." Pp. 25-98. From: Hicks, Dan & M. Beaudry. The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies. Oxford UP. P. 89.
"Life, both human and non-human, as it is encountered in archaeology and anthropology involves not relations between fixed entities, but life as the ongoing flow of permeabilities, and the emergence of worlds." Hicks, Dan. 2010. "The Material-Cultural Turn: Event and Effect." Pp. 25-98. From: Hicks, Dan & M. Beaudry. The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies. Oxford UP. P. 90.
"But despite what looks like an obvious match, and despite a good deal of effort in this direction, the success of complexity science has been mainly limited to rather simple social systems, such as crowds, traffic or evacuation, where the complexity of human behavior is reduced to simple rule-following. Success in the study of societal systems in their full complexity has been much more limited. Although concepts like path-dependency, attractors, tipping points, and chaos have provided basic lessons that have transformed deeply seated ideas about causality in society, these are highly general lessons that have proven hard to operationalize and they are not strongly represented in policy work. In many – if not most – branches of social science, complexity science remains rarely or at least superficially used. Complexity science appears to remain in a state of being perpetually promising in relation to social science." Andersson, Claes, A. Toernberg & P. Toernberg. 2014. "Societal systems – Complex or worse?" Futures. 63: 145-157. P. 146.
"As things stand, the mainstream of complexity science may be aware that complexity and complicatedness are distinct qualities, but complicatedness in complex systems is not seen as a fundamental problem. Complicated or not, they are complex, and that is what is seen as fundamentally important: extending mainstream theory to deal with them is seen as challenging and hard, but, essentially, gradual and cumulative work. Sociological complexity thinkers disagree with mainstream complexity science about how complexity ought to be understood. Notably, however, they do not really disagree that, in the end, complexity ought to be one single thing. Our analysis will lead us to a different conclusion. We do not see societal systems as a type of complex systems, but as a type of system where complexity is mixed with complicatedness, yielding an emergent quality – wickedness – to which neither complexity science, systems approaches, mathematical models or combinations between them lend themselves very well." Andersson, Claes, A. Toernberg & P. Toernberg. 2014. "Societal systems – Complex or worse?" Futures. 63: 145-157. P. 148.
"... we chart our system types, problems and theoretical approaches on the basis of these two system qualities [complex as y axis; complicated as x axis). The corners of the plane that is described give us four ideal system types. Systems that are neither complex nor complicated (bottom-left corner) we call ‘simple systems’, systems that are complex but not very complicated we call ‘complex systems’, systems that are complicated but not very complex are labeled ‘complicated systems’ and, finally, systems that are both complicated and complex we call ‘wicked systems.’ Andersson, Claes, A. Toernberg & P. Toernberg. 2014. "Societal systems – Complex or worse?" Futures. 63: 145-157. P. 148.
"We choose the term ‘wicked systems’ in recognition of a potentially deep connection between this class of systems and what has been called ‘wicked problems’. The term ‘wicked problems’ was first coined in management research by Horst Rittel to characterize a class of problems that failed to fit into the molds of the formal systems theoretical models that were being applied across the board at the time with considerable confidence. Just about any large-scale societal problem can in fact be confidently put into the category of wicked problems: starvation, climate change, geopolitical conflicts, social disenfranchisement, and so on. All these are problems that escape definition and where there is a constant feeling that the efficacy of proposed solutions is called into question not only with regard to feasibility and adequacy but also with regard to the risk of creating cascades of other problems that are impossible to foresee and that may be even worse than the initial problem." Andersson, Claes, A. Toernberg & P. Toernberg. 2014. "Societal systems – Complex or worse?" Futures. 63: 145-157. P. 148.
"... we map three groups of formal theoretical approaches into the complexity-complicatedness plane: ‘mathematical theory’, ‘systems based theories’ and ‘complexity science’. Under the rubric of ‘mathematical theory’ [at bottom left of above-described axes] we place theory and models mainly based on closed-form equations, most importantly in this context neoclassical economic theory, such as mainstream macroeconomics approaches, which are characterized by strong assumptions about agent rationality and equilibrium that serve to make models mathematically tractable. When we refer to systems based theories we mean approaches that rely on holistic ontologies...." Andersson, Claes, A. Toernberg & P. Toernberg. 2014. "Societal systems – Complex or worse?" Futures. 63: 145-157. P. 149.
"To begin understanding what a mix between complexity and complicatedness entails, we should first note that we are mixing a primarily structural quality – complicatedness – with a primarily dynamical quality – complexity – and that both of these on their own are theoretically challenging. To make matters even worse, the way in which they intermix cause these qualities to fuse into something quite unlike either quality in isolation. This is what we mean when we say that the combined quality of ‘wickedness is emergent. Complexity and complicatedness can be seen as mutually reinforcing in societies and ecosystems – our two principal examples of wicked systems. Self-organization here generates, changes and maintains macro structure, and macro structure, in turn, scaffolds and creates a multitude of arenas for self-organization." Andersson, Claes, A. Toernberg & P. Toernberg. 2014. "Societal systems – Complex or worse?" Futures. 63: 145-157. P. 150.
"... the organization and dynamics of wicked systems make them poorly accessible to approaches that rely on what Simon called near-decomposability, which is to say just about any conceivable formal theorizing." Andersson, Claes, A. Toernberg & P. Toernberg. 2014. "Societal systems – Complex or worse?" Futures. 63: 145-157. P. 151.
"Significantly, the components of technological artifacts and organisms also have no separate agendas; it makes no sense for the engine of a car to benefit on the expense of the car as a whole since engines are meaningless objects except as part of a functional whole. Multicellular life, with cell types, tissues and organs, is no different in this respect. Selection for top-level functionality often yields hierarchical systems with near-decomposable levels (such as engineered artifacts or organisms) since such an organization increased evolutionary adaptability." Andersson, Claes, A. Toernberg & P. Toernberg. 2014. "Societal systems – Complex or worse?" Futures. 63: 145-157. P. 152.
"The fundamental problem for complexity science in this context, and really any approach that relies on these ontological assumptions, is that on the time scales of sociotechnical change almost everything in society really is ‘changing with everything else’; there is no relevant ‘short run’ for a model to operate in; there is no way of cutting the system into distinct and persistent levels of organization." Andersson, Claes, A. Toernberg & P. Toernberg. 2014. "Societal systems – Complex or worse?" Futures. 63: 145-157. P. 152.
"... followers can still each receive more extra resource than they would in acephalous groups, where the surplus would be generated less frequently. This demonstrates the voluntary creation of hierarchy, where individuals that accept inequality in their groups are better off than those that remain egalitarian. Whether or not this is the case depends on the magnitude of the advantage that leaders confer in surplus generation." Powers, Simon & L. Lehmann. 2014. "An evolutionary model explaining the Neolithic transition from egalitarianism to leadership and despotism." Proceedings of the Royal Society: B. 281: 20141349. P. 4.
"Our results suggest that demography plays an important role in the stability of despotism. When groups are small, then hierarchy can easily collapse if despots take too much resource. But if groups are larger, then density-dependent competition means that hierarchical individuals can outcompete acephalous individuals for shared resources, even when despots retain most of the surplus. Demographic expansion can therefore cause individuals to become locked into hierarchy, by destroying the viability of a previous non-hierarchical niche." Powers, Simon & L. Lehmann. 2014. "An evolutionary model explaining the Neolithic transition from egalitarianism to leadership and despotism." Proceedings of the Royal Society: B. 281: 20141349. Pp.7-8.
"Although human health appears to have declined with the origin of agriculture, and agriculture may initially have been less productive than hunter-gathering, cemetery data strongly imply that a demographic expansion indeed occurred during the Neolithic. Other data indicate that the population density of hunter-gatherer groups is usually below 0.1 person per square mile, whereas that of early dry farmers is around 4 persons per square mile, and that of early irrigation farmers from 6 to 25 persons per square mile." Powers, Simon & L. Lehmann. 2014. "An evolutionary model explaining the Neolithic transition from egalitarianism to leadership and despotism." Proceedings of the Royal Society: B. 281: 20141349. P. 8.
"In conclusion, our model predicts that despotic social organization will evolve from an initial state of egalitarianism when: (i) leaders generate surplus resources leading to demographic expansion of their groups, which removes the viability of an acephalous niche in the same area; and (ii) high dispersal costs subsequently limit outside options for followers by restricting choice of leader. The empirical evidence reviewed here suggests that these conditions were likely to have been satisfied during the Neolithic." Powers, Simon & L. Lehmann. 2014. "An evolutionary model explaining the Neolithic transition from egalitarianism to leadership and despotism." Proceedings of the Royal Society: B. 281: 20141349. P. 8.
"This view of human cooperation rests on the idea that we have strong, cross-cultural evidence that humans are typically psychologically altruistic, but are also given to vengeful moralizing." Sterelny, Kim. 2016. "Cooperation, Culture, and Conflict." Brit. J. Phil. Sci. 67: 31-58. P. 35.
"There have been two revolutions in human social life, not one. The first is the transition from great ape social lives to those of the egalitarian foraging bands of the mid- to late-Pleistocene.... "Around 10 kya, at the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, a second social revolution began, with the transition to farming and to a sedentary society, perhaps initially mediated by increased use of storage and increased management of wild resources. Human groups grew in size and in social complexity. They became markedly inegalitarian, with the emergence both of great differences in wealth and formal political power. They became much more anonymous and interactions with strangers became routine." Sterelny, Kim. 2016. "Cooperation, Culture, and Conflict." Brit. J. Phil. Sci. 67: 31-58. Pp. 36-8. "A particularly important case is the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. For the Pleistocene-Holocene transition to storage and resource management, thence to farming, to a sedentary life, and eventually to life in larger-scale societies eroded the basis of the Pleistocene social contract." Sterelny, Kim. 2016. "Cooperation, Culture, and Conflict." Brit. J. Phil. Sci. 67: 31-58. P. 50.
"So in the Holocene, the Pleistocene mechanisms that controlled incipient elites failed, while group-group rivalry and the threat from outside gave the relatively poor an incentive to continue cooperating. Very likely, the farming societies that survived were the ones in which the poor were risk averse, and where elites managed to maintain practices of collective action." Sterelny, Kim. 2016. "Cooperation, Culture, and Conflict." Brit. J. Phil. Sci. 67: 31-58. P. 52.
"... a typical day for the Tai forest chimpanzees. Varying parties fuse and disperse as they forage along, maintaining cohesion by loud calls and drumming." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 88.
"Three main benefits [for group living] have been proposed: decreased predator pressure, better exploitation and protection of food resources, and increased cooperative behaviour, like hunting or cooperative breeding." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 89.
"All chimpanzee populations live in a ‘fission-fusion’ social structure. This means that group members gather in unstable, temporary groups that usually include only a small subset of the whole community. Goodall named a ‘community’ the entity of all individuals seen for long periods of time in various temporary subgroups called ‘parties’. The community is equivalent to the ‘unit-group’ used for the Mahale and Bossou chimpanzees. The fission-fusion system has also been observed in eight large arboreal primates and is thought to allow more flexibility in exploiting resource patches of different sizes in a species free of predation." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 89.
"Small parties last for a shorter time than large ones ..." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 90.
"Tai chimpanzee community: high fluidity, parties rarely including more than a third of the community members, and an average party size of 10 chimpanzees." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 92.
"During the wet season, Tai chimpanzees hunt nearly every day. Successful hunts result in prolonged meat-eating episodes that last much longer than any other activity in chimpanzee social life and lead to especially large assemblies." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 102.
"In conclusion, party size in Tai chimpanzees is directly influenced by fruit availability, sexual opportunities, and hunting rate. These factors explain most of the variation we observed. When all these factors are low, party size can become quite small and the duration of social interactions decreases sharply; this happens mostly during June and July." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 102.
"We called the partners of such associations [between adults, usually female] ‘friends’ because their relationship was not only characterized by high DAIs [dyadic association indexes] but also by frequent food-sharing and support in conflict situations." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 105.
"Coalitions are of special interest, for they enable manipulation of social partners and may offer a way to counter a hierarchical order." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 110.
"Some regularly described behaviour patterns in the Mahale chimpanzees are absent in our autumn 1993 sample, and are on the whole seldom observed. This is the case for mounting and embracing, which we observed very rarely in situations of extreme tension, but were seen 61 and 22 times respectively in Mahale chimpanzees. Similarly, kissing was seen regularly in Mahale chimpanzees but only twice at Tai.... These intriguing differences suggest the possibility that different social behaviour elements are in use in the two populations." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. Pp. 112-3.
"Nevertheless, we gained the impression that grooming distribution in wild chimpanzees is partly opportunistic, stimulated simply by the simultaneous presence of individuals as well as the number of individuals of each sex present in the community." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. Pp. 119-20. "The importance of coalitions in gaining social dominance has been assumed to be important, but data are deceptive, both because coalitions between unrelated individuals are not frequent and because the dominance rank order between the males remains linear in most studied populations despite the coalitions." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 120.
"This destabilizing role of coalitions [making it non-linear or unstable] has rarely been observed in carnivores or monkeys, where they are as a rule of the winner-support type, a supporter helping the dominant individual against a lower-ranking one. Such winner-support coalitions do not profit the supported individual and often seem opportunistic, in the sense that the supporter seeks an easy victory.... In contrast, coalitions of low-ranking individuals against higher-ranking ones (called loser-support coalitions) destabilize the hierarchy." "In chimpanzees, both inferior- and loser-support coalitions seem to be more common than in monkeys." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 123.
"The frequency of a male’s participation in coalitions was, however, a perfect predicator of mating success with fertile females. This suggests that the ability to enlist and assist other males is the key in getting access to fertile females. Thus, coalitions of inferiors against dominants in Tai chimpanzees is partly tolerated by the fact that dominants gain meat from those inferiors, and the benefit of coalitions is higher mating success." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 125.
"Note the importance of individual personality for chimpanzee mating success. Brutus was for years the alpha male, and despite his old age remained a very gifted social manipulator. In most cases, he mated on the ground within a party, whereas the other males, including the dominant ones, mated mostly in trees or at the edge of a party. Brutus could rely on the social support of both females and males." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 125.
"The dense forest habitat forces them to cooperate to be successful, and this cooperation can only be stable if food-sharing rules assure hunters a fair share of meat. As these rules conflict with the existing hierarchy, hunters are guaranteed access to meat only with the help of the females, who are in turn granted a specially high position in meat access." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 126.
"In the Tai chimpanzee society, alternative strategies were successful.... Chimpanzees use social strategies to gain certain social goods, and the strategies used can make dominance look despotic or egalitarian." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. Pp. 126-7.
"With a glance towards Fitz and Darwin, Kendo leads them in this direction... About 60 metres ahead, we see branches being moved, probably by heavier monkeys, possibly red colobus. Darwin and Macho rush there silently, climb immediately, and run after the fleeing monkeys. As so often happens, no monkey is caught during this first move. The diana monkeys immediately give alarm calls and most monkeys climb higher in the trees and flee in all directions. "The hunt has started. Darwin pushes before him a few red colobus that he has singled out. Kendo and Macho follow their progress from the ground. Fitz has anticipated the direction they will take by about 80 m and has already climbed into the higher canopy to be ready to move towards them on their arrival. Kendo and Macho see Fitz and accelerate on the ground, trying to anticipate the reaction of the monkeys to Fitz’s actions. When Fitz reaches the top of the trees above the canopy, everything accelerates and I have to run in order to keep up with Fitz. Darwin, still in the trees, follows Fitz in a distance. About 200 metres ahead of us, Kendo and Macho climb a tree. The monkeys seem trapped, but both chimpanzees are too slow and most of the colobus escape. Just one unfortunate colobus mother and her juvenile has fallen into the trap and moves towards Fitz and manages to avoid him, only to find herself facing Darwin who has followed Fitz. Kendo and Fitz immediately see the benefit of this move and both press hard on her. To escape, she almost runs into Darwin. He grabs her while she is probably petrified with fear and does not even try to bite him." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 158.
"During these months [September and October], the chimpanzees hunt every day and in some years did so twice or more per day. During the rest of the year, they hunt on average about once per week." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 161.
"Thus, three factors, rainy season, reduced availability of other food sources, and birth season in colobus combine in shaping the seasonality of hunting behaviour in Tai chimpanzees. "The end of the hunting season in November can be more easily explained by the beginning of the nut-cracking season. Nuts provide all group members with a very large daily return in protein and calories, and one that rivals the benefits derived from hunting." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 162.
"Tai chimpanzees may have a sort of ‘search image’ that excludes some potential prey. For example, blue duikers are hunted by the Mahale chimpanzees, and they are also the most abundant duiker specie in Tai forest where the chimpanzees encounter them at least three or four times daily. Adult Tai chimpanzees were never seen to make any intentional movement to capture one, even when a duiker happened to be running towards them and they had to step aside to avoid it. At most they made a soft bark and it fled. In five cases, we were with the chimpanzees when they encountered duikers that were resting between the buttresses of tree trunks, easy victims indeed, but they just looked at them." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. Pp. 169-70.
"Tai chimpanzees are only rarely scavengers. They found the dead but fresh bodies of several species and although they did show some interest, they did not feed on them." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 170.
"This describes an ‘ideal’ hunt that reaches its conclusion through the complete involvement of the hunters, but a capture may occur at any moment during such a hunt. We call such ‘ideal’ hunts ‘collaborative hunts’, that is the hunters perform different complementary roles all directed towards the same prey. However, group hunting does not have to be as collaborative as this, and we classified a group hunt as a ‘similarity hunt’ if all hunters concentrated similar actions on the same prey, with no spatial or temporal relation between them. However, at least two of them always act simultaneously. We called it a ‘synchrony hunt’, when they at least try to react to each others actions in time and a ‘coordination hunt’, when they relate their actions both in time and in space.... At Tai, three quarters of the group hunts were collaborative.... "Tai chimpanzees have low success when hunting alone, and the increase in success when hunting in groups is a clear incentive for them to collaborate." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 173.
"Ulysse demonstrated his intelligence by developing a personal hunting tactic: he provoked red colobus males to mob him. He would climb very slowly towards them to give the impression he was hesitating, then, if they showed no reaction, would even slow down in the most critical passages on thin branches between trees, until they would mob him. There, the chimpanzees are normally in a weak position and cannot protect themselves easily, and the red colobus often start to mob them successfully at this moment. Once we saw Ulysse move back and forth in such a passage until he was closely attacked by the colobus. But Ulysse was absolutely fearless and would invariably capture one right then. Black-and-white colobus males are powerful, weighing up to 20 kg, and they usually attacked hunters without much hesitation, but Ulysse invariably took advantage of their approach to capture one by turning it on its back or by making it fall to the ground by pulling wildly on one of its legs. Red colobus were more difficult to manoeuvre, and he often used the passive presence of another chimpanzee in a tree to help him corner one of them. Ulysse stopped using these special tactics when the other males started to hunt with him again." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 181.
"Some years later, Fitz, then about 17 years old, developed a new way of capturing colobus monkeys that proved very successful. He took advantage of the fact that once a red colobus is pursued long enough, it stops running, both from exhaustion and stress, sits motionless, and simply lets the hunter approach and seize it." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 181.
"If a capture is easily achieved, we should not expect group hunting to evolve or individual success to increase with group size. When a capture is difficult to achieve, then individuals are forced to hunt together and cooperation may be the best way to keep hunting profitable." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 189.
"Tai chimpanzees hunt very regularly and have developed a sophisticated system of reciprocity in which hunters are rewarded for their contribution, not only for their participation in the hunt, but also for the type of contribution they make during the hunt. This indicates that they evaluate the contribution of different individuals and have a fine graded control of cheaters that pretend to hunt by adopting low cost tactics." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 189.
"Cooperation in hunting is stable among Tai chimpanzees thanks to an elaborate system based on individual recognition, temporary memory of actions in the recent past, attribution of value to those actions, and social enforcement of those values. The end effect is that cooperators gain more than cheaters, but for this to happen a complex social organization based on impressive cognitive abilities is required. If this example is representative of most cooperating systems, it makes the stability of cooperation dependent upon a certain degree of cognitive development,..." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 190.
"In nut-cracking, too-use and food-sharing intermingle in a complex web of interactions that affect many aspects of social life." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 192.
"While she [chimpanzee named Agathe] eats some honey, her infant, Aphrodite, looks at her and another infant inspects the nest entrance." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 200.
"Thus, two nut-cracking techniques used at Tai are particularly demanding: Coula cracking directly in the tree (requiring the anticipation of transporting tools and dexterity in handling tool and nuts), and cracking the very hard Panda nuts (requiring transport of stone hammers and technical skill due to the hardness of these nuts)." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 204.
"The tree technique, as well as pounding Panda nuts, are both used more frequently by females, and their performance (number of hits used to open the nut and number of nuts eaten per minute) is superior to that of males. We found that the reason for this sex difference is social, for males favour social contact whenever there is a conflict between cracking more nuts or remaining with other group members. The rather solitary activity of these two particular techniques, one taking place high up in the trees, usually out of sight of others, the other happening at the few isolated trees, being further restricted to one or two individuals due to the lack of stones, are thus performed less frequently by males." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 204.
"Mothers share the nuts they pound with their infants for many years. This leads to a situation in which the learning attempts and food-sharing occur simultaneously." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 205.
"The learning of nut-cracking seems to proceed through four distinct phases. First, the youngsters make unsuccessful attempts by hitting the nuts. Typically during this phase, youngsters do not understand fully how to achieve success and regularly make mistakes, such as hitting the nuts directly with the hand or with another nut, without using a hammer, or without placing the nut on an anvil. The second phase is reached at the age of three years when they understand the technical problems and crack nuts only when the three elements are present, but they are limited by their lack of muscular power for opening a nut. The third phase starts when they have enough strength and manage to pound the nuts correctly. In spite of some success, the balance of energy remains negative." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 207.
"Infants tend to win all conflicts, for they obtain on average 90 to 92% of all the requests the mother initially contested.... "It is difficult to claim that infants win all the conflicts over nuts, for they might be very sensitive to the mother’s refusal gestures even if she gives in afterwards. The infants would thereafter simply avoid a similar pressure ..." Boesch, Christophe & Hedwige Boesch-Achermann. 2000. The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 212.
"However, even though MTE has been implicitly revised by ETI [evolutionary transitions in individuality] theorists to adopt the mitochondrion-driven version of eukaryogenesis, one would think that if ETIs were of such central theoretical importance to the revised model, then other evolutionarily significant events in which two organisms become one would loom large on the transitions-theoretic radar." O’Malley, Maureen & R. Powell. 2016. "Major problems in evolutionary transitions: how a metabolic perspective can enrich our understanding of macroevolution." Biology and Philosophy. 31:159-189. P. 169.
"We think, it is a matter of some importance that the primary plastid endosymbiosis was not ‘merely’ a transition in individuality. Just as significantly, it further transformed the biogeochemical world and the space of evolutionary possibility, because many of these new plastid-bearing organisms (the algae and then the plants) became major contributors to the ongoing oxygen balance of our atmosphere today." O’Malley, Maureen & R. Powell. 2016. "Major problems in evolutionary transitions: how a metabolic perspective can enrich our understanding of macroevolution." Biology and Philosophy. 31:159-189. P. 171.
"Whether general or more specifically bioenergetic, a metabolic perspective on evolutionary turning points makes explanatory contributions to classic and revisionist MTE theory. First, by focusing on the metabolic mechanisms that have driven the biogeochemistry of life on Earth, it includes key missing events in its ontology of major turning points, including the oxygenation of Earth, the mitochondrial-based origins of eukaryotes, and plastid acquisitions." O’Malley, Maureen & R. Powell. 2016. "Major problems in evolutionary transitions: how a metabolic perspective can enrich our understanding of macroevolution." Biology and Philosophy. 31:159-189. P. 177.
"Understanding these organizational modes and their evolution requires a focus on ‘horizontal complexity’ rather than the vertical complexity emphasized in standard views of evolutionary transitions. By horizontal complexity, we simply mean the way in which organisms interact over evolutionary time with their environments, biotic and abiotic, in order to make a living. This horizontality occurs both in metabolic and genetic interactions. Rather than neat vertical descent, our explanatory strategy focuses on vast networks of energy exchange that can often involve lateral gene transfers. In fact, metabolic advantage seems to be a major explanation of adaptive gene transfers. A horizontal approach is necessary to explain the multiscale interactions that make the biological world what it is, because such interactions range over multiple ‘levels’ of organization, causally affecting one another without regard to hierarchy." O’Malley, Maureen & R. Powell. 2016. "Major problems in evolutionary transitions: how a metabolic perspective can enrich our understanding of macroevolution." Biology and Philosophy. 31:159-189. P. 183.
"The conditions causing the transition [of a human major transition in individuality] to stall include the decreasing congruence of group boundaries with kinship boundaries, growth in group size, increasing interdependence of groups, membership of individuals in several types of groups, divided loyalties of individuals among groups, and the emergence of institutions as novel entities uncoupled from the individuals who temporarily belong to them. Those conditions combine to decrease the ability of cultural group selection to effect genetic change in group-oriented traits." Stearns, Stephen. 2007. "Are we stalled part way through a major evolutionary transition from individual to group?" Evolution. 61-10: 2275-2280. P. 2275.
"Individuals who responded to punishment with improvements in group-oriented behavior–or who reduced the costs of being punished by avoiding it because they had evolved the capacity for anticipatory internalizations such as shame and guilt–formed groups that were more cohesive and competitive than those in which individuals were less capable of shame or guilt, insensitive to punishment, which they resisted or ignored, and acted in pure self-interest. "Out of this process emerged the striking predilections, sensitivities, and susceptibilities of our group psychology: empathy and sympathy; sin, guilt, and shame; honor, duty, and other precursors of patriotism; the importance we place on our social reputations; and our unusual willingness–incomplete but nonetheless striking–to wage a war and to die for nonrelatives in a war. Those features of our psychology are seen here as having been shaped in populations with the kind of hierarchical structure in which selection could operate strongly among groups for a long time." Stearns, Stephen. 2007. "Are we stalled part way through a major evolutionary transition from individual to group?" Evolution. 61-10: 2275-2280. P;. 2276-7.
"Apparently the English lexicon grew from 600,000 words in 1950 to over 1 million by 2000." Gamble, Clive. 2014. "The anthropology of deep history." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 21: 147-164. P. 149.
"However, one thing nonhuman primates do not excel at is concentration. Outside of grooming and an encounter with a favourite food, their attention span is limited. Humans, by contrast, have much better powers of concentration, which is manifest in social contexts as different as infatuated star-crossed lovers, students listening to lectures, and artisans absorbed in making things. I refer to this as the ‘Acheulean gaze’: the ability to concentrate intently for at least fifteen to twenty minutes in order to make a hand-held bifacially worked stone tool." Gamble, Clive. 2014. "The anthropology of deep history." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 21: 147-164. P. 156.
"Where this [the social brain hypothesis of Dunbar as it predicts skills like theory of mind] becomes relevant to the disconnect between large-brained hominins and their stuff is if we consider the emotions which underpin the bonds of social life. Three levels exist. First there are the mood emotions, those feelings about places as either safe or scary. Then there are the primary emotions such as fear, anger, and happiness that we share with many other animals. These are survival emotions and are supported by the pain-reward systems of the body and the release of endorphins in the brain. And finally there are the social emotions which only exist because of an advanced theory of mind that recognizes another’s perspective: guilt, shame, pride, and compassion, to name a few. These social emotions operate at a distance when social partners are separated but remain attentive to one another. They are the small voice of conscience that constrains actions. The important point is that the sensory basis for these social emotions remains the same. The pain/reward systems of the brain continue to operate, as is the case with the feeling of shame. What has changed is the amplification of a common survival emotion such as fear into a social emotion such as guilt which then has a bearing on behaviour. The disconnect between encephalization and a lack of corresponding change in cultural stuff can then be explained by the amplification of the sensory part of the social core in preference to materials. It would therefore be wrong to conclude that very little was happening for a million years just because stone tools like handaxes appear to stand still. During this time hominins were still attending to one another and social bonds were being created and affirmed on a daily basis. Instead we have argued that it was during this slow movement in the symphony of hominin evolution that the basis of social life was amplified through emotion rather than through stuff, and this occurred in response to larger community sizes." Gamble, Clive. 2014. "The anthropology of deep history." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 21: 147-164. Pp. 157-8.
"Hospitality is the underlying principle for social life.... Instead it is the hospitality described by Ortner, where it forms an arena for enacting social dramas. When it occurs in a material context, such as a house, hospitality coerces rather than elicits co-operative responses." Gamble, Clive. 2014. "The anthropology of deep history." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 21: 147-164. P. 158. Reference: Ortner, S. 1978. Sherpas Through Their Rituals. Cambridge UP.
"A further term is needed to probe the evolution of the hospitable hominin imagination. That term is kinshipping: moving through time and space by means of relationship and exchange. When we are kinshipping we are making new and remaking old relationships according to the hominin mantra: as we relate, so we create. We do this through the mediation of devices such as abstract categories, absent third parties, and objects. Kinshipping is what we do effortlessly while giving and receiving hospitality. What kinshipping boils down to is the exploration of new spaces." Gamble, Clive. 2014. "The anthropology of deep history." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 21: 147-164. Pp. 158-9.
"Hospitality as an underpinning principle of social life must therefore have an ancestry that extends into deep history. Formal kinship systems that we know from the shallow history of social anthropology were an amplification of the hospitality / kinshipping principle; a classic example of as we relate, so we create." Gamble, Clive. 2014. "The anthropology of deep history." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 21: 147-164. P. 159.
"Consequently my tipping-point for deep history is not farming, Lubbock’s Neolithic, but the circumstances by which a single species emerged as a global species. This was achieved in the last 50,000 years, well before the modern period. In my view this was only possible with a reconceptualization of the way relationships were experienced. Instead of the free flow of universal kinship there was the experience of containment, of being part of an institution such as formal kinship with its social boundaries. People were now wrapped and bounded in ways not previously seen. It is therefore unsurprising that coincident with global dispersal we see a rise in artefacts which also contain: boats, houses, and clothes; imaginative expressions of going beyond yet staying in touch." Gamble, Clive. 2014. "The anthropology of deep history." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 21: 147-164. P. 159.
"The theory of economic defendability, a key theory in behavioural ecology, posits that the denser and more predictable a resource is, the more profitable it becomes to engage in costly behaviours to defend it. Dense and predictable resources are also attractive to a competitor and thus can stimulate recurring conflict. The theory of economic defendability has proved to be a powerful explanation for understanding when species practise territorial patrols and active defence of their territories." Marean, Curtis. 2016. "The transition to foraging for dense and predictable resources and its impact on the evolution of modern humans." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371: 20150239. P. 1.
"The theory as currently constructed deals most explicitly with three components of the hunter-gatherer adaptive system: mobility, technology and sociality.... "Mobility refers to the way hunter-gatherer bands move about the landscape. Movement types have been commonly classified as residential or logistical. Residential moves are when the band moves all their members from one residential camp to a new location. Logistical moves are when a specialized task group, often targeting food that is clumped, moves away from a residential site and uses a separate camp and overnight stay.... "Generally, the more logistical moves a group makes, the fewer residential moves they make, though this is not always the case.... "Some hunter-gatherers have very light technologies composed of few separate parts where the emphasis is on its suitability for regular movement while still being effective. Other hunter-gatherers have highly complex technologies with many separate parts, often composed of multiple raw materials, and these can sometimes be rather heavy to carry.... "Hunter-gatherer social structure has been a focus of this research and most researchers recognize a spectrum of variation from egalitarian to non-egalitarian (hierarchical, ranked or stratified) systems.... "There are systematic co-associations of mobility, technology and social structure across these systems driven by similar adaptations to structural aspects of the environment." Marean, Curtis. 2016. "The transition to foraging for dense and predictable resources and its impact on the evolution of modern humans." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371: 20150239. Pp. 2-3.
"Binford recognized that at the level of mobility and technology, hunter-gatherers tend to adapt differently to environments where resources occur sequentially and clumped versus those where they occur more homogeneously in both time and space. He argued that in environments with high levels of temperature seasonality, hunter-gatherers have short periods of time during the year when they must collect large quantities of prey and store the food they provide. In such environments, most of the available food is in the form of animal prey, with plants often absent between late autumn through to spring. These animals are often clumped in time and space, and include prey like salmon, whales, migrating caribou, etc. This often requires complex technology that has a high performance quality, resulting in complicated technological systems. In such situations, logistical mobility of specialized task groups makes sense to create these surpluses, and the surplus is moved to people and stored for future use. The stored food and logistical moves lessen the need for regular residential moves, so residential mobility is reduced and logistical moves increased. Overall, these contexts often result in sedentary behaviour. Woodburn argued that in such situations the storage of food offers the opportunity for individuals to accumulate differential surplus, and this then stimulates in these ‘delayed-return’ systems a breakdown in egalitarianism and can lead to the non-egalitarian societies typical of ‘complex hunter-gatherers’.... "Environments with more muted temperature seasonality provide conditions less dependent on the production of stored food and often have more plant foods available for longer periods of the year than highly seasonal environments. This reduced reliance, or even non-existence of storage, results in little need for logistical moves and complex technologies to create surplus, and the overall pattern is to forage across the landscape, moving people to the food. Woodburn recognized that such ‘immediate-return’ societies tend to be egalitarian." Marean, Curtis. 2016. "The transition to foraging for dense and predictable resources and its impact on the evolution of modern humans." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371: 20150239. P. 3. References: Binford, L.R. 1983. In Pursuit of the Past. Thames and Hudson. Woodburn, J. 1982. "Egalitarian societies." Man. 17: 431-51.
"In sum, boundary defence is favoured where high-ranked resources are dense and predictable." Marean, Curtis. 2016. "The transition to foraging for dense and predictable resources and its impact on the evolution of modern humans." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371: 20150239. P. 4. "Thus, territorial defence of dense and predictable resources can be expected to stand at the origin point of land tenure systems." Marean, Curtis. 2016. "The transition to foraging for dense and predictable resources and its impact on the evolution of modern humans." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371: 20150239. P. 4.
"We can use economic defendability theory to propose the following: when humans expanded their foraging niche to include dense and predictable resources as a regular food item, they became more territorial to protect this space surrounding those resources, and used intergroup conflict as a strategy against competing groups. Hunter-gatherers exploiting dense and predictable resources tend to be more sedentary, and settlements themselves take on value due to the presence of stored food, stocks of material culture, and mates and offspring." Marean, Curtis. 2016. "The transition to foraging for dense and predictable resources and its impact on the evolution of modern humans." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371: 20150239. P. 4.
"In summary, the evidence suggests that for the most part African terrestrial ecosystems lack the type of dense and predictable food resources that would trigger territoriality. Aquatic resources in Africa, including the rich intertidal zones off the coasts of northern and southern Africa, and certain riverine and lacustrine ecosystems, have resources worth defending." Marean, Curtis. 2016. "The transition to foraging for dense and predictable resources and its impact on the evolution of modern humans." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371: 20150239. P. 6.
"Wilson observes that every known case of insect eusociality involves a ‘nest’, and he suggests that the trigger for the evolution of insect eusociality was the defence of these nests." Marean, Curtis. 2016. "The transition to foraging for dense and predictable resources and its impact on the evolution of modern humans." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371: 20150239. P. 7. Reference: Wilson, E.O. 2012. The Social Conquest of Earth. W.W. Norton.
"The marine coastal zones of South and North Africa provide the first recurrent evidence anywhere in the world for a commitment to the systematic exploitation of dense and predictable resources." Marean, Curtis. 2016. "The transition to foraging for dense and predictable resources and its impact on the evolution of modern humans." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371: 20150239. P. 9.
"The more recent parts of human evolution can offer insights. The broadly accepted time scale for the origins of the modern human lineage is thought to be between 0.4 and 0.7 Ma, but there are grounds for recognizing transitions around and after this date. The dating is such that we can resolve a number of important events within that time scale–a genetic divergence from the last common ancestors with Neanderthals about 0.5 + 0.2 Ka [sic, = Ma], the appearance of prepared core technologies at approximately 0.3 Ka [sic], the appearance of a modern morphology by at least 195 Ka, dispersals across Africa at approximately 120 Ka and beyond between 80-60 Ka or before, elements of modern human behaviour by at least 160 Ka, and various accelerations in the accumulation of such traits by 120 Ka, and especially after 100 Ka." Foley, Robert, L. Martin, M. Mirazon Lahr & C. Stringer. 2016. "Major transitions in human evolution." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371: 20150229. P. 4.
"In terms of impact, and uniqueness among extant animals, humans in the course of their evolution have undergone major changes, but the relatively good visibility of the evolutionary record for humans (compared to other major transitions) shows that it consists of many smaller cumulative changes, not a single major transition." Foley, Robert, L. Martin, M. Mirazon Lahr & C. Stringer. 2016. "Major transitions in human evolution." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371: 20150229. P. 5.
"Against this confusing backdrop of conflicting approaches to conceptualizing domestication, the following definition is offered: Domestication is a sustained multigenerational mutualistic relationship in which one organism assumes a significant degree of influence over the reproduction and care of another organism in order to secure a more predictable supply of a resource of interest, and through which the partner organism gains advantage over individuals that remain outside this relationship, thereby benefitting and often increasing the fitness of both the domesticator and the target domesticate." Zeder, Melinda. 2015. "Core questions in domestication research." PNAS. March 17. V. 112. No. 11. 3191-3198. P. 3191.
"This human ability to choose between genetic variants of partner species, to leave one relationship in favor of another, to consciously manipulate a symbiont’s life history to the domesticator’s benefit, is the key feature that distinguishes human domesticatory relationships from those between nonhuman species." Zeder, Melinda. 2015. "Core questions in domestication research." PNAS. March 17. V. 112. No. 11. 3191-3198. P. 3192.
"The pathways that humans and target species follow from initial management into domestication are shaped by a number of contingencies affecting both partners and can be broadly classified into three types: (i) a commensal pathway in which the plant or animal first moves into an anthropogenic habitat and later develops a two-way partnership with humans, (ii) a prey or harvest pathway initiated by a human interest in enhancing the yield or predictability of a resource provided by target species, and (iii) a directed pathway in which humans deliberately set out to domesticate a species." Zeder, Melinda. 2015. "Core questions in domestication research." PNAS. March 17. V. 112. No. 11. 3191-3198. P. 3192.
"Just as some level of management is an essential precursor to domestication, the presence of domesticates is a prerequisite for agriculture. Human utilization of one or more domesticates, however, does not constitute agriculture. Instead, agriculture is distinguished by the degree of dependence on domesticates and is defined here as: a provisioning system based primarily on the production and consumption of domesticated resources." Zeder, Melinda. 2015. "Core questions in domestication research." PNAS. March 17. V. 112. No. 11. 3191-3198. Pp. 3192-3.
"There is then, a continuum between resource management, domestication, and agriculture." Zeder, Melinda. 2015. "Core questions in domestication research." PNAS. March 17. V. 112. No. 11. 3191-3198. P. 3193.
"Management, as defined here, centers on the actions of the manager in attempting to enhance the returns of a resource of interest. The definition of domestication emphasizes the coevolving mutualism between the manager and the managed resource and the responses each make to promote this relationship. Agriculture is defined as a provisioning system in which the production and consumption of domesticates plays a dominant role." Zeder, Melinda. 2015. "Core questions in domestication research." PNAS. March 17. V. 112. No. 11. 3191-3198. P. 3193.
"For over a decade researchers endorsing optimal foraging theory (OFT) have argued that goals of optimizing energetic returns were primary shaping factors in domestication. Characterized as derived from neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, OFT is based on the premise that optimizing behaviors confer a selective advantage to individuals who practice them. Of the various OFT models that have been developed, only the diet breadth model (DBM) has been used in efforts to explain initial domestication. DBM predicts that foragers will always choose resources with higher net energy returns, after search and processing costs, over lower return resources." Zeder, Melinda. 2015. "Core questions in domestication research." PNAS. March 17. V. 112. No. 11. 3191-3198. P. 3196.
"In direct opposition to DBM-based explanatory frameworks, a cultural niche construction (CNC) explanatory framework for initial domestication is directly derived from macroevolutionary theory. In contrast to a neo-Darwinian focus on selection-driven allele frequency changes in individual organisms, macroevolutionary theory considers organisms as integrated wholes that do not simply adapt to changes in their environment but that may, through more hierarchical and interactive processes, actually shape their environments. This is accomplished through niche construction or ecosystem engineering, with organisms acting ‘as co-directors of their own and other species evolution’." Zeder, Melinda. 2015. "Core questions in domestication research." PNAS. March 17. V. 112. No. 11. 3191-3198. P. 3196.
"Whereas OFT explanatory frameworks cast efforts at modifying environments leading to domestication as adaptive responses to resource depression, CNC explanatory frameworks see niche construction as an important driver of evolutionary change that does not require resource depression to be set into motion. In fact, a CNC approach argues that long-term commitments to niche-constructing activities required for domestication are more likely to occur in stable or resource-rich environments. So, whereas OFT scenarios place domestication in the context of imbalances between population and a region’s carrying capacity, CNC explanatory frameworks argue that stable to resource rich environments made it possible for human groups to abandon more mobile strategies and establish relatively permanent communities that served as the nexus for the increase and dissemination of information about the environment, each other, and the broader world." Zeder, Melinda. 2015. "Core questions in domestication research." PNAS. March 17. V. 112. No. 11. 3191-3198. P. 3196.
"... a major evolutionary transition, I propose that each transition can be usefully divided into three principal stages. These are (a) social group formation, (b) social group maintenance, and (c) social group transformation." Bourke, Andrew. 2011. Principles of Social Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 15.
"Social group transformation is hereby defined as the set of processes that transforms a stable social group into an obligate collective with a high degree of interdependence of its parts and sufficient overall integration to be considered an individual and candidate for participation, as a subunit, in the transition to the next hierarchical level. Put another way, social group transformation is the stage in a major transition at which the new level of individuality emerges." Bourke, Andrew. 2011. Principles of Social Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 20.
"All three stages of a major transition–social group formation, maintenance, and transformation–overlap to some extent." Bourke, Andrew. 2011. Principles of Social Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 21.
"Hamilton’s theory addresses the evolution of four types of social behaviour, namely cooperation (narrow sense), altruism, selfishness, and spite. These represent all possible types of social behaviour as formally defined by the nature of the costs and benefits experienced by social partners." Bourke, Andrew. 2011. Principles of Social Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 21.
"It is its combination of breadth, fit to data, and profundity that, as several previous authors have argued, renders Hamilton’s theory the foremost candidate for a general theory of social evolution." Bourke, Andrew. 2011. Principles of Social Evolution. Oxford UP. P. 22.
"Aggregated pairs [species pairs of plant and animal community organization] dominated from the Carboniferous period (307 million years ago) to the early Holocene epoch (11,700 years before present), when there was a pronounced shift to more segregated pairs, a trend that continues in modern assemblages. The shift began during the Holocene and coincided with increasing human population size and the spread of agriculture in North America. Before the shift, an average of 64% of significant pairs were aggregated: after the shift, the average dropped to 37%. The organization of modern and late Holocene plant and animal assemblages differs fundamentally from that of assemblages over the past 300 million years that predate the large-scale impacts of humans. Our results suggest that the rules governing the assembly of communities have recently been changed by human activity." Lyons, S. Kathleen, Amatangelo, Behrensmeyer, Bercovici, Blois, Davis, DiMichele, Du, Eronen, Faith, Graves, Jud, Labandeira, Loo, McGill, Miller, Patterson, Pineda-Munoz, Potts, Riddle, Terry, Toth, Ulrich, Villasenor, Wing, Anderson, Anderson, Waller & Gotelli. 2016. "Holocene shifts in the assembly of plant and animal communities implicate human impacts." Nature. V. 529. January 7. P. 80.
"Whereas most studies have described overall community structure with simple indices such as species richness and average co-occurrence, some analyses categorize individual species pairs in assemblages as random, aggregated, or segregated. Segregated species pairs may be generated by processes such as negative species interactions, distinct habitat preferences, and dispersal limitation. Aggregated species pairs may be generated by processes such as positive species interactions, shared habitat preferences, and concordant dispersal." Lyons, S. Kathleen, Amatangelo, Behrensmeyer, Bercovici, Blois, Davis, DiMichele, Du, Eronen, Faith, Graves, Jud, Labandeira, Loo, McGill, Miller, Patterson, Pineda-Munoz, Potts, Riddle, Terry, Toth, Ulrich, Villasenor, Wing, Anderson, Anderson, Waller & Gotelli. 2016. "Holocene shifts in the assembly of plant and animal communities implicate human impacts." Nature. V. 529. January 7. P. 80.
"Possible drivers by which increasing human impacts led to an increase in segregated pairs include (1) increases in hunting and domestication of particular species, (2) changes in land use, (3) increases in the frequency of fire, (4) increases in habitat fragmentation and dispersal barriers, and (5) deliberate and accidental spread of species beyond their native geographical ranges." Lyons, S. Kathleen, Amatangelo, Behrensmeyer, Bercovici, Blois, Davis, DiMichele, Du, Eronen, Faith, Graves, Jud, Labandeira, Loo, McGill, Miller, Patterson, Pineda-Munoz, Potts, Riddle, Terry, Toth, Ulrich, Villasenor, Wing, Anderson, Anderson, Waller & Gotelli. 2016. "Holocene shifts in the assembly of plant and animal communities implicate human impacts." Nature. V. 529. January 7. P. 82.
"The co-occurrence structure of modern and recent plant and animal assemblages thus appears to be unique in the evolutionary history of terrestrial ecosystems, ...." Lyons, S. Kathleen, Amatangelo, Behrensmeyer, Bercovici, Blois, Davis, DiMichele, Du, Eronen, Faith, Graves, Jud, Labandeira, Loo, McGill, Miller, Patterson, Pineda-Munoz, Potts, Riddle, Terry, Toth, Ulrich, Villasenor, Wing, Anderson, Anderson, Waller & Gotelli. 2016. "Holocene shifts in the assembly of plant and animal communities implicate human impacts." Nature. V. 529. January 7. P. 83. "Broad evidence ... suggests that direct human alteration of terrestrial ecosystems by hunting, foraging, land clearing, agriculture, and other activities has been profound in some regions at least since the late Pleistocene, with long-term impacts from forest clearing, increased fire frequencies, megafaunal extinctions, species invasions, soil erosion, and others. Despite widespread recognition that hunter-gatherers and early farmers were capable of transforming terrestrial ecosystems around the world, these early anthropogenic changes have yet to be understood as global change processes and are generally portrayed by global change scientists as localized and insignificant compared with contemporary changes in the Earth system." Ellis, Erle, J. Kaplan, D. Fuller, S. Vaurus, K Goldewijk & P. Verburg. 2013. "Used planet: A global history." PNAS. May 14. V. 110. No. 20. 7978-7985. P. 7978.
"Even as human populations increase beyond seven billion and per capita demand for food is increasing, rates of growth in the global extent and per capita use of land for agriculture seem to be declining. This has been made possible by agricultural intensification, the adoption of technologies enabling dramatic increases in food production from a given area of agricultural land." Ellis, Erle, J. Kaplan, D. Fuller, S. Vaurus, K Goldewijk & P. Verburg. 2013. "Used planet: A global history." PNAS. May 14. V. 110. No. 20. 7978-7985. P. 7978.
"... a general trend toward increasing productivity with population density is attained not as a smooth and continuous process but through a complex succession of land system regime shifts, some of them regressive, with populations and their production systems subject to both surplus production and productivity crises,.... "In this general model of intensification, land-use systems tend to follow a three-phase relationship between productivity and population. In the ‘intensification’ phase, adoption of more productive technologies enables productivity to increase faster than population. ‘Involution’ occurs once technology-driven productivity increases are exhausted, such that only net increases in labor or other costly inputs enable increases in production. Finally, production ‘crises’ result once all capacity to enhance land productivity is exhausted and food production cannot keep up with increasing populations.... In all cases, regime shifts in land system productivity are driven not by technological innovations in themselves but rather by demographic or social demands for surplus production or reduced labor inputs, usually well after the requisite technologies have become widely available." Ellis, Erle, J. Kaplan, D. Fuller, S. Vaurus, K Goldewijk & P. Verburg. 2013. "Used planet: A global history." PNAS. May 14. V. 110. No. 20. 7978-7985. P. 7981.
"Processing techniques such as grinding, boiling, fermenting, and roastiing were gradually adopted to enhance nutrient bioavailability from plant and animal foods, further increasing the amount of food extractable from a given area of land." Ellis, Erle, J. Kaplan, D. Fuller, S. Vaurus, K Goldewijk & P. Verburg. 2013. "Used planet: A global history." PNAS. May 14. V. 110. No. 20. 7978-7985. P. 7981. "Although diverse across regions and time periods, most human populations likely entered the Holocene living within cultures that had become technologically adapted to denser populations by pre- and protoagricultural processes of land-use intensification, including dietary broadening, the use of fire to enhance foraging success, food processing, the propagation of useful species, and other accumulated products of social learning... Although pre-agricultural technologies for ecosystem engineering have far lower productivities than the agricultural technologies that came later, they still enabled human populations to grow beyond the capabilities of unaltered ecosystems to support them." Ellis, Erle, J. Kaplan, D. Fuller, S. Vaurus, K Goldewijk & P. Verburg. 2013. "Used planet: A global history." PNAS. May 14. V. 110. No. 20. 7978-7985. P. 7981.
"Despite their unprecedented scale, sophistication, and productive capacity, the rise of intensive industrial land-use systems fits well within our general definition of land-use intensification, with increasing human population densities, concentrated within urban settlements in this case, driving ever increasing productivity per unit area of land." Ellis, Erle, J. Kaplan, D. Fuller, S. Vaurus, K Goldewijk & P. Verburg. 2013. "Used planet: A global history." PNAS. May 14. V. 110. No. 20. 7978-7985. P. 7982.
"In this modern context, there are two main theories of the evolution of human cooperation, both of which focus on the most difficult theoretical problem from the point of view of evolutionary theory: altruism. The first theory comes from evolutionary psychology and is often called the Big Mistake Hypothesis. The basic idea is that human altruistic tendencies evolved at a time when humans lived in small groups, comprised mostly of kin. In this setting, altruistic acts would either (a) benefit the altruist by enhancing in some way her chances for reciprocity, which is especially critical in small groups in which reputational assessment among familiar interactants is constant.... "The second theory is the Cultural Group Selection Hypothesis, and it focuses on a later stage in human evolution characterized by larger social groups. The basis idea is that social groups with more altruists will, for various reasons, outcompete other groups." Tomasello, Michael, A. Melis, C. Tennie, E. Wyman & E. Herrmann. 2012. "Two Key Steps in the Evolution of Human Cooperation: The Interdependence Hypothesis." Current Anthropology. V. 53. No. 6. December. P. 673.
"Our starting point is not cooperation as altruistic helping, but rather cooperation as mutualistic collaboration. Our hypothesis, which we call the Interdependence Hypothesis, is that at some point humans created lifeways in which collaborating with others was necessary for survival and procreation (and cheating was controlled by partner choice). This situation of interdependence led inevitably to altruism, as individuals naturally wanted to help the collaborative partners on whom they depended for, for example, foraging success. Moreover, interdependent collaboration also helps to explain humans’ unique forms of cognition and social organization, since it is collaboration, not altruism, that creates the many coordination problems that arise as individuals attempt to put their heads together in acts of shared intentionality to create and maintain the complex technologies, symbol systems, and cultural institutions of modern human societies." Tomasello, Michael, A. Melis, C. Tennie, E. Wyman & E. Herrmann. 2012. "Two Key Steps in the Evolution of Human Cooperation: The Interdependence Hypothesis." Current Anthropology. V. 53. No. 6. December. Pp. 673-4.
"In general, as humans went from more passive scavenging to more active collaborative foraging, they were faced with every more challenging coordination situations and decisions, and this provided the selective context for the evolution of ever greater skills of coordination and communication." Tomasello, Michael, A. Melis, C. Tennie, E. Wyman & E. Herrmann. 2012. "Two Key Steps in the Evolution of Human Cooperation: The Interdependence Hypothesis." Current Anthropology. V. 53. No. 6. December. P. 678.
"Clutton-Brock proposes a generalized version of this mechanism called group augmentation. If my prosperity depends on my social group (for defense against predators, etc.), then it is in my interest to keep them alive and prosperous as well. "The process is, then, a form of social selection: I help others who do things that benefit me (more than my help costs me). But the scenario we are proposing here is special. It is special because if I have a stake in an alarm caller and so help her, then what I am socially selecting for is better alarm callers (who have keen perception, loud vocalizations, etc.). But when the target domain is collaboration, then what is being socially selected for is good collaborators–who are tolerant of others in cofeeding situations, skillful at coordination and communication, have a tendency to shun or punish free riders, help their partners, and so on." Tomasello, Michael, A. Melis, C. Tennie, E. Wyman & E. Herrmann. 2012. "Two Key Steps in the Evolution of Human Cooperation: The Interdependence Hypothesis." Current Anthropology. V. 53. No. 6. December. P. 680. Reference: Clutton-Brock, T. 2002. "Breeding together: kin selection and mutualism in cooperative vertebrates." Science. 296:69-72.
"But, apparently, at some point it was not stable, as evidenced by the fact that contemporary humans possess a whole other level of mechanisms for cooperation, including social conventions, norms (internalized into guilt and shame), and institutions, along with a strong in-group bias. Why did these become necessary? "We think there were two, essentially demographic, factors: population growth within groups, and competition between groups." Tomasello, Michael, A. Melis, C. Tennie, E. Wyman & E. Herrmann. 2012. "Two Key Steps in the Evolution of Human Cooperation: The Interdependence Hypothesis." Current Anthropology. V. 53. No. 6. December. P. 681.
"... Hill and Hurtado argue and present evidence that a transition to larger social groups with central-place foraging–and comprising a hierarchical structure in which ‘bands’ coalesce into ‘tribes’ or ‘societies’–took place basically with modern humans and the advent of behavioral modernity. The result was two new sets of challenges to human cooperators: "Large-group coordination: as groups became larger, at least partly in competition with other groups, individuals needed to be able to coordinate with relative strangers–while still knowing that they were from within the group (and so had the requisite skills and trustworthiness). "Large-group social selection: as groups became larger, again due to competition with other groups incentives for cooperation diminished (each individual was less needed, and reputational information was more difficult to obtain), so free riding–and even active cheating–proliferated and needed to be controlled." Tomasello, Michael, A. Melis, C. Tennie, E. Wyman & E. Herrmann. 2012. "Two Key Steps in the Evolution of Human Cooperation: The Interdependence Hypothesis." Current Anthropology. V. 53. No. 6. December. P. 681. Reference: Hill, K. & M. Hurtado. 2009. "Cooperative breeding in South American hunter-gatherers." Proceedings of the Royal Society: B. 276: 3863-3870.
"Cultural practices are different from behavioral traditions because their practitioners understand them as ‘shared’ in the group; that is, they understand them as conventional. We have all ‘agreed’ to do them in a particular way, even though we all know that there are other ways we could do them... Conventions thus require some kind of recursive mindreading or common ground as the basis of the agreement, and this basic ability evolved initially, as argued above, as a skill for forming joint goals and joint attention in collaborative activities.... "Conventions generate the conformity characteristic of cultural practices because it is in the individual’s interest to do things the way that others do them so that they can effectively coordinate–and this is especially important if one wishes to be able to coordinate with anyone in the larger society, including strangers." Tomasello, Michael, A. Melis, C. Tennie, E. Wyman & E. Herrmann. 2012. "Two Key Steps in the Evolution of Human Cooperation: The Interdependence Hypothesis." Current Anthropology. V. 53. No. 6. December. P. 682.
"In the face of group competition, group life in general becomes one big collaborative activity, both directly for agonistic conflicts with competitor groups and indirectly in competing for resources with competitors in the same geographical area." Tomasello, Michael, A. Melis, C. Tennie, E. Wyman & E. Herrmann. 2012. "Two Key Steps in the Evolution of Human Cooperation: The Interdependence Hypothesis." Current Anthropology. V. 53. No. 6. December. P. 682.
"Under these conditions–within-group population growth and between-group competition–group identification thus became critical. Group identification may seem a fuzzy concept, but many phenomena confirm its reality, most especially, the many in-group biases that modern humans show (helping in-group more than out-group members, caring more about reputation with in-group than with out-group members, etc.). Even more striking, people feel collective guilt, pride, or shame when some member of their group does something especially praiseworthy or blameworthy–as if they themselves had done it... This psychological attitude may be called group-mindedness...." Tomasello, Michael, A. Melis, C. Tennie, E. Wyman & E. Herrmann. 2012. "Two Key Steps in the Evolution of Human Cooperation: The Interdependence Hypothesis." Current Anthropology. V. 53. No. 6. December. P. 682.
"Pretty much all of the cooperative mechanisms characteristic of humans at this second step in our evolutionary story come together in the creation of social institutions. Social institutions are collaborative cultural practices with joint goals and standardized roles, with social norms governing how rewards are dispensed, how cheaters and free riders are treated, and so on. What is new about institutions is that they create new statuses for individuals playing particular roles that everyone must respect; for example, we give individuals the rights and obligations to be group ‘chief,’ and we give ‘police’ the rights and obligations necessary to keep within-group peace." Tomasello, Michael, A. Melis, C. Tennie, E. Wyman & E. Herrmann. 2012. "Two Key Steps in the Evolution of Human Cooperation: The Interdependence Hypothesis." Current Anthropology. V. 53. No. 6. December. P. 684.
"The result was a new kind of interdependence and group-mindedness that went well beyond the joint intentionality of small-scale cooperation in a kind of collective intentionality at the level of the entire societal, that is, cultural, group. Interestingly and importantly, young children do not begin to show this kind of group-mindedness and collective intentionality–in particular, they do not enforce social norms on others–until after 3 years of age, which is considerably after they are capable of collaborating with other individuals toward joint goals, as in step 1 of our story." Tomasello, Michael, A. Melis, C. Tennie, E. Wyman & E. Herrmann. 2012. "Two Key Steps in the Evolution of Human Cooperation: The Interdependence Hypothesis." Current Anthropology. V. 53. No. 6. December. P. 684.
"... as noted at the outset, cultural group selection explains why the particular social norms and institutions of particular cultural groups prevailed, and this assumes species-universal skills and motivations for creating social norms and institutions in the first place. We thus view cultural group selection as a critically important component in the process leading to modern human cooperation in large-scale societies, but only fairly late in the process, that is, after our second step, in which human groups began their truly cultural life in larger societies." Tomasello, Michael, A. Melis, C. Tennie, E. Wyman & E. Herrmann. 2012. "Two Key Steps in the Evolution of Human Cooperation: The Interdependence Hypothesis." Current Anthropology. V. 53. No. 6. December. P. 685.
"The combinatorial metabolic outcomes of the reactions of the five major elements connected by electron transfers ultimately are driven by thermodynamics, but selected by biologically derived catalysts." Falkowski, Paul & L. Godfrey. 2008. "Electrons, life and the evolution of Earth’s oxygen cycle." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 363: 2705-2716. P. 2706.
"Hence, at its core, the nitrogen cycle is mediated by three groups of microbes: nitrogen fixers, nitrifiers and denitrifiers, which sequentially couple the cycle of N to the reciprocal reaction of carbon via a reduction, oxidation and reduction step. That is, the initial reduction of N2 to NH4+ is at the expense of the oxidation of organic carbon to inorganic carbon, while the oxidation of NH4+ to NO3- is coupled to the reduction of inorganic carbon to organic matter and the reduction of NO3- to N2 is coupled to the oxidation of organic matter to inorganic carbon. All the three pathways are related to oxygen, the two reduction reactions are inhibited by O2, while nitrification is strictly dependent upon the gas." Falkowski, Paul & L. Godfrey. 2008. "Electrons, life and the evolution of Earth’s oxygen cycle." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 363: 2705-2716. P. 2709.
"In the case of SEM [socioeconomic metabolism], we propose to use the level of control by human agents as the defining extrinsic property to draw the line between SEM and the natural environment. This control threshold for events represents the boundary between events that experience sufficiently high levels of control by human agents and are hence part of SEM, and those that do not and are hence part of the natural environment." Pauliuk, Stefan & E. Hertwich. 2015. "Socioeconomic metabolism as paradigm for studying the biophysical basis of human societies." Ecological Economics. 119: 83-93. P. 85.
"Socioeconomic metabolism constitutes the self-reproduction and evolution of the biophysical structures of human society. It comprises those biophysical transformation processes, distribution processes, and flows, which are controlled by humans for their purposes. The biophysical structures of society and socioeconomic metabolism together form the biophysical basis of society." Pauliuk, Stefan & E. Hertwich. 2015. "Socioeconomic metabolism as paradigm for studying the biophysical basis of human societies." Ecological Economics. 119: 83-93. P. 85.
"The events that constitute SEM are part of two distinct, but interconnected spheres, which are termed biophysical and social realities, or natural/biophysical and social spheres of causation. "All events in SEM are of biophysical nature, and hence part of the biophysical reality. They are also part of the social reality, because humans need to recognize these objects and events before they can control them for their purposes." Pauliuk, Stefan & E. Hertwich. 2015. "Socioeconomic metabolism as paradigm for studying the biophysical basis of human societies." Ecological Economics. 119: 83-93. P. 86.
"The metabolism of current industrial societies, because of its short duration in historic terms and its apparent overuse of natural resources, should not be seen as a regime by itself but as a transition to a new, yet unknown future socio-metabolic regime." Pauliuk, Stefan & E. Hertwich. 2015. "Socioeconomic metabolism as paradigm for studying the biophysical basis of human societies." Ecological Economics. 119: 83-93. P. 90.
"These two levels, the individuals and the social groups, correspond to what Lotka, Georgescu-Roegen, and afterwards Margalef called endosomatic energy and exosomatic energy, a distinction having an axiomatic value for the foundations of ecological economy. These two flows also represent the biometabolic and sociometabolic energy flows, respectively, which together make up the general process of metabolism between nature and society.... "The history of humanity is then but the history of the expansion of sociometabolism beyond the addition of the bio-metabolisms of all its members.... ...but in the present time industrial societies, the exosomatic energy is thirty or forty times larger than the overall energy used by the individuals that conform them." Gonzalez de Molina, Manuel & V.M. Toledo. 2014. The Social Metabolism: A Socio-Ecological Theory of Historical Change (Environmental History). Springer. Pp. 60-1.
"... the general process of social metabolism involves three types of material and energy flows: input flows, inner flows, and output flows. The metabolic process is then represented by five phenomena that are theoretically and practically distinct, and that represent the five main functions of social metabolism: appropriation (Apr), transformation (Tr), circulation, (Cir), consumption (Con), and excretion (Exc)." Gonzalez de Molina, Manuel & V.M. Toledo. 2014. The Social Metabolism: A Socio-Ecological Theory of Historical Change (Environmental History). Springer. Pp. 61-2.
"Through time, Tr activities have been gradually increasing in complexity, and the process becoming less labor intensive and more energy intensive." Gonzalez de Molina, Manuel & V.M. Toledo. 2014. The Social Metabolism: A Socio-Ecological Theory of Historical Change (Environmental History). Springer. Pp. 62-3.
"... 23 main commodities and services can be recognized that derive from four well-delimited ecosystemic functions (of regulation, of habitat, of production, and of information) operating as a matrix of what society obtains from nature." Gonzalez de Molina, Manuel & V.M. Toledo. 2014. The Social Metabolism: A Socio-Ecological Theory of Historical Change (Environmental History). Springer. P. 73.
"Agrarian activities were the center of economic activity because they supplied the bulk of the energy used for production, transportation, metallurgy and crafts, and also the bulk of raw materials, such that all other economic activities were strictly dependent on them.... "Because of this dependency on agrarian production, crops needed to provide more energy than that invested in their production. For example, in the pre-industrial agriculture of the humid portions of Europe, it has been estimated that the amount of food needed for sustaining agrarian activities was between 14 and 20% of the total produced food; in different terms, the energy input-output ratio was of 5-1." Gonzalez de Molina, Manuel & V.M. Toledo. 2014. The Social Metabolism: A Socio-Ecological Theory of Historical Change (Environmental History). Springer. P. 162. "Thus societies under the organic metabolic regime organized themselves in a closed circuit having its origin in the appropriation process, while at the same time the excretion processes were incorporated and, given the organic nature of wastes, turned into inputs. The processes of transformation were nearly inexistent or were restricted to domestic products or crafts (preserves, sausages, salted meats, etc.). The distribution process was mainly at a local scale. Agro-food chains were short, and their energetic and raw material costs had a low significance." Gonzalez de Molina, Manuel & V.M. Toledo. 2014. The Social Metabolism: A Socio-Ecological Theory of Historical Change (Environmental History). Springer. P. 163.
"Considering the territorial equilibrium organic societies needed to establish, the impossibility of indefinitely expanding production without human labor and territorial costs, little possibilities existed of having an economy in a progressive state, i.e., sustained economic growth. Therefore, the magnitude of organic metabolism tended–meaning it was always like that–to remain stable, and its economy to be in a stationary state." Gonzalez de Molina, Manuel & V.M. Toledo. 2014. The Social Metabolism: A Socio-Ecological Theory of Historical Change (Environmental History). Springer. P. 176.
The shift from a mainly solar production to one based on fossil fuel or mineral energy as a product of the industrial revolution, generated a qualitative change in the degree of transformation of ecosystems. It can be said that it was the leap in the mode of transformation (energy capture) what unleashed a change in the modes of appropriation, circulation, consumption, and excretion, eventually transforming the whole metabolism." Gonzalez de Molina, Manuel & V.M. Toledo. 2014. The Social Metabolism: A Socio-Ecological Theory of Historical Change (Environmental History). Springer. P. 197.
"The synergies of metabolic processes were multiplied in the industrial metabolism, as its most noticeable and unexpected of consequences giving place to a massive increase in human population and to unimaginable impacts on the ecosystems, and eventually on the whole of Earth’s ecosystem." Gonzalez de Molina, Manuel & V.M. Toledo. 2014. The Social Metabolism: A Socio-Ecological Theory of Historical Change (Environmental History). Springer. P. 198.
"Technological innovations were the result of the valiant struggle of society placed against the ecological wall. When land began to be scarce it became more profitable to produce machines that operated with fossil fuel instead of horses needing of land suitable for agriculture." Gonzalez de Molina, Manuel & V.M. Toledo. 2014. The Social Metabolism: A Socio-Ecological Theory of Historical Change (Environmental History). Springer. P. 202.
"But in fact, the industrial metabolic regime had penetrated agriculture half a century earlier during the late nineteenth century, when chemical fertilizers manufactured by means of fossil fuels and chemical procedures made their appearance. Their introduction meant overcoming the most common limiting factor in production thus far, the lack of soil nutrients, and a break from the dependence on replenishing land fertility. In other words, reducing the land cost of fertilization. A long transition process commenced in which agrarian production shifted from depending on soil to depending on subsoil, in other words, on fossil fuels and minerals, as is the case today." Gonzalez de Molina, Manuel & V.M. Toledo. 2014. The Social Metabolism: A Socio-Ecological Theory of Historical Change (Environmental History). Springer. Pp. 233-4.
"In fact, the production of biomass no longer provides the bulk of the energy that allows society to function. The domestic extraction of biomass represented between 95 and 100% of the energy consumption in organic metabolism societies, whereas in societies where the industrial metabolism has become the dominant way of organizing relations with nature, biomass only produces between 10 and 30%. Furthermore, the energy balances show that agriculture has changed from being a supplier to a demander of energy. Without the subsidy of external energy, a part of global agriculture could not function. "This major injection of energy and materials explains why yields per land unit have multiplied, offering the capability of feeding a population that has grown six-fold since the start of the nineteenth century, giving rise to one of many paradoxes. According to Smil, the total area of farmland in the world grew by a third during the twentieth century; however, because productivity has multiplied by four, the harvests obtained in this period multiplied by six. But as Smil himself acknowledges, this gain is partly due to the fact that the amount of energy used in farming is eight times larger." Gonzalez de Molina, Manuel & V.M. Toledo. 2014. The Social Metabolism: A Socio-Ecological Theory of Historical Change (Environmental History). Springer. P. 238. Reference: Smil, V. 2001. Energias: Una guia ilustrada de la biosfera y la civilizacion. Editorial Critica.
"In conclusion, during the past three decades economy has grown faster than resource consumption, a trend more evident in richer countries. Despite all, most countries continue to consume more resources in absolute terms, independently of the evolution of their economy. In fact, total consumption in the world grew by 88% between 1980 and 2008. We are thus far from witnessing a strong dematerialization." Gonzalez de Molina, Manuel & V.M. Toledo. 2014. The Social Metabolism: A Socio-Ecological Theory of Historical Change (Environmental History). Springer. P. 241.
"The behavior of more industrialized countries has led some authors to suggest that the industrialization process–the transition from the organic to the industrial metabolic regime–follows an S-shape curve model with a pre-development trend ending in a sudden takeoff stage, followed by a vertiginous acceleration phase, and apparently ending in phase of slowdown and stabilization. Wiedenhofer et al made a long-term analysis of the processes–taking centuries or a few years–of expansion of the industrial metabolic regime based on the cases of Austria, UK, Japan, and US from the end of the eighteenth century until the year 2000, concluding that the process fits the S-curve model." Gonzalez de Molina, Manuel & V.M. Toledo. 2014. The Social Metabolism: A Socio-Ecological Theory of Historical Change (Environmental History). Springer. P. 241. Reference: Wiedenhofer, D., E. Rovenskaya, W. Haas, F. Krausmann, I. Pallua & M. Fischer-Kowalski. 2013. "Is there a 1970s syndrome? Analyzing structural breaks in the metabolism of industrial economies." Energy Procedia. 40:182-191.
"The industrial metabolic regime ended up being a high entropy regime, i.e., based on high energy and materials consumption, requires building and maintaining large infrastructure (buildings, highways) and high volumes of physical stocks (e.g., cars), have high person and commodity mobility, and very high level of material (exosomatic) consumption." Gonzalez de Molina, Manuel & V.M. Toledo. 2014. The Social Metabolism: A Socio-Ecological Theory of Historical Change (Environmental History). Springer. P. 247.
"The industrialized processes, as we have shown here, has only reached a reduced number of richest countries and only 20% of the total world population lives in societies characterized as of advanced industrial metabolism. These countries produce 80% of the global GDP, own 25% of Earths land, and consume 38% of all the primary energy and 37% of all the materials globally supplied. In contrast, it has been estimated that nearly 600 million people still live under an organic metabolic regime. Around two thirds of the world’s population live in economies placed along the different transition stages we have described." Gonzalez de Molina, Manuel & V.M. Toledo. 2014. The Social Metabolism: A Socio-Ecological Theory of Historical Change (Environmental History). Springer. P. 247.
"Assessed in U.S. dollars, the global economy multipled by 14 between 1900 and 2000, so that the global economy of 1950 has been surpassed by the current economy of the U.S., and the global economy of 1900 is equivalent to the present Japanese economy." Gonzalez de Molina, Manuel & V.M. Toledo. 2014. The Social Metabolism: A Socio-Ecological Theory of Historical Change (Environmental History). Springer. P. 311.
"Likewise, the extraction and consumption of metals (copper, zinc, manganese, chrome, nickel, magnesium, tin, molybdenum, and mercury) had a spectacular increment during the past 100 years. Between 1900 and 2009 the consumption of resources went from 7 to nearly 70 billion tons (7-70 Gt). All types of products show a high increment: biomass, from 5 to 20 Gt; fossil fuels, 1-13 Gt; metals, 0.2-6 Gt; and building materials, 0.7-28 GT. Despite the mass of biomass was quadrupled; its growth is the lowest in relative terms. In fact, the annual per capita consumption of biomass remained somewhat stable during the twentieth century, the consumption of inorganic resources went from 1 to 7 t inhab-1 y-1. This means that the consumption of materials grew during the past century at a higher rate than population. In fact, the population multiplied by 4.4, while consumption of resources by 9.6. Each current earth’s inhabitant needs 2.2 times more materials than inhabitants at the beginning of the past century...." Gonzalez de Molina, Manuel & V.M. Toledo. 2014. The Social Metabolism: A Socio-Ecological Theory of Historical Change (Environmental History). Springer. P. 311.
"Cars produce 15% of atmospheric polluting gases, its building generates between 15 and 20 tons of wastes, and each year car accidents kill one million and injure between 25 and 35 million people.... By 2001 the cattle population reached to 1.53 billions,...." Gonzalez de Molina, Manuel & V.M. Toledo. 2014. The Social Metabolism: A Socio-Ecological Theory of Historical Change (Environmental History). Springer. P. 312.
"Metamorphosis is thus an appropriate metaphor for understanding the enormous complexity of socioecological change." Gonzalez de Molina, Manuel & V.M. Toledo. 2014. The Social Metabolism: A Socio-Ecological Theory of Historical Change (Environmental History). Springer. P. 317.
"Between the beginning of our era and until 1750 the world population grew at a cumulative annual rate of 0.06%, of 0.48% from 1750 to 1850, 0.71% between 1850 and 1950, and of 1.76% from 1950 to the present." Gonzalez de Molina, Manuel & V.M. Toledo. 2014. The Social Metabolism: A Socio-Ecological Theory of Historical Change (Environmental History). Springer. P. 321.
"The exploitation of agrarian labor by dominant classes is a paradigmatic case of parasitism." Gonzalez de Molina, Manuel & V.M. Toledo. 2014. The Social Metabolism: A Socio-Ecological Theory of Historical Change (Environmental History). Springer. P. 322.
"I make three key points, which arguably apply to life elsewhere in the universe, and are therefore proposed as biological principles that could guide our understanding of life generally: (1) chemiosmotic coupling is as universal as the genetic code, for fundamental reasons relating to the origin of life; (2) prokaryotes are constrained by chemiosmotic coupling across their plasma membrane, but eukaryotes escaped this constraint through a rare and stochastic endosymbiosis between two prokaryotes, giving them orders of magnitude more energy per gene; and (3) this endosymbiosis, in turn, produced a unique genomic asymmetry, transforming the selection pressures acting on eukaryotes and driving the evolution of unique eukaryotic traits." Lane, Nick. 2014. "Bioenergetic Constraints on the Evolution of Complex Life." Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology. 6:a015982. P. 3.
"Eukaryotes display an extreme genomic asymmetry, in which hundreds or thousands of tiny mitochondrial genomes support, energetically, a huge nuclear genome, typically three to four orders of magnitude larger than the largest known prokaryotic genomes." Lane, Nick. 2014. "Bioenergetic Constraints on the Evolution of Complex Life." Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology. 6:a015982. P. 11. "The loss of endosymbiont genes and transfer of others to the nucleus helped integrate the two cells into one, but the fact that this process was never–can never be–completed means that eukaryotes remain fundamentally chimeric. The precise selection pressures that mitochondria placed on their host cells must have changed over time, but the dominant leitmotif of eukaryotic evolution, differing radically from anything in bacteria and archaea, is the need for intergenomic coadaptation, generation after generation." Lane, Nick. 2014. "Bioenergetic Constraints on the Evolution of Complex Life." Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology. 6:a015982. P. 11.
"A consideration of membrane bioenergetics offers striking insights into why life arose so early here, why all life on Earth is chemiosmotic, why prokaryotes stalled in their morphological complexity, why eukaryotes arose only once in 4 billion years and then evolved a large number of traits that have puzzled biologists for a century, and why these traits are never seen in prokaryotes.... If [this perspective is] true, energetic constraints dictated the evolution of life as much as genetics." Lane, Nick. 2014. "Bioenergetic Constraints on the Evolution of Complex Life." Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology. 6:a015982. P. 15.
"Thus, for articles, vowels, the lexicon, and semantics, all of the evidence suggests that historical forms tend to be retained as low-frequency variants in the tail of the nonlinear distribution of contemporary usage. By the same token, the long tail is where we will find novel features as they enter the language. Grammaticalization, then, is not a process in which particular variants are selected as being ‘grammatical,’ but instead it is the process by which variants just become more frequent at the expense of older variants, and then themselves may become less frequent as newer variants arise and expand. What we call grammaticalization thus corresponds to change in frequency on the A-curve, and in particular for some usage its increase in frequency on the curve as it becomes one of the few top-ranked features." Kretzschmar, William. 2015. Language and Complex Systems. Cambridge UP. P. 59.
"Thus learning begins with isolates (nouns, names), and then nonlinear frequency takes over. ‘Highly recurrent discourse functions’ account for the distributional pattern according to Tomasello. A and the are on the list now for the 2-year-old because they recur with a great many nouns, while the situation for the use of any particular noun will recur only seldom. To see the nonlinear pattern indicates not merely the fact that the child has ‘just a small amount of grammar,’ but that the child has now passed the isolate stage and has achieved the threshold for normal linguistic interaction. These facts show that grammar is developmental, and of course the child’s command of her language will continue to develop." Kretzschmar, William. 2015. Language and Complex Systems. Cambridge UP. P. 71.
"The existence of nonlinear distributions does not prove that any category we have selected is real or valid, however, because the scaling property of complex systems tells us that we can expect to see a nonlinear distribution anywhere we look, at any level, for any phenomenon, for any group of speakers. To say, as the Five Graces do, that ‘grammatical categories develop [through grammaticalization] in all languages’ puts the cart before the horse: frequency distributions occur for any constructions we decide to nominate, but linguists are the ones who create the categories, who make the grammar. The operation of complex systems does not create a network out of which we observe a state as an object. The complex system merely creates a nonlinear frequency distribution, and linguists think that they see a grammar in the distribution after the fact." Kretzschmar, William. 2015. Language and Complex Systems. Cambridge UP. P. 76. Reference to "Five Graces": Ellis, Nick & D. Larsen-Freeman, Eds. 2009. "Language Is a Complex Adaptive System: Position Paper." Language as a Complex Adaptive system. Wiley-Blackwell. Pp. 1-26. Authored by editors plus the following: C. Beckner, R. Blythe, J. Bybee, M. Christiansen, W. Croft, J. Holland, J. Ke & T. Schoenemann.
"It is just not credible to jump back and forth between frequency evidence on a national level, like the Francis and Kucera rankings, and cognitive development in individuals. The operation of the complex system of speech in the cognitive development of children is the same in principle but essentially different in outcome from the operation of the complex system in a speech community at any level. As Tomasello has said, ‘children learn what they hear and different children hear different things in different quantities.’ We can never assume that others will share our own experiences with constructions. If we take care to match the assessments we make to the particular populations from which our data comes, we can make better generalizations, whether for a language as a whole, for national or regional varieties, for social groups, or for particular kinds of texts. The complex interaction of recurrence, frequency, and setting for language look different from every point of view at every scale of analysis." Kretzschmar, William. 2015. Language and Complex Systems. Cambridge UP. P. 79.
"Indeed, the logical conclusion we can draw from complex systems is that there is really only one language, the human language, and the phenomena that we have perceived as different languages are actually levels of scale within the overall complex system of human language." Kretzschmar, William. 2015. Language and Complex Systems. Cambridge UP. Pp. 79-80.
"One of the points made by C.S. Lewis in his Studies in Words (1960) is that the meaning of key words in our culture have ‘ramifications.’ That is, words do retain their older meanings even while they gather new ones. This fact may be obscured for incautious readers by what Lewis called the ‘dangerous sense,’ the meaning that is so frequent in modern usage that we automatically think of it. Lewis could have had no idea of A-curves, but the dangerous sense is of course the top ranked meaning on the modern nonlinear curve of meanings for a word. Our corpus analysis of clockwork showed us this process in operation in contemporary time: we can still use the word to refer to gears and wheels, and the dangerous sense of the word is regularity and precision, but we need to be aware that now we often speak of clockwork in a negative sense, as with universe and orange, that may give the word a dated or unsavory or ironic semantic prosody that refers to something a little too perfect in operation. Thus, for grammatical constructions, the lexicon, and semantics, all of the evidence suggests that historical forms tend to be retained as low-frequency variants in the tail of the nonlinear distribution of contemporary usage, and that such usage continues actively to change." Kretzschmar, William. 2015. Language and Complex Systems. Cambridge UP. P. 113.
"So, it is a postmodern view to claim, as many of us now do, that speech is essentially local, and that language variation begins in small groups at the bottom of the scale-free network of speech that rises to broad regional and social continua of speech." Kretzschmar, William. 2015. Language and Complex Systems. Cambridge UP. P. 210.
"Language variation has not gone away, but our way of thinking about the world has changed, again, just as it did in the modern era when the Dialect Society was founded. People who prefer to do so can still be modernists and look for the big picture. But there are good reasons to enact the postmodern acceptance of language as we find it." Kretzschmar, William. 2015. Language and Complex Systems. Cambridge UP. P. 211.
"In order to use our knowledge of language variation better, we need to focus not so much on the big picture of a language and its major dialects, but, as Klages would say, on the ‘situational, provisional, contingent, and temporary’ settings where speakers interact with language and use the great flexibility of the complex system of speech to accomplish their communicative purposes in particular local settings and situations." Kretzschmar, William. 2015. Language and Complex Systems. Cambridge UP. Pp. 211-12.
"Numerous different perspectives have converged on some version of the idea that subject and object, mind and matter, human and thing co-constitute each other. In these different approaches it is accepted that human existence and human social life depend on material things." Hodder, Ian. 2012. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Wiley-Blackwell. P. 16.
"In material culture and materiality studies there is less focus on human being, and more on how things come to have person-like qualities, how they act, have agency, personalities, spirits, powers. The emphasis remains on the constitution of self and identity, but the focus shifts to how things act in the world." Hodder, Ian. 2012. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Wiley-Blackwell. P. 30.
"The French school of technology studies has long identified technical systems in which human bodies and things are engaged in particular tasks. In recent work a three-tiered ordering of technical systems has been identified by Pierre Lemonnier. At the first level, there are all the components of a technique whether it is coil-building a pot or tying shoe-laces or driving a car. The interacting components consist of the matter being acted upon, tools, gestures or bodily movements, sources of energy, humans and their knowledge. At the second level the various techniques are linked together in a number of ways in any particular society. For example, the techniques are linked together by the fact that one precedes another. Thus, before the coil-building can start, the clay has to be obtained, carried, pounded and mixed. Different techniques may also be linked because they use the same tools, or the same human specialists or the same materials. At the third level, the techniques are embedded within wider social and cultural concerns such as gender relations, ideas about matter and the cosmos, the organization of labor." Hodder, Ian. 2012. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Wiley-Blackwell. Pp. 52-3.
"The chaine operatoire is made up of bodily movements that incorporate both reflective knowledge and practical skills. It also includes the sequences by which materials, tools and sources of energy are involved in the transformation of matter." Hodder, Ian. 2012. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Wiley-Blackwell. P. 53.
"Schiffer’s emphasis on ‘performance characteristics’ includes a broad range of capabilities of things and humans, but it has most distinctively led to detailed study of how the material characteristics of, say, a pot enable certain tasks to be fulfilled, and in this way it is similar to Gibson’s notion of affordances.... "Thus the study of performance characteristics concerns the interactions and affordances between things in relation to a task or goal." Hodder, Ian. 2012. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Wiley-Blackwell. P. 55. Reference: Schiffer, MB. 1999. The Material Life of Human Beings: Artifacts, Behavior, and Communication. Routledge.
"... the stages of human use of materials include procurement, manufacture, exchange, use, discard." Hodder, Ian. 2012. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Wiley-Blackwell. P. 70.
"Indeed, in Europe and the Middle East the adoption of the wheel in the 4th millennium BC is closely tied to the more intensive use of animals for secondary products such as draught and wool. Thus the use of the wheel may have saved labor but it also depended on greater labor investment in the management of animals, their provisioning and foddering, the organization of herd structures and so on." Hodder, Ian. 2012. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Wiley-Blackwell. P. 72.
"Wheats and people had become involved in a co-dependency relationship. The reproduction of wheat came to depend on our continued intervention. We obtained increased production per unit area of land but we also got trapped into clearing, planting, weeding, harvesting, winnowing, pounding, roasting, grinding and so on, together with all the additional tools involved." Hodder, Ian. 2012. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Wiley-Blackwell. P. 76.
"In delayed return systems, on the other hand, humans invested in joint labor such as the making of boats or nets or the clearance of land that produced returns over the long term. Farmers too have delayed return systems as they dig land and harvest crops. Longer term social institutions are needed to hold the group together between the investment of labor and its return. "At the heart of this distinction between immediate and delayed return systems are the temporalities of humans and things. Humans invest labor, expend energy and in small-scale hunter gatherer societies expect a quick return. But if they plant a cereal, or tend it in its wild state, they have to wait for the crop to be harvested before they get a return. If they build a boat it takes time and a lot of energy and skill – too much to repeat every time they go fishing. So they have invested in the boat which has its own temporality – the boat lasts so it can be reused. Humans are thus drawn in to the different temporalities of things." Hodder, Ian. 2012. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Wiley-Blackwell. P. 84.
"The previous three chapters have examined how humans depend on things (HT), how things depend on other things (TT), how things depend on humans (TH). If we add the obvious point that humans depend on humans (HH), then entanglement, at one level, is simply the addition of these four sets of dependences and dependencies. "Entanglement = (HT) + (TT) + (TH) + (HH) "The defining aspect of entanglement with things is that humans get caught in a double bind, depending on things that depend on humans. Put another way, things as we want them have limited ability to reproduce themselves, so in our dependence on them we become entrapped in their dependence on us." Hodder, Ian. 2012. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Wiley-Blackwell. P. 88.
"The term ‘enchainment’ as used by Strathern refers to Polynesian and Melanesian cultures where an artifact is not ‘a thing in itself’. It does not acquire identity from those who use it nor give identity to people. A thing is part of a chain of obligations and desires as things circulate, passed around as gifts. ‘If in a a commodity economy things and persons assume the social form of things, then in a gift economy they assume the social form of persons’. In this context persons are ‘dividuals’ or ‘partible persons’ – that is persons are the products of chains of socially reproductive acts, so there is no division between the social and individual persons. So every person is a product of others, or has an identity which is produced from all the social actions that were involved in marriage, giving birth, nurturing, etc." Hodder, Ian. 2012. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Wiley-Blackwell. Pp. 89-90. Reference: Strathern, M. 1988. The Gender of the Gift. University of California Press. "The dependence of things on humans means that humans are always busy along the strings or cables of entanglement mending things, putting fingers in dykes, fixing holes in buckets and so on. And because things and humans live in different temporalities, there is an unpredictability about where maintenance and innovation may next be needed." Hodder, Ian. 2012. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Wiley-Blackwell. P. 98.
"In many ways, these types of things [thoughts, ideas, sounds, words] have similar properties to material objects. Humans depend on them, invest in them, care for them; they may have legal ownership of them. Ideas and thoughts and words in the form of brain activity or spoken sounds have temporalities too short to become entangled in human lives. They fade and die out too quickly. But of course when remembered, included in stories or myths, written down, otherwise recorded or memorialized they do come to have a presence that endures, falls apart and requires fixing." Hodder, Ian. 2012. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Wiley-Blackwell. Pp. 119-120.
"So entanglements and affordances and functions are always tied to abstractions (ideas, thoughts, words, feelings and senses). These abstractions are hierarchical and nested as noted above, and they often cross domains so that humans seek unities, coherence, metaphor within different realms of experience." Hodder, Ian. 2012. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Wiley-Blackwell. P. 120.
"It is the fittingness within entanglements that determines whether a trait is selected for or not. The long-term persistence of wheels has had very little to do with the reproductive success of the people who made and used wheels, but it has had a lot to do with the long-term persistence of domestic cattle and horse, the construction of roads, international trade in rubber to make tires, the invention of the internal combustion engine, and all the multitude of associated entanglements across millennia." Hodder, Ian. 2012. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Wiley-Blackwell. P. 139.
"But the angle that is provided by evolutionary archaeology that is important is temporal continuity – the lineages of ways of doing things. The variants that are present at time t have partly to be understood in relation to the pool of variation available in time t-1." Hodder, Ian. 2012. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Wiley-Blackwell. P. 143.
"At about 1350 BP there is a decrease in size of projectile points that equates with the shift from use of the atlatl to the bow and arrow [in North America]." Hodder, Ian. 2012. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Wiley-Blackwell. P. 145.
"Boyd and Richerson certainly contribute to our understanding of why certain forms of social learning are selected for in certain environments. But the accounts of culture in Dual Inheritance Theory often seem disconnected from developments in social and cultural anthropology. In most cultural anthropology, culture is no longer understood as a pocket of beliefs handed down from one generation to the next." Hodder, Ian. 2012. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Wiley-Blackwell. P. 145. Reference: Boyd, R. & P. Richerson. 1985. Culture and the Evolutionary Process. U. of Chicago Press.
"There seems a real need for the more nuanced types of perspective seen in materiality or agency or memory studies. Dual Inheritance accounts of culture as transmitted information, held in the brain, seem a long way from, for example, Taussig’s subtle accounts of the mimetic process. In most anthropological work material culture is nowadays seen as actively engaged in social processes. What and how culture (in the Boyd and Richerson sense) is transmitted depend on culture (in the anthropological sense) – that is on the active engagement of people in their entangled lives. "If we take a more anthropological view we see that humans and things are caught up in complex webs – and these webs of technology, social obligation, exchange relations, phenomenological understanding, ideological perspective, social jockeying are all part of the complex environment that mean that a certain trait is or is not used. One thing depends on another thing. It is these entanglement processes that produce so-called battle-ship curves, and it is within them that transmission takes place or ceases. We need to focus more on the selective context that leads to the persistence of traits, and focus less on the human and their transmissions one to the other. In biased transmission, a results bias occurs when a particular way of doing things seems more effective, but what is effective depends primarily on the rest of the entanglement. The increases and decreases of a results bias are primarily to be understood in terms of the shifting entanglement as a whole." Hodder, Ian. 2012. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Wiley-Blackwell. Pp. 145-6. Reference: Taussig, MT. 1993. Mimesis and Alterity: a Particular History of the Senses. Routledge.
"Careful comparison of cooking with pots and clay balls, using ethnographic and experimental data, demonstrated that the main advantage of cooking in clay pots over a fire was that the cook was more able to do other things at the same time. Use of clay balls involved continual monitoring of the cooking process, moving the balls back into the fire as they cooled down, shifting the balls around. But a cooking pot could more easily be left on the fire, acting as a ‘delegate’ of the cook.... "Given the importance of sheep and goat in the diet, and the intensive labour involved in breaking up bones to gain fats, the efficiencies gained by switching from clay balls to pots in cooking would have been significant." Hodder, Ian. 2012. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Wiley-Blackwell. Pp. 153-4.
"Power is the differential flow of matter, energy and information through entanglements...." "The perspective provided by entanglement is that such power relations are not just about control of the means of production, or the control of social relations or social ideologies since those mechanisms of control are themselves set within wider human-thing entanglements." Hodder, Ian. 2012. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Wiley-Blackwell. P. 214.
"The study of agency contributes to the analysis of entanglement, but the emphasis in entanglement theory is less on the agent itself and more on the networks of entanglement that make possible and constrain certain forms of agency and certain forms of agent." Hodder, Ian. 2012. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Wiley-Blackwell. P. 215.
"Whether or not the Anthropocene is formally recognized, there is no question that the scale, rate, intensity, and diversity of anthropogenic environmental changes are unprecedented in comparison with those caused by any prior multicellular species." Ellis, Erle. 2015. "Ecology in an anthropogenic biosphere." Ecological Monographs. 85(3): 287-331. P. 288.
"More than three-quarters of the terrestrial biosphere has already been transformed into anthropogenic biomes (anthromes) by human populations and their use of land. In a biosphere increasingly transformed by human societies, ecology cannot advance as a predictive science without gaining the basic theoretical tools needed to investigate and understand the ultimate causes, not just the consequences, of human transformation of ecological pattern, process, and change." Ellis, Erle. 2015. "Ecology in an anthropogenic biosphere." Ecological Monographs. 85(3): 287-331. P. 288.
"As cross-generational environmental variation increases, cultural and then ecological inheritances become increasingly important modes of phenotypic trait transmission, as traits that enhance phenotypic plasticity are favored over the inheritance of traits adaptive only under prior environmental conditions." Ellis, Erle. 2015. "Ecology in an anthropogenic biosphere." Ecological Monographs. 85(3): 287-331. P. 294.
"Perhaps the most powerful mechanism supporting rapid cultural change is ‘runaway’ cultural evolution, in which changes in culture must be adapted to by further changes in culture, which in turn require additional cultural adaptations, generating accelerating rates of cultural change across generations." Ellis, Erle. 2015. "Ecology in an anthropogenic biosphere." Ecological Monographs. 85(3): 287-331. P. 299.
"By processes of runaway cultural niche construction combined with the ratchet effect, cultural traits for niche construction tend to become increasingly adaptive, complex, and powerful across generations, the evolution of these traits is accelerated, and populations become more and more dependent on cultural traits for ecosystem engineering to sustain themselves. "There are further explanations for increasing human dependence on cultural niche construction. Socially learned traits for ecosystem engineering have the potential to support larger human populations, and larger populations have the potential for more rapid cultural evolution, especially in small-scale societies." Ellis, Erle. 2015. "Ecology in an anthropogenic biosphere." Ecological Monographs. 85(3): 287-331. Pp. 299-300.
"By combining cultural niche construction, culturally mediated social organization (ultrasociality), and cultural evolution into a single theory of sociocultural niche construction, the observation of dramatic long-term changes in and diversification of the human niche can be explained, together with the capacity of human societies, to transform the biosphere." Ellis, Erle. 2015. "Ecology in an anthropogenic biosphere." Ecological Monographs. 85(3): 287-331. P. 300.
"Specialization and exchange in subsistence regimes have made it possible for human individuals to subsist apart from any direct interactions with ecosystems, with all subsistence needs met through exchange networks of subsistence producers (i.e., farmers, fisherman), processors (food preparation), providers (traders), and potentially many more specialists (tool makers, irrigation experts, bankers) in complex and dynamic subsistence supply chains (‘subsistence webs’) inviting further study as ‘socio-trophic relations.’" Ellis, Erle. 2015. "Ecology in an anthropogenic biosphere." Ecological Monographs. 85(3): 287-331. P. 300.
"That larger societal scales can become an adaptive advantage over smaller scales is summarized by the ‘law of cultural dominance,’ which holds that ‘larger scale societies tend to destroy or radically alter the cultures of smaller scale societies’." Ellis, Erle. 2015. "Ecology in an anthropogenic biosphere." Ecological Monographs. 85(3): 287-331. P. 303.
"Through the evolution of sociocultural niche construction over hundreds of human generations, human societies became a global force capable of transforming the biosphere. Three main forces of human sociocultural niche construction explain this unprecedented capacity and its dynamics across the biosphere in time and space: cooperative engineering, social upscaling, and energy substitution." Ellis, Erle. 2015. "Ecology in an anthropogenic biosphere." Ecological Monographs. 85(3): 287-331. Pp. 308-9.
"The general long-term trend in sociocultural niche construction is toward the evolution of subsistence regimes capable of supporting ever-larger and denser human populations in increasingly unequal, hierarchical, and complex societies by increasing land productivity over time through cooperative ecosystem engineering, increasing dependence on subsistence exchange over larger and larger distances, and by increasing use of nonhuman energy." Ellis, Erle. 2015. "Ecology in an anthropogenic biosphere." Ecological Monographs. 85(3): 287-331. P. 309.
"Three fundamental processes of sociocultural niche construction drive long-term ecological change. The first is cooperative ecosystem engineering, defined as the ability of social groups and societies to alter ecosystems to preferentially sustain human populations over other species. The second is social upscaling through culturally mediated changes in social organization and increasing scales of subsistence exchange, and the third is the harnessing of nonhuman energy sources to sustain these processes of ecosystem engineering, social upscaling, and subsistence exchange." Ellis, Erle. 2015. "Ecology in an anthropogenic biosphere." Ecological Monographs. 85(3): 287-331. Pp. 310-1.
"As societies have scaled up, so have rates of cultural evolution, enabling human subsistence regimes and their transformation of ecology to evolve more rapidly than rates of biological evolution, putting nonhuman species at an extreme disadvantage." Ellis, Erle. 2015. "Ecology in an anthropogenic biosphere." Ecological Monographs. 85(3): 287-331. P. 311.
"In other words, anthromes will predict ecological pattern and process more accurately than biomes alone." Ellis, Erle. 2015. "Ecology in an anthropogenic biosphere." Ecological Monographs. 85(3): 287-331. P. 313.
"Variations in ecological patterns and processes can be conceptualized as ‘sequences,’ as in chronosequences (time), toposequences (terrain), and climosequences (climate). In this way, ‘anthrosequences’ depict variations in ecological patterns and processes caused by variations in sociocultural niche construction acting on a given biome." Ellis, Erle. 2015. "Ecology in an anthropogenic biosphere." Ecological Monographs. 85(3): 287-331. P. 313.
"In considering the forces of sociocultural niche construction as equivalent to a ‘human climate,’ the question of where some species ‘belong’ shifts from ecoregions to the novel habitats of urban landscapes, croplands, rangelands, and seminatural anthromes." Ellis, Erle. 2015. "Ecology in an anthropogenic biosphere." Ecological Monographs. 85(3): 287-331. P. 316.
"Most importantly, it will be essential to sustain processes of evolution by natural selection in the face of powerful human tendencies to select the traits of and even to domesticate the native species we are trying to conserve as wild." Ellis, Erle. 2015. "Ecology in an anthropogenic biosphere." Ecological Monographs. 85(3): 287-331. P. 319. "Accepting sociocultural systems as a global force of nature represents a paradigm shift across the natural sciences that is no less significant than evolution by natural selection or plate tectonics." Ellis, Erle. 2015. "Ecology in an anthropogenic biosphere." Ecological Monographs. 85(3): 287-331. P. 319.
"... the ultimate causes of human transformation of the biosphere are inherently social and cultural, not biological, chemical, or physical. "The emergence of sociocultural niche construction by behaviorally modern human societies represents a novel evolutionary process in the Earth system that has reshaped the biosphere and will likely continue reshaping both the biosphere and human societies for the foreseeable future. Building on this ‘first law of the Anthropcene,’ anthroecology theory generates novel ecological hypotheses together with strategies for testing them using new theoretical frameworks...." Ellis, Erle. 2015. "Ecology in an anthropogenic biosphere." Ecological Monographs. 85(3): 287-331. P. 321.
"... the emergence of the biosphere was not a compounding of misadventures but a restructuring of systems." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. xv.
"... the core of intermediary metabolism is a necessary consequence of galactic processes giving rise to some distribution of the elements of the periodic table, which under the right geochemical boundary conditions generate an autocatalytic network of chemicals capable of emerging subsequently through a series of transitions into more complex molecules and structures: the biosphere." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. xvi.
"... the emergence of life may have been stochastic, but it was not accidental." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. xix.
"We invert the conventional view of life as a property inherent in individuals, and recognize individuality as one mode of organization – albeit an important one – among many that enable life... metabolism and the ecosystem define two of life’s most fundamental universals, to which individuals may form many different relations." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. xxi.
"The biosphere is, most fundamentally, the geosphere on Earth that opens otherwise unreachable domains of organic chemical states and processes. It is maintained for the same reason as it emerged: the chemistry of life and all the hierarchy of structures that maintain it constitute a channel for relaxation of redox and other energetic stresses." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. xxi.
"The emergence of life was a major transition in our planet’s formative history, alongside the accretion of its rocky core, the deposition and eventual persistence of its oceans, and the accumulation of its atmosphere." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 2.
"Each of the three traditional geospheres [atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere] is associated with one or a few primary groups of chemical constituents, a primary phase of matter, and a characteristic class of chemical reactions." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 7.
"Acid/base and oxidation/reduction reactions may be coupled due to the high solubility of protons in water, in contrast to extremely low solubility of electrons." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 7.
"At the outermost level of abstraction, we emphasize that the order of the biosphere is fundamentally an order of processes, that the ‘internal’ organization of the biosphere consists of flows anchored to the exchange at boundaries with the other geospheres, and that the biosphere as a whole, rather than any organism or ecosystem within it, is the level of aggregation in which to recognize the nature of the living state. "The biosphere is a set of patterns maintained by processes, and patterns of processes, and not merely a collection of ‘living things’." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. Pp. 10-11.
"... ‘living things’ assumes a category error: life is not a property inherent in things so much as things are instantiations of organizational states that arise within a larger context of life." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 11.
"The aliveness of things is not defined as a property of structure or function inherent in the things themselves, but rather by their participation within the web of processes by which the systemic integrity of the biosphere is maintained." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 12. "We will argue, however, that what the origin of life pushes us to recognize, about sources of order and stability, should ultimately restructure our understanding of the living world including the role of evolution." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 17.
"Three assumptions about the role of evolution either presume results that should be derived, or pre-emptively frame the problem of understanding the living state in terms that may not recognize all relevant mechanisms. We wish to avoid these assumptions. "1. Supposing that Darwinian selection has sufficient power and scope as an error-correction mechanism to explain all of living order. The potential error is one of false generalization: finding that selection is sufficient to trap errors in a subset of dimensions of variation, but then failing to quantify all dimensions of variation that produce error, and supposing that they are somehow trapped as well without requiring different mechanisms.... "2. Supposing the distinctive character of life must be traceable to uniquely ‘biotic’ order-forming processes. We wish to avoid supposing that because the living state is distinctive, that distinctiveness must have been produced by a process that is likewise distinct from processes at work in the non-living world. In particular, we will argue that Darwinian evolutionary dynamics arises as an emergent process within the living context, but that the reverse is not true: the distinctiveness of the living state cannot be accounted for solely in terms of the role evolution plays within it. "3. Supposing the essential order-forming processes for life are of any single kind. Finally, while Darwinian evolutionary processes contribute to the dynamics of all living systems today, we believe it is an error of false conceptual reduction to suppose that competition and selection within Darwinian populations will thereby be the source of explanation for all relevant forms of order." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. Pp. 17-8.
"The most important assumption that sets evolutionary processes apart, within the larger class of Markov processes, is what evolution assumes it means to be a ‘member’ of a ‘population.’ The operative concept is one we will call individuality." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 21.
"The step-like character of the degree of interdependence at the boundary of an individual identity gives the dynamics in individual-based systems a character we call granularity to contrast it with the behavior of continuous systems, ..." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 21. "Our thesis in this book is that the emergence of life should be understood as a cascade of dynamical phase transitions, as matter in an energetically stressed young planet was rearranged into conduits for energy flow. The function of these conduits, which comprise the ordered states and events of living matter, in a planetary context is to mitigate the accumulation of chemical potential stresses." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 24.
"In equilibrium systems, entropy counts degeneracies of states. Information, or a reduction in entropy that often defines a relevant concept of order, measures the reduction in the number of states of being required to satisfy whatever constraints the environment imposes. Life, as we have emphasized, is a jointly ordered system of both processes and states. The information relevant to life must also measure the reduction in the number of ways of doing something required to satisfy the non-equilibrium constraints the environment imposes. Some processes play out over an extended interval of time, in the course of which they pass through series of states. In such cases, the relevant information must measure the reduction in the range of histories that perform a function, where each history is an integrated series of states and transformations." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 27.
"... despite the remarkable complexity of living order, the aggregate function of the biosphere is a simple one: it opens a channel for energy flow through a domain of organic chemistry that would otherwise be inaccessible to planetary processes. It is analogous to a lightning strike through the graph of chemical possibilities, producing a channel that is stable at the system level but heterogeneous and far from equilibrium when viewed locally." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 28.
"At some stage, life began to make use of oligomers of large size, and from then onward the combinatorial possibilities for useful functions and structures became much too numerous to be sampled exhaustively by genomes, cells, or whatever were the relevant replicating units. The transition between a (putatively) unique metabolism and an undersampled world of oligomers marks a qualitative change in the problem of maintaining life on Earth." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 30.
"Compartments and genomes mark two forms of emergence of individuality, perhaps one of the most important characteristics of the dynamical living phase that has no counterpart in equilibrium phases. The existence of parallel units sensibly regarded as individual is the precondition for Darwinian evolution." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 31. "We argue, from the existence of regularities in a chemistry and ecosystem structure that are more universal than the individuals and species that carry evolutionary memory, that processes of biosynthesis and repair are at least partly a reflection of time-invariant laws of organization." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 32.
"Fundamental constraints on the possible ways to assemble living systems are captured by grouping organism phenotypes according to their chemical energy sources for electron transfers (donors or acceptors), and according to whether they are metabolically self-sufficient or can only live using resources extracted from larger ecosystems. The same bioenergetic distinctions exist for ecosystems as for organisms, but as ecosystem boundaries can often be constructed to be metabolically closed, ecosystems are in a sense simpler and more universal than organisms." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 35.
"From an appreciation of the heterogeneity of the kinds of order that structure the biosphere, we revisit the question of chance and necessity, and argue that it cannot be understood as one question. Some characteristics of life, particularly metabolic universals at the ecosystem level, are nearly as steady and deterministic as geochemistry, and we believe, nearly as predictable. others, particularly in complex organisms and ecological community relations, are fragile and ephemeral, and some even depend on programmed turnover to carry out their functions. All are aspects of life. "This is the first argument, from elementary observations, for a theme that we will develop in the remainder of the book. Life should not be viewed as one state of order. It must be recognized as a kind of unity-in-confederacy of many kinds of order.... Rather than seeking the emergence of a novel and unified form of order from the beginning, and asking about its progressive complexification, we seek the dispersed opportunities for chemical and physical order provided by the Earth’s chemistry and dynamics, and ask how they were brought into interdependence and thus granted partial autonomy from the non-living geospheres." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. Pp. 38-9.
"Instead of developing recognized relations from the descriptive tradition, where appropriate, into diverse and heterogeneous concepts of identity at many levels, biology became increasingly focused on individual dynamics and particularly natural selection. At the same time as it progressively idealized the abstraction of the individual (in our view, to a point of harmfully oversimplifying this complex concept), it marginalized the concept of an ecosystem to that of merely an assembled community of member species." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 41. "The lack of a concept of ecosystems as primitive entities becomes limiting when ecosystems are discovered to show homeostasis arising from coordinated evolution among many member species, or to possess patterns that are independent of the particular cohort of member species." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 41.
"The dynamics of living systems derives from the interaction of history with laws of constraints on processes and the kinds of order they can create. Accordingly, living systems show relations of more than one kind. Some relations are due to the shared imprint of history, and are most readily seen from the idiosyncratic divergences of forms. Other relations reflect shared constraints or the structure of underlying laws, and are most readily seen from the absence of variation or from strong tendencies toward evolutionary convergence. Divergence and convergence (including constraint) are antitheses, and so we may partition classification schemes into those that are constructed to capture signatures of divergence and those that are constructed to capture signatures of convergence or constraint. The former are the phylogenetic classification schemes, and the latter are various kinds of typological classifications." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 43.
"Here we argue that a typological classification based on the directions of electron flow in metabolism reveals the greatest simplicity in the grouping of organisms. More importantly, the same classification criteria apply at the ecosystem level, where they reveal greater universality than they do at the level of species." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 43.
"The first two questions we would choose in such a game [to classify organisms] would group organisms .... The first question concerns where the energy for metabolism, including biosynthesis, originates, which is a biochemical question. The second question concerns whether the metabolism encoded within a single organism’s genome is self-sufficient, or whether the organism depends on an ecological embedding with other organisms in order to survive and reproduce.... "[A figure shows] A two-by-two matrix, grouping organism phenotypes according to their primary chemical energy source, and their degree of ecological completeness. Organisms with reductive metabolisms obtain their energy from molecules that are electron donors relative to carbohydrate (CH2O). Organisms with oxidative metabolisms obtain their energy from molecules that are electron acceptors relative to carbohydrate. Organism that are self-sufficient with respect to biosynthesis, called autotrophs, can exist in a medium of only inorganic inputs. Organisms that depend on carbon or nitrogen compounds of biotic origin, called heterotrophs, can only exist through dependency on a larger ecosystem." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. Pp. 45-6. "Autotrophic organisms are ecosystems-unto-themselves, while heterotrophic organisms require an ecological embedding to define their biochemical function. For most heterotrophs, the environments in which they can survive and grow are restricted.... "Autotrophs have the entire inventory of metabolic functions that they require under the control of a genome that undergoes selection for survival in each generation. Thus the components of the metabolic machinery are by and large filtered for mutual compatibility in each generation. Ecosystems composed of heterotrophs that jointly account for the whole biosynthetic network partition the problem of metabolic control among multiple genomes, which undergo selection autonomously from one another in the generations of different species. Thus whereas the distinction between reductive or oxidative metabolic modes is fundamentally chemical, the distinction of autotrophy from heterotrophy concerns the assembly of the organism as a regulated entity." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. Pp. 48-9.
"Most metabolic pathways may be classified as either anabolic or catabolic. Anabolism is defined by the construction of larger molecules from smaller components, including one-carbon units. Catabolism is defined by the decomposition of larger molecules into smaller components. Like the notion of a geosphere, the anabolic/catabolic categorization is coarse." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 50.
"All ecosystems require anabolism but only some make use of respiration. Therefore the two classes ... are not actually parallel. The reductive metabolisms are both simpler than, and in a sense contained within, the more complex metabolisms driven by oxidants." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 54.
"In reductive organisms, the electron donors are externally provided. In more complex metabolisms depending on light, oxidants, or organic carbon, the anabolic core is surrounded by a much more complex layer of bioenergetic systems. This layer is reminiscent of a ‘space suit’ that surrounds the core and makes it viable in inhospitable geochemical environments that do not offer chemical electron donors directly." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. Pp. 54-5.
"Respiration and fermentation, along with the processes preceding them that break down large molecules to provide the small-molecule inputs to these low-level processes, are all forms of catabolism; the breaking down of biotically produced compounds for either energy metabolism or inputs to anabolism." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 55. "Therefore, ecosystems contain large numbers of compound pathways that, were they to be carried out within single organisms, would be futile cycles: reaction sequences that produce no net change from the starting compounds, but dissipate free energy from bioenergetic subsystems. Sometimes these compound pathways reflect one-way gain by parasites or predators, but in other cases they may reflect complementary specialization, as when plants trade organic carbon that they fix in a high-oxygen environment, for reduced nitrogen that their symbiotic bacteria fix in environments sheltered from molecular oxygen that is toxic to the nitrogen-fixation enzymes. At the ecosystem level, these ‘futile cycles’ form loops, which may be contracted to leave a simpler network with the same aggregate biomass productivity as the ecosystem as a whole. "We may think of each ecosystem level metabolome, then, as having two layers. The lower layer is the minimal network with the same biomass production as the actual meta-metabolome, but with all futile cycles contracted away that do not affect the stoichiometry captured in biomass. The upper layer contains the addition of the futile cycles resulting from parasitic, predatory, and symbiotic associations among organisms." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. Pp. 55-6.
"While it must be borne in mind that only a fraction of microbial genes have been identified, our current samples are consistent with a proposition that the common biosynthetic pathways in autotrophs and aggregate networks of ecosystems are in fact a universal property of life on earth." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 57.
"The densely cross-linked core of intermediary metabolism includes only on the order of 50 compounds – the entire inventory of monomers required to synthesize an autotroph numbers only about 125 – and the rest of anabolism and catabolism is organized in rays from or to this core." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 57.
"Similarly, a shift appears to have occurred between innovation in organic chemistry in early life, and innovation in cell form (endosymbiosis), cell coordination (colonialism and multicellularity), and complex regulation (multicellular development) following the rise of oxygen." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 65.
"On the very longest terms the major transitions take place. While these may often be recognized by qualitative changes in the content and use of genomes, they are only understood when the genomic changes are seen as one component in larger system rearrangements that often involve ecological and even chemical or energetic shifts. Examples are too numerous to list, but include nitrogen fixation, the rise of oxygen, endosymbiosis, multicellularity, or the Cambrian radiation." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. Pp. 65-6.
"Just as we have argued that ‘life’ cannot be understood as a single kind of order, we argue that the emergence of the biosphere cannot have been a single transition or even a single kind of transition." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 66.
"One of the great conceptual challenges to understanding the nature of the living state is that evolution can produce open-ended variation, but it can also be the agent of absolute conservation of some characters of life. Foremost, in our view, among the conserved characters is the role and structure of metabolism, but several other elements of molecular biology and cell physiology can be cited as well. The puzzle in their conservation is that we see these structures and functions only within the domain of living systems, where they seem to rely inherently on complex and high-level entities tuned by natural selection. Yet the low-level patterns are much more invariant than the higher-level mechanisms on which they seem to ‘depend.’ "We think that this observation motivates a more quantitative awareness of the relative roles of adaptive versus stabilizing selection. Adaptation, and particularly ‘open-ended’ variation, seems to be the major function of evolution stressed in most writing. However, in biology one can find what one chooses to notice. Adaptations and arbitrary complexities abound for those who find them interesting. However, in purely quantitative terms, the ‘events’ of stabilizing selection against deviation from a set template probably far outweigh events that favor innovation." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 68.
"Everywhere a disequilibrium exists, and a free energy is available, some barrier exists against an energetic relaxation, and relative to the timescale to cross this barrier, some part of our universe is still young. The existence of these barriers, and the stress-driven systems that accumulate behind them and over them, is what creates structure as well as directionality in the aging universe." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 75.
"Timescales for diffusion of matter in solids are much longer than the timescale for diffusion of heat that permits solid formation, so memory of initial conditions can be bottled up in planets by quenching, over longer timescales than stellar lifetimes." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 83.
"The determinants of oxidation state in the mantle are important to life because the solid Earth can sustain persistent redox disequilibria – something that fluid phases, with their inability to hold persistent spatial structure, cannot do.... "However, the same stability that makes solids potential reservoirs of free energy may also cause them to deliver that energy too slowly to maintain non-equilibrium order.... The possibility to maintain redox-driven order on Earth therefore depends on the existence of timescales for transport phenomena that are slower than the rapid mixing times of fluids but faster than simple diffusion." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 95.
"... some of the more productive vent communities have been discovered to have among the highest rates of carbon fixation known on earth, even though their contribution to total biotic carbon is small (~0.02%) because of their restricted environments." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 141.
"The replacement of the paradigm of struggle by the paradigm of least resistance occurs repeatedly, as we first shift away from an emphasis on phototrophy and toward chemotrophy, and then again as we compare chemical environments at different temperatures and chemical compositions. Whereas the synthesis of almost all biotic carbon compounds from CO2 is energetically uphill in oxidizing environments, it is now understood that synthesis of many of them becomes exergonic in reducing environments, ..." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 150.
"McCollom and Shock have estimated that the chemical potential flulx available for chemosynthetic primary production from these souces at deep-sea hydrothermal vents is about 1013 g biomass per year." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 152. Reference: McCollom, Thomas & E. Shock. 1997. "Geochemical constraints on chemolithoautotrophic metabolism by microorganisms in seafloor hydrothermal systems." Geochim. Cosmochim Acta. 61:4375-4391.
"... we have emphasized a one-way flow of influence, from stars and mantle convection to atmospheres, oceans, and magmas, and from these to the chemical raw materials that support life. However, as life became an autonomous planetary subsystem, it increasingly fed back to influence composition and dynamics in the abiotic geospheres. Just as the evolution of much of the biosphere’s complexity has been coevolution among species in ecological contexts, the mineralogy of the lithosphere has been a component of this context and a participant in its evolution." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 167. "... of the ~4500 known minerals on Earth, perhaps 3000 depend in some way on the prior existence of a biosphere. For many of these the dependence is through the action of molecular oxygen, so they are contingent on oxygenic photosynthesis, a late and complex evolutionary innovation. "The remaining ~1500 minerals, which created the conditions for the emergence of life, may be grouped into stages of mineral diversification, occurring progressively in the formation of the stellar disk and the planet. The first ~250 are associated with the formation of the stellar disk and the Sun, and are common among meteorites, small asteroids, and moons. The formation and differentiation of larger rocky planets expands this number to ~350 in volatile-poor conditions, or ~500 for planets with water. Hazen lists roughly 420 rock-forming minerals that would have been volumetrically important and widely distributed on the Hadean Earth. "Remelting of initial basaltic crusts on large planets with significant sustained internal heating concentrates rare elements into distinct phases, and may produce a further ~500 minerals, but only the establishment of fully developed plate tectonics with subduction of water and the resulting changes in melting and volcanism, as well as emplacement of salts and sulfides, leads to the inventory of ~1500 minerals that were probably present on Earth by the early Archean. In this respect, even without life, the Earth would have been distinctive among the inner planets of the solar system." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. Pp. 167-8. Reference: Hazen, Robert. 2006. "Paleomineralogy of the Hadean eon: a preliminary species list." Am. J. Sci. 313:807-843.
"... barriers structure the chemical dynamics of the abiotic geospheres. Barriers to energy flow and equilibration within a continually aging universe lead to concentration of stresses. The paths of least resistance over those barriers become the scaffolding on which new levels of organization form." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 168.
"An important generalization we will draw from the evolutionary transition in metabolism is that major transitions are driven by feedback from higher levels in the metabolic hierarchy onto processes at lower levels. The first of these, we propose, were successive waves of cofactors, and later layers were macromolecular catalysts. On the basis of this generalization, we conceive of biogenesis in its early stages not as a replacement of geochemistry, but rather as an enfolding of geochemical mechanisms under increasing degrees of control by organic systems. Through the emergence of control, low-level organosynthesis was gradually rendered autonomous from the supports of geochemistry, at the price of greater interdependence among molecular systems." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 175.
"The mechanisms by which metabolic pathways evolve as a result of enzyme evolution tend to propagate the patterns of chemical relations that make early pathways robust upward into the more refined pathways that replace them over time. They thus provide a mechanism for the upward flow of information, within the overall control system of evolution." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 177.
"The core [of metabolism] is the network of pathways that include essentially all organic reactions: those that alter covalent bonds among C, O, N, H, and S atoms, augmented by a modest number of dative bonds of N or S to transition metals. Molecules in the core include a diverse set of small metabolites, a subset of which are monomers that are building blocks of macromolecules. Molecules in the core range in size from 2 (acetate) to about 20 carbon atoms (tetrahydrofolate). Larger molecules are made almost exclusively by assembly of metabolites from the core...." "Including the monomers or elementary repeated units, the essential core metabolism required for autotrophic life contains only about 125 distinct compounds." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. Pp. 178-9.
"Intermediary metabolism is the standard term used to refer to the metabolism that is within cells or organisms, as distinct from metabolic reactions that may require transfers between organisms through trophic links in ecosystems (such as predation, parasitism, etc.)." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 179.
"All heterotrophs, and most modern organisms with some phenotypic plasticity, employ some catabolic pathways to break down stored or environmentally consumed organic molecules for energy or inputs to biosynthesis. All organisms, of necessity, also employ suites of anabolic pathways to synthesize all molecules that they cannot consume in exactly the forms they require. "Many different characterizations of metabolic network topology, function, or control now characterize heterotrophic or plastic metabolism as a ‘bowtie’. Catabolic pathways are rays inward toward a ‘knot’; anabolic pathways are rays outward from it. Topologically, the inward and outward rays are distinguished from the knot because the knot is extensively cross-linked, and the rays much less so. The lack of cross-linking among rays makes the shortest paths between most pairs of metabolites paths that pass through the knot." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 180.
"Cofactors form a unique and essential class of components within biochemistry, both as individual molecules and as a distinctive level in the control over metabolism. In synthesis and structure they form a subset of the metabolites, including many of the largest and most complex products of organosynthesis, but unlike amino acids, nucleotides, sugars and lipids, they are not primary structural elements of the macromolecular components of cells. Instead, cofactors provide a limited but essential inventory of functions, which are used widely and in a variety of macromolecular contexts... "Whereas cofactors are ‘only’ required in about half of all metabolic reactions, or all the key carbon, nitrogen, and energy incorporation steps in core metabolism they are essential." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 249.
"Cofactors in extant metabolism are, in three respects, a class in transition between the core metabolites and the oligomers.... "The polymerization exhibited within cofactors is distinguished from that of oligomers by its heterogeneity. In contrast to oligomers, cofactrors often include monomeric components from several molecule classes.... "The relation between structure and function in the cofactor class is different from that of other monomers such as amino acids, RNA, or even monosaccharides in being determined mostly at the single-molecule scale. The monomer constituents of oligomer macromolecules often have rather general properties, and only take on more specific functional roles that depend on location and context in the assembled molecule. In contrast, the functions of cofactors are specific, often finely tuned by evolution, and deployable in a wide range of macromolecular contexts." "Cofactors, like small metabolites, can complete autocataltic networks as group carriers, but more like enzymes, they conserve a large core of atoms that are not altered during the reaction." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. Pps. 249-51.
"The emergence of the cofactor layer therefore would define a transitional phase when the reaction mechanisms of core metabolism came under selection and control of organic as opposed to mineral-based chemistry, and they provided the structured foundation from which the oligomer world grew." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 252.
"The universal reactions of intermediary metabolism depend on only about 30 cofactors." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 253.
"Biochemistry seems to suggest, from many directions, a unique control place and organizing role for what we have called the ‘universal covering network’ of metabolism, in Figure 4.5, and within that, a preferred status for the rTCA reactions and the C1 reduction sequence now performed on folates. Not only is the universality of this network attested phylogenetically; what evidence we can compile about the direction of evolutionary change suggests that the redundancy of its functional-group chemistry was even more essential to the possibility for its existence in the era of the earliest cells with their non-specific and perhaps unreliable catalysis." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 269.
"The cell is not merely one kind of compartment but at least three. The three core functions of cellularization – unification of bioenergetics, catalytic rate enhancement, and homeostatic regulation of the cytosol – may have come at different stages of separation from mineral-hosted environments. The resulting picture of life is of a confederacy of subsystems, which retain some distinct identity even in their current union. During biogenesis these gained autonomy from the environments that drove them into existence by becoming more dependent on each other." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 273.
"The resulting picture of cellular life is of a confederacy. Cells are unified and heavily interdependent systems-of-systems. The subsystems they bring together are of many kinds and show order at many scales of aggregation and timescale. Their interdependencies are bounded, though they are not so extensive as to have eliminated the internal identity of modules or their conditional independence from one another given a small number of restricted molecules or structures that serve as interfaces." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 274.
"Oligomer catalysts can be classified roughly into what we will term ‘tweezers’ and ‘hands.’ The tweezers catalyze organic reactions, while hands catalyze oligomerization reactions from phosphoryl-activated or adenylyl-activated monomers. The former alter microscopic transition states and show patterns of conservation in highly specific residues in the active site; the latter mostly provide binding pockets to orient activated monomers, and under either conservation or evolutionary convergence, the gross geometry is maintained but specific residues are not. Thus catalysts mirror the bimodal distribution between organosynthesis in small molecules and a wholesale conversion to phosphate-mediated dehydration for large molecules." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 277.
"The monomer-to-oligomer transition created sufficiently new organizational abstractions that the translation apparatus could nearly function as a ‘firewall,’ insulating the problem of sequence selection for macromolecular function from the rich but arbitrary structure of constraints in the underlying metabolic network." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 286.
"The role of energy in all thermodynamic systems is to determine the set off configurations that the system can take at all. The conservation of energy, from mechanics, is one of the most fundamental inputs to thermodynamics because it requires that adding energy to one subsystem to make more states available entails taking energy away from other subsystems, and thereby making fewer states available to them. It is in this role that chemical bonds can be rightly said to ‘carry’ or ‘deliver’ energy;..." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 324.
"The structure of biochemistry reflects a complex three-way trade-off: (1) maintaining sufficient diversity of chemical reactions to support complexity; (2) driving these reactions with a few ‘energy sources’ of high chemical potential, thus simplifying and modularizing the system; and (3) minimizing the mismatch between the chemical potentials of the drivers and those of the reactions, to capture as much of the energy transfer as possible in the form of chemical work, relative to the amount dissipated as heat." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 325.
"The great diversity of reactions in biochemistry is sustained by three primary energy-carrying subsystems. These are the transferable electrons in oxidation/reduction couples, phosphoryl groups that supply energy to other leaving groups or drive dehydrating polymerization, and membrane-exchangeable protons that may be used to couple the other two systems or may do mechanical or chemical work directly." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 325.
"Proposals have been put forth that either coascervates such as micells, mineral foams, or fracture systems with large surface areas might have been plausible precursors to cells." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 332.
"Not only the whole cell, but each of the subsystems we have considered within it, is an assembly of smaller subsystems. Whether these are the network and catalytic motifs in metabolism, the biosynthetic layers and stages in the code and translation system, the three carriers of bioenergetics, or the multiple functions of cellular compartmentalization, the modules within each subsystem suggest slightly different dependencies on a geochemical scaffold, or on intermediate grouping of their own lower-level components. The emergence of the biosphere is not a path through time but rather a tree. It is a tree viewed from the roots, which are anchored in diverse chemistry and energetics, and which coalesce at the apex in the integrated cell." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 338.
"Metabolism-first perspectives see contributions to the nature of the living state beginning in organic geochemistry and continuing as higher-level structures form. They expect greater complexity and selectivity in the geochemical setting, and also expect continuity from geochemical to emerging biochemical pathways. They regard Darwinian transitions as later regime shifts within the unfolding nature of life, which are only partly innovative and largely change modes of control." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 351.
"The emergence of a ribosome capable of high-fidelity translation produced many changes in the character of evolutionary transitions, but the most major evolutionary transitions retain a simplicity and lawfulness at their foundation that is continuous with the pre-Darwinian era. The important change is that, upon crossing Woese’s Darwinian Threshold, the organisms in the biosphere could for the first time have possessed genomes long enough that the diversity of maintainable sequences outnumbered the population sizes of organisms that could instantiate them." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 420.
"The following three examples are among the most major evolutionary transitions, and each is manifestly biogeochemical in character. "Innovation in carbon fixation in a reducing world... In important respects, life was expanding into a ‘new world,’ in comparison to the complex jockeying for a ecological position in today’s ‘full world.’ "Phototrophy.... "The rise of oxygen ..." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. Pp. 420-1.
"One of our main theses in this monograph is that the origin of life cannot be understood as a compounding of rare or arbitrary events, but must be understood as a cascade of system rearrangements that were in certain essential ways robust, and at least locally, necessary.... a theory of biogenesis can only make sense within the larger framework of physical and mathematical law if almost all intermediate stages were robust, and at least most transitions were likely." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 425.
"... we argue that the first question to be asked must not be about particular mechanisms to reach life as a kind of pre-defined goal, but rather why any state besides lifelessness could be a goal. In posing this question for chemical systems, we recognize from a modern perspective that the main difficulty is not accessing reactions, but combining yield with selectivity." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 428.
"The need for chemical concentration and selection, in a chemical era that seems best regarded as pre-Darwinian, leads us to the essential properties provided by thermal phases. We characterize this as the ‘stability perspective’ on the origin of life." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 428.
"The problem for the origin of life is rather to understand what makes a redox relaxation orderly, so that matter and energy flux are concentrated into a small subset of compounds, which are produced in significant concentrations." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 430.
"If one thing more than others is surprising across the range of experiments [on the origin of life], it is that despite the stark differences in their sources of activation energy and reaction conditions, many products found at significant concentration are common in multiple reaction systems, and a subset of these are also known metabolites." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 431.
"Our hypothesis becomes that the lifeless Earth was not only an energetically stressed Gibbs state, but a metastable or unstable state, and that a process of relaxation through a sequence of progressively more stable dynamical states was what we recognize as the emergence of the biosphere." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 432.
"In searching for a theory of biogenesis, we must remember that before it is anything else – before it uses TCA precursors or RNA, before it is cellular, before it is Darwinian – the biosphere is a dynamical ordered state of chemistry that has persisted on Earth for almost four billion years." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 432.
"The implications of thermodynamics are not exhausted when we have defined the Gibbs free energies of molecules or transition states; they continue to apply at an ascending series of scales through population genetics, ecological dynamics, and long-term evolution. The mathematics of phase transitions provides both a formulation of the stability problem as a problem of joint error correction at multiple systemic levels, and a description of the kind of cross-level interactions that enable optimally efficient and effective error correction. It therefore offers a unifying description of stability capable of bridging the heterogeneous, multilevel, coupled mechanisms that have jointly contributed to the emergence and persistence of life." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 433.
"The origin of life may be a phenomenon that cannot even be thought about correctly from within the knowledge and perspective available to any individual, but it may be within reach of the right kinds of collaborative community." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 436.
"Biochemistry exists in space and time, and like matter is indexed by their four coordinates. It also has internal degrees of freedom, because at every point in physical space, a copy exists of the network of all possible chemical species and all possible reactions. This network takes the place of the field variables in the theory of matter. Most of the network is unoccupied by actual molecules in realized chemical systems, so it is to be understood as a network of potential configurations. "In the hierarchy of matter, phase transitions occur as the vacuum is cooled. As internal energy is removed from a system, the range of fluctuations in the matter fields that can be accessed is reduced. Lowering temperature and removing internal energy is one way in which the distribution of fluctuations is constrained by its boundaries, .... A freezing transition permits the space of fluctuations everywhere to be greatly reduced all at once, as the system is crowded into a corner of its state space. "For driven chemical reactions ..., instead of cooling, the environment increases the inequality between the chemical potentials for some species (such as electron pairs [such as by a catalyst?]) between two or more nodes in the reaction graph. An environment that can independently impose different chemical potentials at different nodes in the reaction graph can always place the system under at least as much constraint as an environment that imposes the same chemical potential at all nodes. The resulting driven system must then always have a smaller accessible configuration space than the corresponding equilibrium system." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. Pp. 479-80.
"Life is not an attribute possessed by individuals, but a role defined through participation in the biosphere. The biosphere exists as an energy-flow channel through organic chemistry, which is only reached through elaborate synthesis of mediating structures. Without a biosphere, these domains of chemical reaction space would go unaccessed (or accessed only at very low rate) by abiotic processes." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 541.
"The important new form of order that makes life progressively less like an any [sic] ordered equilibrium phase is the emergence of individuality. Individuality, whether in development, transmission, or selection, is a complex concept applicable at many levels. Each new form or kind of individuality is like a new ordered phase, in that it renders some variations independent of others. However, the kind of independence that defines individuals – localized in space and periodic in time – makes it increasingly difficult for collective effects to propagate single solutions through all living matter. The result is that life, partitioned among individuals, maintains a plurality of parallel forms. Throughout the changes that constitute the emergence of each new kind of individuality, the correction of errors remains a global function jointly carried out by bulk chemistry and individual dynamics, so that out of the plurality of forms the aggregate biosphere continues to possess a unified identity." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 551.
"In treating individuality as a new form of statistical partitioning, which distills like droplets out of a foundation of metabolic and physical order, feeding back on that background but not replacing its fundamental architecture, we recover a view of individuals more in keeping with the modern understanding that draws jointly from development, population processes, and ecology." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 551.
"Ecosystems, then, become the carriers of universal order in the biosphere such as invariant core metabolism, while successive, emergent forms of individuality change the internal mechanisms by which that order is maintained, from what it was in the era of bulk chemistry." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 552.
"Conflating life with the capacity for adaptive evolution marginalizes the features that do not change and the mechanisms that maintain them. They become mere ‘constraints’ or ‘protometabolism.’ The reason a biosphere formed organisms or lifecycles in the first place, as opposed to remaining a continuum in space and time as most abiotic ordered systems do, becomes an unframeable question, because the nature of life is cast in terms of a dynamic that can only be expressed if individuals are presumed to exist. "Everything we have argued up to this point makes it impossible for us to see the nature of life through such a frame. Metabolism is not a relic of proto-life but the distributed substrate and the reference for coevolutionary coherence. The emergence of individuality was a partitioning of the error-correction problem between new kinds of autonomous subsystems and the pre-existing distributed substrate." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. Pp. 552-3.
"Individuals, of whatever kind, are packages of components that are collocated in space, that affect each others’ states, and that have at least a high probability to be either reproduced or lost together." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 575.
"Two further properties of individuals that can greatly alter dynamics from the character of bulk physics or chemistry might be termed granularity and shared fate." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 576.
"If the notion of the single organism’s niche is enriched to the notion of jointly stable ecological community-states – which then project onto a subset of viable organism forms – this suggests a way to frame the concept of a niche as a solution within a high-dimensional constraint satisfaction problem." Smith, Eric & H. Morowitz. 2016. The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Cambridge UP. P. 604. "Assuming the conjecture is true, that the major transitions are to be understood mainly as increases in hierarchy, the decision to include human society as the eighth and last transition is a departure, a violation of Maynard Smith’s own criteria for what the sequence of transitions represents. A human society would seem to be just that, a society, not an even higher level of selection. It would seem to occupy the same hierarchical level as a social insect society (achieved already in the seventh transition) or a primate society (present already at the start of the eighth). Each human is a multicellular eukaryotic individual, and a human society would appear to be just another association of multicellular eukaryotic individuals. To be sure, our societies are different in detail from ant and baboon societies. Ours are also unique in a number of ways. But social organization in every multicellular species is different in detail from every other, and more different with greater taxonomic distance. Likewise, every species is unique. But that does not make us a higher level. "What is the next highest level, the level above the social? From first principles, it would seem to be an association of societies, a metasociety or supersociety of some sort. Now among nonhuman animals, at least, there seem not to be any supersocieties, either extant or in the fossil record, at least none that are individuated to the extent that organisms or even societies are." McShea, Dan & C. Simpson. 2011. "The Miscellaneous Transitions in Evolution." Pp. 19-34. From: Calcott, B. & K. Sterelny. The Major Transitions of Evolution Revisited. MIT Press. P. 29.
"Biology has been called ‘the physics of the twenty-first century’. This remark suggests that biological data have become sufficiently rich and well curated, and biological mechanisms sufficiently wide spread and conserved, that there is a prospect for the generation of new effective theories, perhaps even laws, for living systems." Krakauer, David, J. Collins, D. Erwin, J. Flack, W. Fontana, M. Laubichler, S. Prohaska, G. West & P. Stadler. 2011. "The challenges and scope of theoretical biology." Journal of Theoretical Biology. 276: 269-276. Pp. 269-70.
"The current absence of a strong theoretical foundation in biology means that there is weak guidance regarding what quantities or variables need to be understood to best inform a general understanding for biological features of interest." Krakauer, David, J. Collins, D. Erwin, J. Flack, W. Fontana, M. Laubichler, S. Prohaska, G. West & P. Stadler. 2011. "The challenges and scope of theoretical biology." Journal of Theoretical Biology. 276: 269-276. P. 272.
"In biology, unlike for traditional physical and chemical phenomena, many of the spatial and temporal scales interact. In physics, nuclear forces can be neglected when calculating planetary orbits as these are screened off over large distances. In biology, however, the lowest levels can have a direct impact on the highest levels (and vice versa), as in the case of genes that influence behavior and social structures and behavior that influence gene expression patterns. Levin et al. suggests that one of the central issues for theoretical biology is the better understanding of how detail at once scale makes its signature felt at other scales, and how to relate phenomena across scales." Krakauer, David, J. Collins, D. Erwin, J. Flack, W. Fontana, M. Laubichler, S. Prohaska, G. West & P. Stadler. 2011. "The challenges and scope of theoretical biology." Journal of Theoretical Biology. 276: 269-276. P. 273. Reference: Levin, S.A., B. Grenfell, A. Hastings & A. Perelson. 1997. "Mathematical and computational challenges in population biology and ecosystems science." Science. 275: 334-343.
"This chapter takes a metabolic view of the planet, and examines how the extended metabolism of the human species compares in magnitude to the metabolism of the entire biosphere." Malhi, Yadvinder. 2014. "The Metabolism of a Human-Dominated Planet." Pp. 142-163. From: Goldin, Ian. Is the Planet Full? Oxford UP. P. 143.
"Instead of harvesting or slightly modifying whatever food stuffs the natural ecosystem was able to provide, the vegetation landscape was effectively ‘colonized’ and altered to produce a higher density and abundance of foodstuffs well suited for human consumption, especially cereals such as wheat, rice and maize." Malhi, Yadvinder. 2014. "The Metabolism of a Human-Dominated Planet." Pp. 142-163. From: Goldin, Ian. Is the Planet Full? Oxford UP. P. 149.
"Locally, non-industrial agricultural societies can appropriate up to 80 per cent of NPP, especially in densely populated, highly productive agricultural regions such as the Ganges plain, East China, and Java. By the time of the onset of the industrial revolution, humans had appropriated approximately 4 per cent of global terrestrial NPP." Malhi, Yadvinder. 2014. "The Metabolism of a Human-Dominated Planet." Pp. 142-163. From: Goldin, Ian. Is the Planet Full? Oxford UP. P. 150.
"The key characteristic of the industrial revolution was large-scale access to new dense sources of fossil energy not directly dependent on contemporary ecosystems, and hence not directly area dependent as hunter-gatherer or agricultural sociometabolism was. Hence humanity introduced a deep time dimension to its energy supply; rather than only being able [to] exploit embodied solar energy captured by the biosphere in the preceding few years, it started exploiting fossil energy embodied solar energy that was captured by the biosphere many millions of years ago ...." Malhi, Yadvinder. 2014. "The Metabolism of a Human-Dominated Planet." Pp. 142-163. From: Goldin, Ian. Is the Planet Full? Oxford UP. P. 151.
"It might be expected that abundant fossil energy might ease and displace pressure on the biosphere, by reducing pressure on fuelwood extraction, for example. In fact, the extra energy availability through industrialization also enables higher NPP extraction and material flows from the biosphere. For example, there is more metabolic energy available to do the work of extracting nitrogen from the air or phosphorus from rocks to make and transport fertilizer, to chop down forests to make new available land, or to build transportation networks linking remote regions of biosphere–such as the American West in the late 19th century or the Amazon frontier in the late 20th century–to centres of industrial metabolism. The availability of abundant fossil energy has generally led to increased exploitation of the biosphere. There are interesting local exceptions; in mature industrial societies woodlands are not longer viewed as fuel or food reserves and have been much less intensively exploited or managed for fuel, and on marginal agricultural areas (such as the Eastern United States), agricultural lands have been abandoned to encroaching forests." Malhi, Yadvinder. 2014. "The Metabolism of a Human-Dominated Planet." Pp. 142-163. From: Goldin, Ian. Is the Planet Full? Oxford UP. Pp. 151-2.
"Two key features of industrial sociometabolism are (1) that biomass energy (whether for food or fuel) is only a small contributor to total sociometabolism compared to fossil fuels and other high-density energy sources, and (2) that there is sufficient surplus energy to build and maintain efficient transportation networks, meaning that population centres do not need to be co-located with food and energy production centres. Hence human sociometabolism and population density are decoupled from land area, enabling population to both grow rapidly and be concentrated in towns, cities, and megacities, where human cultural and information exchange and partition of labour is much more efficient. As part of this transition humanity is moving from being an overwhelmingly rural creature to a predominantly urban one." Malhi, Yadvinder. 2014. "The Metabolism of a Human-Dominated Planet." Pp. 142-163. From: Goldin, Ian. Is the Planet Full? Oxford UP. P. 152.
"A modern industrial human has a sociometabolism of 8000 W (or 12,000 W if a North American). This is equivalent to the physiological metabolism of a 10-tonne mammal (or a 15-tonne mammal in North America) [back-computed by Kleiber’s Law where animal metabolism as energy scales with body mass as a three-quarter power law], about 1.4 to 2 times the mass of a large African elephant, the largest extant land mammal. A 10-15-tonne primate, such as King Kong, has existed only in literature. For an alternative perspective on human impacts on the natural environment, imagine the United Kingdom as a landscape with 63 million 10-tonne apes roaming the countryside, or the United States as a landscape with 310 million 15-tonne King Kongs! "Our access to fossil energy has enabled us to sustain exceptional levels of resource consumption and exceptional population densities. We are something new in the metabolic history of this planet; a hypersocial mega-faunal mammal, half-ape and half-ant. It is inevitable that such an organism has major impacts on the functions and metabolism of the wider planet." Malhi, Yadvinder. 2014. "The Metabolism of a Human-Dominated Planet." Pp. 142-163. From: Goldin, Ian. Is the Planet Full? Oxford UP. Pp. 154-5.
"In the early 21st century we are in the full fury of this [urban] transition: over 50 per cent of the human population is now urban and this proportion is expected to approach 70 per cent by 2050." Malhi, Yadvinder. 2014. "The Metabolism of a Human-Dominated Planet." Pp. 142-163. From: Goldin, Ian. Is the Planet Full? Oxford UP. P. 158.
"The human expansion and domination of the Earth system over the past 10,000 years, albeit fleetingly recent in the 4.6 billion year context of Earth history, represents a major transition in the nature of life on Earth, comparable energetically to the colonization of land by plants." Malhi, Yadvinder. 2014. "The Metabolism of a Human-Dominated Planet." Pp. 142-163. From: Goldin, Ian. Is the Planet Full? Oxford UP. P. 161.
"In the past 500 years, humans have triggered a wave of extinction, threat, and local population declines that may be comparable in both rate and magnitude with the five previous mass extinctions of Earth’s history.... This recent pulse of animal loss, hereafter referred to as the Anthropocene defaunation, is not only a conspicuous consequence of human impacts on the planet but also a primary driver of global environmental change in its own right.... "The term defaunation, used to denote the loss of both species and populations of wildlife, as well as local declines in abundance of individuals, needs to be considered in the same sense as deforestation,...." Dirzo, Rodolfo, H. Young, M. Galetti, G. Ceballos, N. Issac & B. Collen. 2014. "Defaunation in the Anthropocene." Science. July 25. V. 345. Is. 6195. Pp. 401-6. P. 401.
"... there are strong differences in body mass distributions among mammals that (i) became extinct in the Pleistocene (<50,000 years before the present), (ii) went recently extinct (<5000 years B.P., Late Holocene and Anthropocene), (iii) are currently threatened with extinction, and (iv) extant species not currently threatened, all showing greater vulnerability of larger-bodied species.... "Frequency of extinction (median value highlighted) Pleistocene extinct – 182 [kilograms], Anthropocene extinct – .7 [kg], Anthropocene threatened – ‘.44 [kg], Anthropocene nonthreatened – .06 [kg]" Dirzo, Rodolfo, H. Young, M. Galetti, G. Ceballos, N. Issac & B. Collen. 2014. "Defaunation in the Anthropocene." Science. July 25. V. 345. Is. 6195. Pp. 401-6. P. 403.
"Although most declining species are affected by multiple stressors, we still have a poor understanding of the complex ways in which these drivers interact and of feedback loops that may exist. Several examples of interactions are already well documented. For example, fragmentation increases accessibility to humans, compounding threats of reduced habitat and exploitation. Similarly, land-use change is making it difficult for animals to expand their distributions into areas made suitable by climate change. Feedbacks among these and other drivers seem more likely to amplify the effects of defaunation than to dampen them." Dirzo, Rodolfo, H. Young, M. Galetti, G. Ceballos, N. Issac & B. Collen. 2014. "Defaunation in the Anthropocene." Science. July 25. V. 345. Is. 6195. Pp. 401-6. P. 403.
"Ongoing declines in populations of animals such as nematodes, beetles, or bats are considerably less evident to humans yet arguably are more functionally important." Dirzo, Rodolfo, H. Young, M. Galetti, G. Ceballos, N. Issac & B. Collen. 2014. "Defaunation in the Anthropocene." Science. July 25. V. 345. Is. 6195. Pp. 401-6. P. 405.
"Here we summarize evidence that such planetary scale critical transitions have occurred previously in the biosphere, albeit rarely, and that humans are now forcing another such transition, with the potential to transform Earth rapidly and irreversibly into a state unknown in human experience." Barnosky, Anthony, E. Hadly, J. Bascompte, E. Berlow, J. Brown, M. Fortelius, W. Getz, J. Harte, A. Hastings, P. Marquet, N. Martinez, A. Mooers, P. Roopnarine, G. Vermeij, J. Williams, R. Gillespie, J. Kitzes, C. Marshall, N. Matzke, D. Mindell, E. Revilla & A. Smith. 2012. "Approaching a state shift in Earth’s biosphere." Nature. V. 486. June 7. Pp. 52-8. P. 52. "Threshold-induced state shifts, or critical transitions, can result from ‘fold bifurcations’ and can show hysteresis. The net effect is that once a critical transition occurs, it is extremely difficult or even impossible for the system to return to its previous state.... "Recent theoretical work suggests that state shifts due to fold bifurcations are probably preceded by general phenomena that can be characterized mathematically: a deceleration in recovery from perturbations (‘critical slowing down’), an increase in variance in the pattern of within-state fluctuations, an increase in autocorrelation between fluctuations, an increase in asymmetry of fluctuations and rapid back-and-forth shifts (‘flickering’) between states." Barnosky, Anthony, E. Hadly, J. Bascompte, E. Berlow, J. Brown, M. Fortelius, W. Getz, J. Harte, A. Hastings, P. Marquet, N. Martinez, A. Mooers, P. Roopnarine, G. Vermeij, J. Williams, R. Gillespie, J. Kitzes, C. Marshall, N. Matzke, D. Mindell, E. Revilla & A. Smith. 2012. "Approaching a state shift in Earth’s biosphere." Nature. V. 486. June 7. Pp. 52-8. P. 52.
"And at the last glacial-interglacial transition, megafaunal biomass switched from being dominated by many species to being dominated by Homo sapiens and our domesticated species." Barnosky, Anthony, E. Hadly, J. Bascompte, E. Berlow, J. Brown, M. Fortelius, W. Getz, J. Harte, A. Hastings, P. Marquet, N. Martinez, A. Mooers, P. Roopnarine, G. Vermeij, J. Williams, R. Gillespie, J. Kitzes, C. Marshall, N. Matzke, D. Mindell, E. Revilla & A. Smith. 2012. "Approaching a state shift in Earth’s biosphere." Nature. V. 486. June 7. Pp. 52-8. P. 53.
"Global-scale forcing mechanisms today are human population growth with attendant resource consumption, habitat transformation and fragmentation, energy production and consumption, and climate change. All of these far exceed, in both rate and magnitude, the forcings evident at the most recent global-scale state shift, the last glacial-interglacial transition." Barnosky, Anthony, E. Hadly, J. Bascompte, E. Berlow, J. Brown, M. Fortelius, W. Getz, J. Harte, A. Hastings, P. Marquet, N. Martinez, A. Mooers, P. Roopnarine, G. Vermeij, J. Williams, R. Gillespie, J. Kitzes, C. Marshall, N. Matzke, D. Mindell, E. Revilla & A. Smith. 2012. "Approaching a state shift in Earth’s biosphere." Nature. V. 486. June 7. Pp. 52-8. P. 53.
"Direct forcing includes the conversion of ~43% of Earth’s land to agricultural or urban landscapes, with much of the remaining natural landscapes networked with roads. This exceeds the physical transformation that occurred at the last global scale critical transition, when ~30% of Earth’s surface went from being covered by glacial ice to being ice free." Barnosky, Anthony, E. Hadly, J. Bascompte, E. Berlow, J. Brown, M. Fortelius, W. Getz, J. Harte, A. Hastings, P. Marquet, N. Martinez, A. Mooers, P. Roopnarine, G. Vermeij, J. Williams, R. Gillespie, J. Kitzes, C. Marshall, N. Matzke, D. Mindell, E. Revilla & A. Smith. 2012. "Approaching a state shift in Earth’s biosphere." Nature. V. 486. June 7. Pp. 52-8. P. 54.
"Humans commandeer ~20-40% of global net primary productivity (NPP) and decrease overall NPP through habitat degradation." Barnosky, Anthony, E. Hadly, J. Bascompte, E. Berlow, J. Brown, M. Fortelius, W. Getz, J. Harte, A. Hastings, P. Marquet, N. Martinez, A. Mooers, P. Roopnarine, G. Vermeij, J. Williams, R. Gillespie, J. Kitzes, C. Marshall, N. Matzke, D. Mindell, E. Revilla & A. Smith. 2012. "Approaching a state shift in Earth’s biosphere." Nature. V. 486. June 7. Pp. 52-8. P. 54.
"Rapid climate change shows no signs of slowing. Modelling suggests that for ~30% of Earth, the speed at which plant species will have to migrate to keep pace with projected climate change is greater than their dispersal rate when Earth last shifted from a glacial to an interglacial climate, and that dispersal will be thwarted by highly fragmented landscapes." Barnosky, Anthony, E. Hadly, J. Bascompte, E. Berlow, J. Brown, M. Fortelius, W. Getz, J. Harte, A. Hastings, P. Marquet, N. Martinez, A. Mooers, P. Roopnarine, G. Vermeij, J. Williams, R. Gillespie, J. Kitzes, C. Marshall, N. Matzke, D. Mindell, E. Revilla & A. Smith. 2012. "Approaching a state shift in Earth’s biosphere." Nature. V. 486. June 7. Pp. 52-8. P. 54.
"It is still unknown, however, what percentage of Earth’s ecosystems actually have to be transformed to new states by the direct action of humans for rapid state changes to be triggered in remaining ‘natural’ systems. That percentage may be knowable only in retrospect, but, judging from landscape scale observations and simulations, it can reasonably be expected to be as low as 50%, or even lower if the interaction effects of many local ecosystem transformations cause sufficiently large global-scale forcings to emerge." Barnosky, Anthony, E. Hadly, J. Bascompte, E. Berlow, J. Brown, M. Fortelius, W. Getz, J. Harte, A. Hastings, P. Marquet, N. Martinez, A. Mooers, P. Roopnarine, G. Vermeij, J. Williams, R. Gillespie, J. Kitzes, C. Marshall, N. Matzke, D. Mindell, E. Revilla & A. Smith. 2012. "Approaching a state shift in Earth’s biosphere." Nature. V. 486. June 7. Pp. 52-8. P. 56.
"Since 1950, global material extraction and use grew 5.6-fold, much faster than population." Schaffartzik, Anke, A. Mayer, S. Gingrich, N. Eisenmenger, C. Loy & F. Krausmann. 2014. "The global metabolic transition: Regional patterns and trends of global material flows, 1950-2010." Global Environmental Change. 26: 87-97. P. 94.
"Overall, material use grew more slowly than GDP during the last 60 years. The average amount of material required to generate one unit of GDP (material intensity measured as domestic material consumption per GDP) decreased from 2.5 kg per dollar in 1950 to 1.4 kg/$ in 2010." Schaffartzik, Anke, A. Mayer, S. Gingrich, N. Eisenmenger, C. Loy & F. Krausmann. 2014. "The global metabolic transition: Regional patterns and trends of global material flows, 1950-2010." Global Environmental Change. 26: 87-97. P. 95.
"With the exception of regions of Latin America and the Caribbean and Sub-Saharan Africa, all world regions had completed or were on the brink of completing the transition from a biomass- to a minerals-based metabolism by 2010. Next to the prevalence of mineral flows within a metabolism to which biomass contributed 30% or less, the industrial metabolic profile is also intrinsically linked to large standing stocks in infrastructure, buildings, and durable goods which amount to several 100 t/cap. Building and maintaining these stocks and the energy demand associated with their use (e.g., in housing and transport) are major drivers of both economic and material use development: In the industrial metabolic profile, bulk minerals such as sand and gravel, iron, copper, aluminum, or timber tend to play dominant roles. We have found evidence that suggests emerging economies are following a similar path and rapidly building up stocks. In 2010, materials that can be integrated into stocks accounted for two thirds of material use in Asia and the Middle East and North Africa. This development illustrates that stocks will be decisive for future resource use, adding inertia to the ongoing metabolic transition." Schaffartzik, Anke, A. Mayer, S. Gingrich, N. Eisenmenger, C. Loy & F. Krausmann. 2014. "The global metabolic transition: Regional patterns and trends of global material flows, 1950-2010." Global Environmental Change. 26: 87-97. P. 95.
"Geneticists see them [major transitions] as driven by changes in the packaging and flow of information, developmental biologists by the growth of novel genes and the construction of new developmental networks, ecologists as generated by ecological opportunity, and geologists by geological processes and physical changes in the environment... Depending on which major transition is under consideration, each viewpoint may contain elements of the truth, but a more interesting question involves the interactions between these different dimensions of evolutionary innovation." Erwin, D.H. 2015. "A public goods approach to major evolutionary innovations." Geobiology. 13: 308-15. P. 308.
"Ecological interactions were missing from the view of METs [major evolutionary transitions] articulated by Maynard Smith and Szathmary, but this deficiency was addressed by Knoll and Bambach who identified six significant expansions (megatrajetories) in ecospace; the origin of prebiotic metabolism, the metabolic diversification of bacteria and archaea, the origin and expansion of unicellular eukaryotes, the diversification of aquatic multicellular clades, the invasion of land, and the origin of intelligence.... Knoll and Bambach focused on expansion of ecospace utilization and the means of gathering resources." Erwin, D.H. 2015. "A public goods approach to major evolutionary innovations." Geobiology. 13: 308-15. P. 310. Reference: Knoll, A. & R. Bambach. 2000. "Directionality in the history of life: diffusion from the left wall or repeated scaling of the right?" Pp. 2-14. Wing S. & D. Erwin (Eds). Deep Time: Paleobiology’s Perspective. Kansas UP.
"... public goods may impact two different aspects of the process of evolutionary innovation; by facilitating the generation of variation upon which selection and drift can act, or by constructing evolutionary opportunities (often viewed as new niches) required for the success of novel phenotypes." Erwin, D.H. 2015. "A public goods approach to major evolutionary innovations." Geobiology. 13: 308-15. P. 311.
"Macroevolutionary lags, long delays between the origin of a clade and its eventual taxonomic or ecologic success, are not uncommon and may be more widespread than generally appreciated. Examples include the origin and later spread of grasses, the spread of angiosperms, and the origins of metazoan orders. These lags emphasize that any general model of evolutionary novelty must give as much attention to the success of novelties as their origin, and public goods may play a role in both ends of this process." Erwin, D.H. 2015. "A public goods approach to major evolutionary innovations." Geobiology. 13: 308-15. P. 311.
"McInerney and colleagues argue that many nucleotide sequences are best seen as public goods, with individual sequences recruited by microbial lineages as needed." Erwin, D.H. 2015. "A public goods approach to major evolutionary innovations." Geobiology. 13: 308-15. P. 311. Reference: McInerney, J., M. O’Connell & D. Pisani. 2014. "The hybrid nature of the Eukaryota and a consilient view of life on earth." Nature Reviews Microbiology. 12: 449-55.
"As sequences form public goods, particularly during the origin of life, so do genes subject to lateral gene transfer serve as public goods during subsequent microbial evolution." Erwin, D.H. 2015. "A public goods approach to major evolutionary innovations." Geobiology. 13: 308-15. P. 312.
"The origin of eukaryotes, probably sometime after 1.8 Ga, involved the development of stable endosymbiosis and thus cells rather than gene sequences became a new form of public good, albeit one that was easily transformed into a club good, restricted to a single clade." Erwin, D.H. 2015. "A public goods approach to major evolutionary innovations." Geobiology. 13: 308-15. P. 312.
"In a recent paper, Douglas highlights two important types of symbiotic interactions: (i) the provision of novel metabolic capabilities for the eukaryotic host and (ii) increased fitness through physiologic benefits of the symbiont. Both interactions are widespread across eukaryotes and suggest that these secondary and tertiary symbioses render eukaryotes functionally multicellular." Erwin, D.H. 2015. "A public goods approach to major evolutionary innovations." Geobiology. 13: 308-15. P. 312. Reference: Douglas, A.E. 2014. "Symbiosis as a general principle in eukaryotic evolution." Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology. 6.
"The evolution of photosystem II and oxygenic photosynthesis generated oxygen as a waste product. Although the initial redox changes in the oceans may have been small and localized, the cumulative effect of the spread of oxygenic photosynthesis was a change in the redox state of the shallow oceans, leading to the GOE about 2.4 Ga and an increase in atmospheric oxygen.... Moreover, oxygen is perhaps the pre-eminent example of a biological public good." Erwin, D.H. 2015. "A public goods approach to major evolutionary innovations." Geobiology. 13: 308-15. P. 312. "The concept of the Anthropocene has evolved in breadth and diversity ..., now ranging from a proposed definition of a new geological epoch, a widely-used metaphor for global change, a novel analytical framework, a meme about the relationship of society to nature, and the framing for new and contested cultural narratives." Brondizio, Eduardo, K. O’Brien, X. Bai, F. Biermann, W. Steffen, F. Berkhout, C. Cudennec, M. Lemos, A. Wolfe, J. Palma-Oliveira & C. Chen. 2016. "Re-conceptualizing the Anthropocene: A call for collaboration." Global Environmental Change. 39: 318-27. Pp. 318-9.
"... the Anthropocene, as proposed by Crutzen in 2000, is based on the concept of the Earth system, a single complex system at the planetary level with its own emergent properties, states and modes of functioning. The Anthropocene thus represents a state change in the Earth system, viewed of [sic] an interdependent social-ecological system." Brondizio, Eduardo, K. O’Brien, X. Bai, F. Biermann, W. Steffen, F. Berkhout, C. Cudennec, M. Lemos, A. Wolfe, J. Palma-Oliveira & C. Chen. 2016. "Re-conceptualizing the Anthropocene: A call for collaboration." Global Environmental Change. 39: 318-27. P. 319. Reference: Crutzen, P. & E.F. Stoermer. 2000. "The Anthropocene." Glob. Change Newslett. 41: 17-18. International Geosphere Biosphere Program (IGBP).
"Similarly, Bonneuil proposes a typology of four grand narratives that are associated with the mobilization of the term, setting out a more diverse set of perspectives: "1) A naturalistic narrative that emphasizes the what, how, and when the humans have altered the Earth system with particular attention to the potential of interdisciplinary integration to provide scientific and technological knowledge to society and policy makers regarding adaptation to and mitigation of the impacts of global change; "2) A post-nature narrative that deploys the term Anthropocene as a symbol of post-modernity, where the dichotomy between culture and nature is dissolved, and where the Anthropocene concept is seen as a useful alternative, even if it conveys, multiple and at times unclear meanings to move beyond the disorders of modernity; "3) An eco-catastrophist narrative that tends to focus on vulnerabilities of society and the dangers of unknown social and environmental tipping-points, highlighting the historical studies of civilizational collapses; on Limits to Growth, and the over-population debate; "4) An eco-Marxist narrative that focuses on the contradictions of capitalism in promoting growth and inequality and technological advances, while at the same time causing environmental disasters. Not unlike political ecological frameworks, the emphasis is on the role of the history of capital circulation and appropriation within unequal global social relations." Brondizio, Eduardo, K. O’Brien, X. Bai, F. Biermann, W. Steffen, F. Berkhout, C. Cudennec, M. Lemos, A. Wolfe, J. Palma-Oliveira & C. Chen. 2016. "Re-conceptualizing the Anthropocene: A call for collaboration." Global Environmental Change. 39: 318-27. P. 321. Reference: Bonneuil, C. 2015. "The geological turn: narratives of the Anthropocene." Hamilton, C. & C. Bonneuil (Eds). The Anthropocene Rethinking the Global Environmental Crisis. Routledge.
"Having characterized 10 frameworks for analyzing social-ecological systems with respect to contextual and structural criteria, we find that these frameworks vary significantly regarding their theoretical and disciplinary origin, their purpose, and the way in which they conceptualize the social and the ecological systems, their interaction and dynamics.... "We found that three criteria were sufficient to classify the frameworks into four different groups. The criteria were: (i) the way in which the conceptualization and the interaction within and between the social and the ecological systems occurs; (ii) the perspective from which the ecological system is conceptualized; and (iii) whether if it is an analysis-oriented or an action-oriented framework. Thereby, four types of frameworks are derived. "Ecocentric frameworks. The first group of frameworks conceptualizes the relationship between the social and the ecological systems to be an S –> E relationship, that is, human activities affect the ecological system, whereas direct feedbacks from the ecological to the social system are not considered. It conceptualizes the social system at an aggregate level, mostly the level of society (macro). It follows an ecocentric perspective, that is, the ecological system is conceptualized in terms of its internal functioning. With the exception of ES, it uses the notion of stocks and flows to analyze the ecological system and its dynamics. The frameworks belonging to this group are: ES [Ecosystem Services], ESA [Earth Systems Analysis], and MEFA [Material and Energy Flow Analysis].... "Integrative frameworks. The second group of frameworks considers the reciprocity between the social and the ecological systems S <–> E, and includes different types of feedbacks within the social system and between the social and ecological systems in different time and social scales, named single, double, or triple loop learning or primary and secondary feedback loops. Within the social system the frameworks in this group also consider the duality between social structure and agency. They view the ecological system from an anthropocentric perspective, that is, they look at the ecological system from the point of view of its utility to humans. The frameworks belonging to this group are: HES [Human Environment Systems Framework], MTF [Management and Transition Framework], and SES [Social-Ecological Systems Framework]. All three frameworks are analysis oriented.... "Policy frameworks. The third group of frameworks conceptualizes the interaction between the social and the ecological systems as being S –> E, that is, human action affects the ecological system. They do not explicitly consider feedbacks between the social and ecological systems, but changes in the ecological system are seen to potentially affect the social system. These frameworks conceptualize the social system as a macro –> micro relationship. Like the second, and in contrast to the first group, they define the ecological system from an anthropocentric perspective. The frameworks belonging to this group are: DPSIR [Driver, Pressure, State, Impact, Response] and TNS [The Natural Step]. Both frameworks are action oriented.... "Vulnerability frameworks. The fourth group of frameworks conceptualizes the interaction between the social and the ecological systems as being E –> S, that is, the ecological system affects the social system. Even through the social system might affect the ecological system, this is not specifically included in the analysis. These frameworks (SLA and TVUL) conceptualize the social system as a macro –> micro relationship. They define the ecological system from an anthropocentric perspective." Binder, Claudia, J. Hinkel, P. Bots & C. Pahl-Wostl. 2013. "Comparison of Frameworks for Analyzing Social-ecological Systems." Ecology and Society. 18(4): 26. Pp. 12-15.
"From our analysis it becomes clear that there is no single framework that can be used to address all research issues in SES. Through our analysis we provide support for selecting the right framework based on the problem to be studied and the way in which the social-ecological system is conceptualized." Binder, Claudia, J. Hinkel, P. Bots & C. Pahl-Wostl. 2013. "Comparison of Frameworks for Analyzing Social-ecological Systems." Ecology and Society. 18(4): 26. P. 15.
"The hologenome is defined as the sum of the genetic information of the host and its microbiota. In the hologenome theory of evolution, we suggest that the holobiont (the host and its symbiotic microbiota) with its hologenome, acting in consortium, should be considered a unit of selection in evolution,...." Zilber-Rosenberg, Ilana & E. Rosenberg. 2008. "Role of microorganisms in the evolution of animals and plants: the hologenome theory of evolution." FEMS Microbiol. Rev. 32: 723-35. P. 723.
"The distinguishing feature of the hologenome theory is that it considers all of the diverse microbiota associated with the animal or the plant as part of the evolving holobiont and that changing the microbial community by amplification, novel acquisition from the environment and horizontal gene transfer provide additional mechanisms for rapid evolution." Zilber-Rosenberg, Ilana & E. Rosenberg. 2008. "Role of microorganisms in the evolution of animals and plants: the hologenome theory of evolution." FEMS Microbiol. Rev. 32: 723-35. P. 730.
"Although biophysical and biochemical reactions catalyze specific electron transfers at a local, molecular level, the metabolic consequences are global. Through opportunity and selection, metabolic pathways evolved to form an interdependent, planetary ‘electron market’ where reductants and oxidants are traded across the globe. The exchanges are made on a planetary scale because gases, produced by all organisms, can be transported around Earth’s surface by the ocean and atmosphere." Falkowski, Paul. 2006. "Tracing Oxygen’s Imprint on Earth’s Metabolic Evolution." Science. March 24. 311:1724-25. P. 1724.
"Over the first 2 billion years of Earth’s history, the electron market evolved to produce a well-structured set of metabolic pathways distributed among groups of interconnected anaerobic microbes, each selected to conduct one, or at most a small subset, of redox reactions. because of the relatively large investment in energy to oxidize water, the biggest electron-donor pool, H2O, remained biologically inaccessible." Falkowski, Paul. 2006. "Tracing Oxygen’s Imprint on Earth’s Metabolic Evolution." Science. March 24. 311:1724-25. P. 1724.
"Over a relatively short period of geological time (~100 million years), O2 built up in Earth’s atmosphere, such that by 2.2 billion years ago, the old electron market place, which had operated so smoothly for so long, was in danger of becoming a historical relic, to be supplanted by a new, high-powered machine that used the latest, most complex, energy-transducing process. The core machinery for this process evolved only once on Earth, and ... the fundamental design became an immutable, ‘frozen’ metabolic accident,... But with the appearance of this new technology [oxygenic photosynthesis], the electron traders, which had evolved under anaerobic conditions, had to accommodate the new oxidant, go into hiding, or become extinct." Falkowski, Paul. 2006. "Tracing Oxygen’s Imprint on Earth’s Metabolic Evolution." Science. March 24. 311:1724-25. P. 1725.
"The first observation to make about multicellularity is that it does not occur in most eukaryotic clades. Patterson recognized seventy major clades of eukaryotes. Fifty-three of these are populated exclusively by unicellular organisms, predominantly motile predators on bacteria and other particle feeders, phytoplankton, and parasites." Knoll, Andrew & D. Hewitt. 2011. "Phylogenetic, Functional, and Geological Perspectives on Complex Multicellularity." Pp. 251-69. From: Calcott, B. & K. Sterelny. The Major Transitions of Evolution Revisited. MIT Press. P. 251. Reference: Patterson, D. 1999. "The diversity of eukaryotes." The American Naturalist. 154(Suppl.): S96-S124.
"Complex multicellular organisms evolved from simple multicellular ancestors, but not all groups with simple, multicells gave rise to complex descendents. In fact, most did not." Knoll, Andrew & D. Hewitt. 2011. "Phylogenetic, Functional, and Geological Perspectives on Complex Multicellularity." Pp. 251-69. From: Calcott, B. & K. Sterelny. The Major Transitions of Evolution Revisited. MIT Press. P. 252.
"The presence of exterior and interior cells is, in our view, critical. In consequence, cells do not all have equal access to nutrients and therefore will not accumulate biomass at a uniform rate–unless a mechanism evolves for the transfer of resources from one cell to another. Also, interior cells no longer receive signals directly from the environment, even though response to environmental dynamics remains key to growth, reproduction, and survival." Knoll, Andrew & D. Hewitt. 2011. "Phylogenetic, Functional, and Geological Perspectives on Complex Multicellularity." Pp. 251-69. From: Calcott, B. & K. Sterelny. The Major Transitions of Evolution Revisited. MIT Press. P. 253.
"Only active transfer processes will free multicellular organisms with interior and exterior cells from the sharp constraints of molecular diffusion." Knoll, Andrew & D. Hewitt. 2011. "Phylogenetic, Functional, and Geological Perspectives on Complex Multicellularity." Pp. 251-69. From: Calcott, B. & K. Sterelny. The Major Transitions of Evolution Revisited. MIT Press. P. 253.
"High abundance and diversity [in number of multicellular species] reflect the functional possibilities of three-dimensional organization, shaped by evolvable networks of regulatory genes, but fundamentally made possible by active transport mechanisms." Knoll, Andrew & D. Hewitt. 2011. "Phylogenetic, Functional, and Geological Perspectives on Complex Multicellularity." Pp. 251-69. From: Calcott, B. & K. Sterelny. The Major Transitions of Evolution Revisited. MIT Press. P. 255.
"In effect, in three-dimensionally complex organisms, the ambient environment of interior cells is other cells, and genetic up- and down-regulation reflects perceived environmental gradients and signals from surrounding cells–the very definition of development. Moreover, signals generated by surface cells will diffuse inward, setting up a molecular gradient that induces different genetic responses in cells along the gradient–again the essence of development in plants and animals.... "The obvious chicken-and-egg problem is whether size increase reflects or promotes the active transfer of nutrients, oxidants, and cell signals. The solution may be to consider the system of size, metabolism, and differentiation as a positive feedback loop." Knoll, Andrew & D. Hewitt. 2011. "Phylogenetic, Functional, and Geological Perspectives on Complex Multicellularity." Pp. 251-69. From: Calcott, B. & K. Sterelny. The Major Transitions of Evolution Revisited. MIT Press. P. 259.
"It is important, here, to reiterate that there are no transmembrance pumps that permit O2 concentrations to build internally against a concentration gradient; therefore, oxygen is a special case among molecular requirements, in that bulk flow of dissolved oxygen is required for long-distance transport." Knoll, Andrew & D. Hewitt. 2011. "Phylogenetic, Functional, and Geological Perspectives on Complex Multicellularity." Pp. 251-69. From: Calcott, B. & K. Sterelny. The Major Transitions of Evolution Revisited. MIT Press. P. 259.
"... two key steps stand out as central to the emergence of complex multicellularity. First was the establishment of mechanisms for active molecular transport between adjacent cells. Of the seventeen eukaryotic clades known to include simple multicellular organisms, only five have plasmodesmata, gap junctions, or incomplete cell walls that facilitate cell-cell communication, and all complex multicellular organisms belong to these five clades. "The second required step, achieved in all groups with intercellular transport mechanisms, was the differentiation of mechanisms for the bulk transfer of oxygen through tissues." Knoll, Andrew & D. Hewitt. 2011. "Phylogenetic, Functional, and Geological Perspectives on Complex Multicellularity." Pp. 251-69. From: Calcott, B. & K. Sterelny. The Major Transitions of Evolution Revisited. MIT Press. P. 265.
"This perspective reemphasizes a point made earlier by McShea and others: the evolutionary transition from unicells to complex multicellular organisms has several steps; it is a corridor, not a door." Knoll, Andrew & D. Hewitt. 2011. "Phylogenetic, Functional, and Geological Perspectives on Complex Multicellularity." Pp. 251-69. From: Calcott, B. & K. Sterelny. The Major Transitions of Evolution Revisited. MIT Press. P. 265. Reference: McShea, Dan. 2002. "A complexity drain on cells in the evolution of multicellularity." Evolution. 56: 441-52.
"That is, early cells and the likely systems that preceded them (protocells) were the products of a chemical evolutionary process. Thus, one cannot speak of a protocell type, but rather of a lineage of protocell systems ...." Kee, Terence & P. Monnard. 2016. "On the Emergence of a Proto-Metabolism and the Assembly of Early Protocells." Elements. December. 12: 419-424. P. 419.
"The term selection is used here to broadly refer to situations in which entities multiply (i.e. promote, directly or indirectly, the local appearance of more such entities) and the rate or efficiency of multiplication has some degree of heritability... However, it [the definition of selection] also includes what I will call neighborhood selection, a kind of selection that can, in principle, result in improvements in collective multiplication and enhanced complexity, even though neighborhoods are not discretely bounded and do not, in any simple sense, self-replicate." Baum, David. 2015. "Selection and the Origin of Cells." BioScience. July. V. 65. No. 7. Pp. 678-84. P. 679.
"If ever an autocatalytic network arose on a surface, neighborhood selection could result in increased cooperation over time, causing progressively more effective acquisition of energy and more efficient growth over the surface." Baum, David. 2015. "Selection and the Origin of Cells." BioScience. July. V. 65. No. 7. Pp. 678-84. P. 682.
"There is little consensus on what constitutes a rigorous definition of life and this is accommodated in such a graph by having ‘aliveness’ as a variable [against a time/system complexity variable]. The equilibrium state is undoubtedly inanimate and the end state animate, but what of intermediate states and the trajectory to life? A smooth increase in aliveness over time seems unlikely to us, as does a single transition from inanimate to animate, so we prefer a series of steps." Sutherland, John. 2016. "The Origin of Life–Out of the Blue." Angewandte Chemie. 55: 104-121. P. 119.
"Following this physicochemical route, we have shown previously that cyclic environmental gradients and non-covalent molecular forces drove the evolutionary emergence of life; the excluded volume effect in particular, also referred to as biomacromolecular crowding, is a key physicochemical factor for a life to emerge." Spitzer, Jan. 2017. "Emergence of Life on Earth: A Physicochemical Jigsaw Puzzle." J. Mol. Evol. 84:1-7. P. 2
"The chemical evolution of the prebiotic molecular inventory is thus cyclic and consists of two parts: (i) chemical reactions and (ii) physical separations of chemical phases; they are both energized by gradients of solar radiation, temperature, water activity, etc. Thus the rotating Earth mixes chemistries from different geochemical locations on macroscopic and microscopic scales." Spitzer, Jan. 2017. "Emergence of Life on Earth: A Physicochemical Jigsaw Puzzle." J. Mol. Evol. 84:1-7. P. 3.
"Under cyclic environmental conditions, new chemical phases appear and disappear in diverse colloidal morphologies; thus they are cyclically re-emergent,..." Spitzer, Jan. 2017. "Emergence of Life on Earth: A Physicochemical Jigsaw Puzzle." J. Mol. Evol. 84:1-7. P. 3.
"Phylogenetics suggests that progenotes could have given rise to Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukaryota directly, thus bypassing LUCA, or that LUCA stabilized first, both genetically and physicochemically; in any case, they were all ‘infected’ with phages and viruses that enhanced the rate of early evolution toward more stable lineages." Spitzer, Jan. 2017. "Emergence of Life on Earth: A Physicochemical Jigsaw Puzzle." J. Mol. Evol. 84:1-7. P. 5.
"... some basic principles of life’s emergence are becoming recognizable: "(1) Chemical prebiotic evolution is continuous with biological Darwinian evolution; they are both based on cyclic chemical processes. "(2) Cycling environmental energies are the ‘blind watchmakers’ of prebiotic chemical evolution; they give rise to a new kind of chemistry–cyclic evolutionary chemistry. "(3) Persisting compartments (microspaces) acting as open thermodynamic systems are required for a life to emerge; only open thermodynamic systems with confining boundaries–of which current biological cells are examples–can defeat the molecular drift to disorder given by the second law. "(4) Macromolecular crowding, hydration, and screened electrostatic forces are critical for a fundamental understanding of life’s emergence; in today’s cells, these non-covalent molecular forces act jointly over a commensurate distance of about 1 nm, more or less independently of temperature. "(5) Progenotes can be regarded as ‘first life,’ reproducing by PCR [progenotic cyclic reproduction]-like cyclic environmental energies, with very high rate of evolution and ‘proto-species’ extinctions, i.e., with poorly reproducible heredity when vertical lineages quickly evolve and become extinct on short timescales of a few generations." Spitzer, Jan. 2017. "Emergence of Life on Earth: A Physicochemical Jigsaw Puzzle." J. Mol. Evol. 84:1-7. P. 5.
"However, neither dystopia nor utopia is our destination. Rather, technology is taking us to protopia. More accurately, we have already arrived in protopia. "Protopia is a state of becoming, rather than a destination. It is a process. In the protopian mode, things are better today than they were yesterday, although only a little better. It is incremental improvement or mild progress. "The ‘pro’ in protopian stems from the notions of process and progress." Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. P. 13.
"When this emerging AI arrives, its very ubiquity will hide it. We’ll use its growing smartness for all kinds of humdrum chores, but it will be faceless, unseen. We will be able to reach this distributed intelligence in a million ways, through any digital screen anywhere on earth, so it will be hard to say where it is. And because this synthetic intelligence is a combination of human intelligence (all past human learning, all current humans online), it will be difficult to pinpoint exactly what it is as well. Is it our memory, or a consensual agreement? Are we searching it, or is it searching us? "The arrival of artificial thinking accelerates all the other disruptions I describe in this book; it is the ur-force in our future. We can say with certainty that cognification is inevitable, because it is already here." Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. P. 30.
"Flowing time has shifted as well. In the first era [initial era of computers borrowing from the industrial age], tasks were accomplished in batch mode. You got your bills every month. Taxes were all paid on the same day of the year. Telephone service came only in units of 30 days. Items piled up and were dealt with in batches. Then, in the second age, along came the web, and very quickly we expected everything the same day. If we withdrew money from our bank, we expected the deduction to show up in our account that same day,.... "Now in the third age, we’ve moved from daily mode to real time. If we message someone, we expect them to reply instantly. If we spend money, we expect the balance in our account to adjust in real time." Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. P. 64.
"The union of a zillion streams of information intermingling, flowing into each other, is what we call the cloud. Software flows from the cloud to you as a stream of upgrades. The cloud is where your stream of texts go before they arrive on your friend’s screen. The cloud is where the parade of movies under your account rests until you call for them. The cloud is the reservoir that songs escape from. The cloud is the seat where the intelligence of Siri sits, even as she speaks to you. The cloud is the new organizing metaphor for computers. The foundational units of this third digital regime, then, are flows, tags, and clouds." Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. P. 65.
"By 2015 more than 60 trillion pages have been added to the World Wide Web, and that total grows by several billion a day." Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. P. 89.
"Reading becomes social. With screens we can share not just the titles of books we are reading, but our reactions and notes as we read them." Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. P. 94.
"A reporter for TechCrunch recently observed, ‘Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate. Something interesting is happening...." "Possession is not as important as it once was. Accessing is more important than ever." Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. P. 109.
"For a long time there were two basic ways to organize human work: a firm and a marketplace.... Recently a third way to organize work has emerged: the platform. "A platform is a foundation created by a firm that lets other firms build products and services upon it. It is neither market nor firm, but something new. A platform, like a department store, offers stuff it did not create. One of the first widely successful platforms was Microsoft’s operating system (OS). Anyone with ambition could build and sell a software program that ran on the OS that Microsoft owned." Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. P. 122.
"... so the next step in the rise of clouds over the coming decades will be toward merging the clouds into one intercloud. Just as the internet is the network of networks, the intercloud is the cloud of clouds. Slowly but surely Amazon’s cloud and Google’s cloud and Facebooks’ cloud and all the other enterprise clouds are intertwining into one massive cloud that acts as a single cloud–The Cloud–to the average user or company." Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. P. 129. "Operating without state funding or control, connecting citizens directly to citizens, globally, daily, this mostly free marketplace [Craigslist] achieved social good at an efficiency that would stagger any government or traditional corporation. Sure, peer-to-peer classified undermines the business model of newspapers, but at the same time it makes an indisputable case that the sharing model is a viable alternative to both profit-seeking corporations and tax-supported civic institutions." Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. P. 145.
"While millions of writers contribute to Wikipedia, a smaller number of editors (around 1,500) are responsible for the majority of the editing. Ditto for collectives that write code. A vast army of contributions is managed by a much smaller group of coordinators. As Mitch Kapor, founding chair of the Mozilla open source code factory, observed, ‘Inside every working anarchy, there’s an old-boy network.’" Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. P. 151.
"We are at a threshold of a Cambrian explosion in attention technology, as novel and outlandish versions of attention and filtering are given a try.... "But what if anyone with an audience could choose the particular ads they wanted to display, without having to ask permission?" Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. P. 182.
"She [Esther Dyson, an early internet pioneer and investor] says, ‘Email is a system that lets other people add things to my to-do list.’ Right now there is no cost for adding an email in someone else’s queue. Twenty years ago she proposed a system that would enable someone to charge senders for reading their email." Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. P. 186.
"A major accelerant in this explosion of superabundance–the superabundance that demands constant increases in filtering–is the compounding cheapness of stuff. In general, on average, over time technology tends toward the free. That tends to make things abundant. At first it may be hard to believe that technology wants to be free. But it’s true about most things we make. Over time, if a technology persists long enough, its costs begin to approach zero." Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. P. 189.
"We will soon dwell smack in the middle of the Library of Everything, surrounded by the liquid presence of all existing works of humankind, just within reach of our fingertips, for free. The great filters will be standing by, quietly guiding us, ready to serve us our wishes. ‘What do you want’ the filters ask. ‘You can choose anything, what do you choose?’ The filters have been watching us for years, they anticipate what we will ask. They can almost autocomplete it right now." Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. Pp. 190-1.
"After all, this is how authors work. We dip into a finite database of established words, called a dictionary, and reassemble these found words into articles, novels, and poems that no one has ever seen before. The joy is recombining them.... Even the greatest writers do their magic primarily by remixing formerly used, commonly shared ones. What we do now with words, we’ll soon do with images." Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. P. 200.
"Rewindability and findability are just two Gutenberg-like transformations that moving images are undergoing. These two and many other factors of remixing apply to all newly digitized media, such as virtual reality, music, radio, presentations, and so on." Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. P. 207.
"But while ‘presence’ will seel it, VR’s [virtual reality’s] enduring benefits spring from its interactivity. It is unclear how comfortable, or uncomfortable, we’ll be with the encumbrances of VR gear.... Presence will draw users in, but it is the interactivity quotient of VR that will keep it going. Interacting in all degrees will spread out to the rest of the technological world." Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. P. 217.
"The zone of interaction will continue to march closer to us. Technology will get closer to us than a watch and pocket phone. Interacting will be more intimate. It will always be on, everywhere." Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. P. 226.
"What helps overcome some of our self-fooling in an N=1 experiment in the new era of self-tracking is automatic instrumentation (having a sensor make the measurement many times for long periods so it is ‘forgotten’ by the subject) and being able to track many variables at once to distract the subject, and then using statistical means later to try to unravel any patterns.... "So in lieu of a control group in an N=1 study, a quantified-self experimenter uses his or her own baseline. If you track yourself long enough, with a wide variety of metrics, then you can establish your behavior outside the experiment, which effectively functions as the control for comparison." Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. P. 242. "Two economists at UC Berkeley tallied up the total global production information and calculated that new information is growing at 66 percent per year.... Five years ago humanity stored several hundred exabytes of information. That is the equivalent of each person on the planet having 80 Library of Alexandrias. Today we average 320 libraries each." Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. P. 257.
"Just as selfish genes tend to replicate, bits do too. And just as genes ‘want’ to code for bodies that help them replicate, selfish bits also ‘want’ systems that help them replicate and spread. Bits behave as if they want to reproduce, move, and be shared." Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. P. 259.
"Ubiquitous surveillance is inevitable. Since we cannot stop the system from tracking, we can only make the relationships more symmetrical. It’s a way of civilizing coveillance." Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. P. 260.
"If symmetry can be restored so we can track who is tracking, if we can hold the trackers accountable by law and responsible for accuracy, and if we can make the benefits obvious and relevant, then I suspect the expansion of tracking will be accepted." Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. P. 261.
"There is a one-to-one correspondence between personalization and transparency. Greater personalization requires greater transparency. Absolute personalization (vanity) requires absolute transparency (no privacy). If I prefer to remain private and opaque to potential friends and institutions, then I must accept I will be treated generically, without regard to my specific particulars. I’ll be an average number." Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. Pp. 261-2.
"If today’s social media has taught us anything about ourselves as a species, it is that the human impulse to share overwhelms the human impulse for privacy." Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. P. 262.
"These new elements [from news or music albums] can be rearranged–remixed–into new text compounds, such as news updates tweeted by your friend. The next step is to unbundle classifieds, stories, and updates into even more elemental particles that can be rearranged in unexpected and unimaginable ways. Sort of like smashing information into ever smaller subparticles that can be recombined into a new chemistry. Over the next 30 years, the great work will be parsing all the information we track and create–all the information of business, education, entertainment, science, sport, and social relations–into their most primeval elements.... "Out of this new chemistry of information will arise thousands of new compounds and informational building materials. Ceaseless tracking is inevitable, but it is only the start. "We are on our way to manufacturing 54 billion sensors every year by 2020. Spread around the globe, embedded in our cars, draped over our bodies, and watching us at home and on public streets, this web of sensors will generate another 300 zillionbytes of data in the next decade. Each of those bits will in turn generate twice as many metabits. Tracked, parsed, and cognified by utilitarian AIs, this vast ocean of informational atoms can be molded into hundreds of new forms, novel products, and innovative services. We will be astounded at what is possible by a new level of tracking ourselves." Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. Pp. 266-7.
"I am convinced that the full impact of Wikipedia is still subterranean and that its mind-changing force is working subconsciously on the global millennial generation, providing them with an existent proof of a beneficial hive mind, and an appreciation for believing in the impossible." Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. Pp. 271-2.
"As far as I can tell, the impossible things happening now are in every case due to the emergence of a new level of organization that did not exist before. These incredible eruptions are the result of large-scale collaboration, and massive real-time social interacting,..." Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. P. 273.
"The collectivist organizations of Wikipedia, Linux, Facebook, Uber, the web–even AI–can do things that industrialized humans could not. This is the first time on this planet that we’ve tied a billion people together in immediate syncopation,...." Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. P. 273.
"This new mode of being–surfing the waves, diving down, rushing up, flitting from bit to bit, tweeting and twittering, ceaselessly dipping into newness with ease, daydreaming, questioning each and every fact–is not a bug. It is a feature. It is a proper response to the ocean of data, news, and facts flooding us. We need to be fluid and agile, flowing from idea to idea, because that fluidity reflects the turbulent informational environment surrounding us." Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. P. 281. "At its core 7 billion humans, soon to be 9 billion, are quickly cloaking themselves with an always-on layer of connectivity that comes close to directly linking their brains to each other." Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. P. 292.
"For simple convenience and to keep it short, I’m calling this planetary layer the holos. By holos I include the collective intelligence of all humans combined with the collective behavior of all machines, plus the intelligence of nature, plus whatever behavior emerges from this whole. This whole equals holos." Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. P. 292.
"This virtual computer’s [the holos] top-level functions operate at approximately the speed of an early PC. It processes 1 million emails each second, and 1 million messages per second, which essentially means the holos currently runs at 1 megahertz." Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape our Future. Viking. P. 293.
"First, connectivity has replaced division as the new paradigm of global organization. Human society is undergoing a fundamental transformation by which functional infrastructure tells us more about how the world works than political borders. The true map of the world should feature not just states but megacities, highways, railways, pipelines, Internet cables, and other symbols of our emerging global network civilization." Khanna, Parag. 2016. Connectography: Mapping the Global Network Revolution. Weidenfeld & Nicholson. Pp. xvi-xvii.
"Competing over connectivity plays out as a tug-of-war over global supply chains, energy markets, industrial production, and the valuable flows of finance, technology, knowledge, and talent. Tug-of-war represents the shift from a war between systems to war within one collective supply chain system." Khanna, Parag. 2016. Connectography: Mapping the Global Network Revolution. Weidenfeld & Nicholson. P. xvii.
"Another way this competitive connectivity takes place is through infrastructure alliances: connecting physically across borders and oceans through tight supply chain partnerships. China’s relentless pursuit of this strategy has elevated infrastructure to the status of a global good on par with America’s provision of security." Khanna, Parag. 2016. Connectography: Mapping the Global Network Revolution. Weidenfeld & Nicholson. P. xvii.
"Maps have graduated from art and theology to commerce and politics; now they need to better reflect demographics, economics, ecology, and engineering." Khanna, Parag. 2016. Connectography: Mapping the Global Network Revolution. Weidenfeld & Nicholson. P. xxii.
"Connectivity is the new meta-pattern of our age." Khanna, Parag. 2016. Connectography: Mapping the Global Network Revolution. Weidenfeld & Nicholson. P. 7.
"Cities and highways, pipelines and ports, bridges and tunnels, telecom towers and Internet cables, electricity grids and sewage systems, and other fixed assets command about $3 trillion per year in global spending, well over the $1.75 trillion spent annually on defense, and the gap is growing. Infrastructure outlays are projected to rise to $9 trillion per year by 2025.... "Our infrastructural matrix today includes approximately 64 million kilometers of highways, 2 million kilometers of pipelines, 1.2 million kilometers of railways, and 750,000 kilometers of undersea Internet cables that connect our many key population and economic centers." Khanna, Parag. 2016. Connectography: Mapping the Global Network Revolution. Weidenfeld & Nicholson. P. 11.
"And yet as universal as they are, supply chains are not things in themselves. They are a system of transactions. We do not see supply chains; rather, we see their participants and infrastructures–the things that connect supply to demand." Khanna, Parag. 2016. Connectography: Mapping the Global Network Revolution. Weidenfeld & Nicholson. P. 20.
"Supply chains and connectivity, not sovereignty and borders, are the organizing principles of humanity in the 21st century." Khanna, Parag. 2016. Connectography: Mapping the Global Network Revolution. Weidenfeld & Nicholson. P. 20.
"There are many kinds of flows in the connected global system; resources, goods, capital, technology, people, data, and ideas. And there are many kinds of friction; borders, conflict, sanctions, distance, and regulation.... "Flow and friction are the yin and yang of the world. They complete each other and keep each other in balance. They are in perpetual negotiation, constantly calibrated to suit strategic goals." Khanna, Parag. 2016. Connectography: Mapping the Global Network Revolution. Weidenfeld & Nicholson. P. 31.
"We now incorporate some measure of our own sense of self-worth by our connectivity, not just our cultural and national identities. The phrase ‘your network is your net worth’ applies very much to individuals and nations both." Khanna, Parag. 2016. Connectography: Mapping the Global Network Revolution. Weidenfeld & Nicholson. P. 339.
"It is the combination of improved physical infrastructure and e-commerce that makes the supply chain world an increasingly seamless physical-virtual hybrid marketplace of goods, services, payments, and delivery." Khanna, Parag. 2016. Connectography: Mapping the Global Network Revolution. Weidenfeld & Nicholson. P. 342.
"While Silicon Valley technology companies employ fewer workers than their industrial-age counterparts such as General Motors, their global services platforms facilitate portable and digital work for the connected masses whether posting advertisements, verifying addresses, photographing for registries, comparing prices for companies, or performing other basic tasks." Khanna, Parag. 2016. Connectography: Mapping the Global Network Revolution. Weidenfeld & Nicholson. P. 343.
"It is rather the full flourishing of self-regulated peer-to-peer capitalism, one in which people get paid for work in micro-increments, but as they do, connectivity becomes the foundation of whatever stability they have." Khanna, Parag. 2016. Connectography: Mapping the Global Network Revolution. Weidenfeld & Nicholson. P. 345.
"Global connectedness is thus an opportunity to evolve both our cartography and our morality. We should make the most of supply chains rather than just letting them make the most of us." Khanna, Parag. 2016. Connectography: Mapping the Global Network Revolution. Weidenfeld & Nicholson. P. 383.
"Although Zeder also recognized the staged model approach, her insight was recognizing and formally describing three separate pathways that animals followed into a domesticated relationship with humans: a commensal pathway, a prey pathway, and a directed pathway." Larson, Greger & Dorian Fuller. 2014. "The Evolution of Animal Domestication." Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics. 45:115-36. P. 117. Reference: Zeder, MA. 2012. "The domestication of animals." J. Anthropol. Res. 68:161-90.
"The commensal pathway does not begin with intentional action on the part of people to bring wild animals into their camps. Instead, as people manipulated their immediate surroundings, different populations of wild animals would have been attracted to elements of the human niche, including human food waste and/or smaller animals that were also attracted to the refuse." Larson, Greger & Dorian Fuller. 2014. "The Evolution of Animal Domestication." Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics. 45:115-36. P. 117.
"In general, animal populations that are attracted to and survive at least partly within the sphere of human habitats are referred to as synanthropes. Though obligate synanthropes include human louse and some pigeon populations, this term is most often reserved for pest species and is not used to refer to domestic animals. Within the context of Zeder’s model, the leap from a synanthropic population to a domestic one could only have taken place after the animals had progressed from anthropophily to habituation, to commensalism and partnership, at which point the establishment of a reciprocal relationship between animal and human would have laid the foundation for domestication, including captivity and human-controlled breeding." Larson, Greger & Dorian Fuller. 2014. "The Evolution of Animal Domestication." Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics. 45:115-36. P. 117. Reference: Zeder, MA. 2012. "The domestication of animals." J. Anthropol. Res. 68:161-90.
"... they [dogs] were the first domestic animal and the only animal domesticated before the advent of agriculture." Larson, Greger & Dorian Fuller. 2014. "The Evolution of Animal Domestication." Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics. 45:115-36. P. 118.
"Instead [of animals’ being attracted to human waste products; but animals of the prey pathway], humans likely altered their hunting strategies to maximize the availability of the prey. In so doing, the selection pressures for traits such as docility would have been significant as people moved from game management to herd management, to more complete control over the animals’ diet and reproduction." Larson, Greger & Dorian Fuller. 2014. "The Evolution of Animal Domestication." Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics. 45:115-36. P. 119.
"By 10 kya, people were preferentially killing young males of a variety of species and allowing the females to live to produce more offspring." Larson, Greger & Dorian Fuller. 2014. "The Evolution of Animal Domestication." Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics. 45:115-36. P. 120.
"Intriguingly, this pattern of overhunting before domestication suggests that the prey pathway was as accidental and unintentional as the commensal pathway." Larson, Greger & Dorian Fuller. 2014. "The Evolution of Animal Domestication." Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics. 45:115-36. P. 120.
"In this way, animal domestication (e.g. sheep) mirrors the process of unintentional entanglement associated with plant domestication as humans first foraged and then, through increased reliance on the resource, became trapped in positive feedback cycles of increasing labor and management of plant species that were evolving in response to human innovations." Larson, Greger & Dorian Fuller. 2014. "The Evolution of Animal Domestication." Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics. 45:115-36. P. 120.
"Thus, though horses, donkeys, and Old World camels were sometimes hunted as prey species, they were each deliberately brought into the human niche for other reasons, such as sources of transport." Larson, Greger & Dorian Fuller. 2014. "The Evolution of Animal Domestication." Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics. 45:115-36. P. 120.
"Despite the failures [of attempted domestication; e.g. gazelles], the majority of modern domestic animals have arisen in the past few hundred years because of the directed pathway. These include more small pets, including hamsters, the global population of which derives from a single sibling pair extracted from the Syrian Desert in 1930 and brought into captivity, and an increasing number of aquatic species, many of which have begun to display characteristics consistent with the domestication syndrome." Larson, Greger & Dorian Fuller. 2014. "The Evolution of Animal Domestication." Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics. 45:115-36. P. 120.
"The consequence of this admixture propensity is that modern domestic populations can often appear to have much greater genomic affinity to wild populations that were never involved in the original domestication process. This result necessitates a revision of our consideration of the term domestication, and we suggest that it should be reserved solely for the initial process of domestication of a discrete population in time and space. Subsequent admixture between introduced domestic populations and local wild populations that were never domesticated should be referred to as ‘introgressive capture.’" Larson, Greger & Dorian Fuller. 2014. "The Evolution of Animal Domestication." Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics. 45:115-36. P. 122.
"Although crop cultivation may have begun independently in as many as 20 regions, early animal domestication is associated with perhaps only 3 regions (the Near East, central China, and the Andes)." Larson, Greger & Dorian Fuller. 2014. "The Evolution of Animal Domestication." Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics. 45:115-36. P. 122.
"Subsequent to domestication as sources of meat, many prey pathway animals underwent diversification for additional uses, including textile fibers, milk, and traction as part of the ‘secondary products revolution’.... Similarly, the development of egg-laying chickens and ducks is also a secondary diversification." Larson, Greger & Dorian Fuller. 2014. "The Evolution of Animal Domestication." Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics. 45:115-36. P. 126.
"The domestication of these animals [donkeys and camels], which provided significantly more efficient transport than cattle carts, is entangled with the expansion of trade and agriculture into new regions. The timing of dromedary domestication, for example, coincides with the expansion of oasis cultivation systems facilitated by qanat irrigation systems, starting ca. 3,000 years BP at end of the Bronze Age. Horses were domesticated in the temperate grasslands of Central Asia by societies that already herded sheep and goats. Horses may have been tamed and ridden firstly as an efficient means to hunt wild horse herds as early as 7,000 years BP. Morphological change associated with more intensive breeding only occurred from 5,500-4,000 years BP, after which horses were used for trade transport, warfare, and horse milking." Larson, Greger & Dorian Fuller. 2014. "The Evolution of Animal Domestication." Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics. 45:115-36. Pp. 126-7.
"The global pattern of animal domestication suggests that the first domesticated animals in each region followed either a commensal or prey pathway. Though humans certainly drove the first steps by hunting animals in the prey pathway, neither of these two routes began with the intention to create a domestic animal." Larson, Greger & Dorian Fuller. 2014. "The Evolution of Animal Domestication." Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics. 45:115-36. P. 127.
"Though the total number of animal domesticates doubled in the middle Holocene (8,000-4,000 years BP) several thousand years after the first domestication episodes, the majority of domestic animals on Earth have been domesticated in the past few centuries. In addition to those discussed above, they include numerous small pets (such as hamsters, gerbils, chinchilla, and degus) and hundreds of freshwater and marine species." Larson, Greger & Dorian Fuller. 2014. "The Evolution of Animal Domestication." Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics. 45:115-36. P. 127.
"Importantly, humans did not intend to domesticate animals by (or at least, they never envisioned a domesticated animal resulting from) either the commensal or prey pathways. In both of these cases, humans became entangled with these species as the relationship between them, and the human role in their survival and reproduction, intensified. "The necessary circumstances appear to have coincided rarely, because few primary animal domestication episodes took place within a limited range of the wild species’ distribution. The resulting consequences for economic productivity and increased population sizes and range expansions of both humans and their domestic animal partners are difficult to overstate,...." Larson, Greger & Dorian Fuller. 2014. "The Evolution of Animal Domestication." Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics. 45:115-36. P. 130.
"Once domestic populations become established, a relaxation of natural selective pressure allowed for the appearance of mutations related to novel traits. By recognizing and selecting for these changes, the genomes of domestic animals became even more differentiated from their wild ancestors. Although some of these traits, such as coat color, were likely linked to fashion, others, including milk, wool, and egg-laying, were economically motivated. Many of these economic traits and additional novel uses (e.g., as draught animals) were exaptations or rather emergent accidental properties that resulted as the domestication process shifted from unconscious to increasingly conscious selection." Larson, Greger & Dorian Fuller. 2014. "The Evolution of Animal Domestication." Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics. 45:115-36. Pp. 130-1. "Domestication has been documented to have evolved at least five times in evolutionary history, and classic examples include the cultivation of fungal species by attine ants, ambrosia beetles, and termites." Meyer, Rachel & Michael Purugganan. 2013. "Evolution of crop species: genetics of domestication and diversification." Nature. December. 14: 840-52. P. 840.
"More than 160 plant families – mostly within the monocots and core eudicots, but also including many non-flowering plants and basal eudicots that are distant from model plants – have been found to contain domesticated species." Meyer, Rachel & Michael Purugganan. 2013. "Evolution of crop species: genetics of domestication and diversification." Nature. December. 14: 840-52. P. 841.
"... the figure shows a summary phylogeny of land plants and the distribution of 353 domesticated food crops...." Meyer, Rachel & Michael Purugganan. 2013. "Evolution of crop species: genetics of domestication and diversification." Nature. December. 14: 840-52. P. 841.
"Domesticated plant species are found in 160 taxonomic families, with estimates that 2,500 species have undergone domestication, and 250 species are considered as fully domesticated." Meyer, Rachel & Michael Purugganan. 2013. "Evolution of crop species: genetics of domestication and diversification." Nature. December. 14: 840-52. P. 842.
"Current rates of extinction are about 1000 times the background rate of extinction." Pimm, S., C. Jenkins, R. Abell, T. Brooks, J. Gittleman, L. Joppa, P. Raven, C. Roberts & J. Sexton. 2014. "The biodiversity of species and their rates of extinction, distribution, and protection." Science. May 30. V. 344. Issue 6187. P. 987.
"I believe a strong argument can be made that domestication qualifies as a form of biological mutualism with clear benefits for each partner in the relationship." Zeder, Melinda. 2012. "The Domestication of Animals." Journal of Anthropological Research. V. 68. No. 2. Summer. Pp. 161-190. P. 162.
"... domesticates have provided humans with resources that they could more predictably and securely control, move, and redistribute–an advantage that fueled a virtual population explosion of agro-pastoralists and their spread to all corners of the globe." Zeder, Melinda. 2012. "The Domestication of Animals." Journal of Anthropological Research. V. 68. No. 2. Summer. Pp. 161-190. P. 163.
"Although domestication shares many features with mutualistic relationships in nature, there are, nevertheless, critical differences that distinguish domestication from any symbiosis found in nature. Mutualisms in nature involve essentially symmetrical, codependent relationships driven by selection operating on mutation-induced changes (behavioral, morphological, or physiological) in both partners. Humans, on the other hand, have the capacity to spontaneously modify their behavioral repertoires, to invent new behaviors that better suit certain goals and abandon old ones.... This capacity for the invention and transmission of learned behavior shifts the balance of power in the symbiosis between humans and emergent domesticates, affording humans the upper hand in the relationship...." Zeder, Melinda. 2012. "The Domestication of Animals." Journal of Anthropological Research. V. 68. No. 2. Summer. Pp. 161-190. P. 163.
"This essentially Lamarkian aspect of human cultural evolution is the reason why mutualistic relationships between humans and domesticates are fundamentally different from non-human symbiotic relationships. The human capacity for inventing and transmitting new behaviors vastly accelerates the process and transforms the domesticate and the domestic relationship far beyond any mutualism in the natural world." Zeder, Melinda. 2012. "The Domestication of Animals." Journal of Anthropological Research. V. 68. No. 2. Summer. Pp. 161-190. P. 163.
"... define domestication as: a sustained, multigenerational, mutualistic relationship in which humans assume some significant level of control over the reproduction and care of a plant/animal in order to secure a more predictable supply of a resource of interest and by which the plant/animal is able to increase its reproductive success over individuals not participating in this relationship, thereby enhancing the fitness of both humans and target domesticates." Zeder, Melinda. 2012. "The Domestication of Animals." Journal of Anthropological Research. V. 68. No. 2. Summer. Pp. 161-190. Pp. 163-4.
"In plants the new selective factors introduced under domestication tend to target genes that control morphology and physiology, whereas in animals the primary focus of selection under domestication tends to be on genes that control behavior." Zeder, Melinda. 2012. "The Domestication of Animals." Journal of Anthropological Research. V. 68. No. 2. Summer. Pp. 161-190. P. 164.
"There is growing evidence that humans, like their domestic partners, have experienced reciprocal genotypic responses to domestication. However, the most significant and distinctive impacts of domestication on humans are cultural. The act of tending plants and animals, whose productive capacity and output can be controlled, has played a major role in reshaping the organization of human societies." Zeder, Melinda. 2012. "The Domestication of Animals." Journal of Anthropological Research. V. 68. No. 2. Summer. Pp. 161-190. P. 165.
"... domestication is a fluid and nonlinear process that may start, stop, reverse course, or go off on unexpected tangents, with no clear or universal threshold that separates the wild from the domestic." Zeder, Melinda. 2012. "The Domestication of Animals." Journal of Anthropological Research. V. 68. No. 2. Summer. Pp. 161-190. P. 165.
"Low reactivity to humans and other external stimuli is a key preadaptation for domestication. These behaviors are also the primary target of the selective pressures experienced by the animal undergoing domestication. The strong selection for reduced wariness and low reactivity is a universal feature that cuts across all animal domestication, including all domesticated mammals–carnivores, herbivores, and rodents, as well as domestic birds, and even domesticated invertebrate species." Zeder, Melinda. 2012. "The Domestication of Animals." Journal of Anthropological Research. V. 68. No. 2. Summer. Pp. 161-190. P. 167.
"The sustained and increasingly intensified selection for lowered reactivity among animal domesticates has resulted in profound changes in brain form and function that are clearly evident in all higher-order vertebrate domesticates. The most dramatic manifestation of the impact of this process is a widely documented reduction in brain size.... Corrected for body size, the brains of domestic pigs are 33.6% smaller than those of wild boars. Carnivores also seem to have experienced a quite severe reduction in brain size under domestication, with dogs’ brains being an estimated 30% smaller than gray wolves’, the progenitors of domestic dogs. Herbivore brain-size reduction is less marked, at between about 14% and 24%, while the brains of domestic rodents show proportionately little brain-size reduction when compared with wild forms.... This pattern also seems to hold true in birds, and even in captive reared fish." Zeder, Melinda. 2012. "The Domestication of Animals." Journal of Anthropological Research. V. 68. No. 2. Summer. Pp. 161-190. P. 167.
"But the most profoundly affected portion of the brain in domestic mammals is the complex structures that belong to the limbic system, which in domestic pigs, dogs, and sheep show a greater than 40% reduction in size compared with their wild progenitors." Zeder, Melinda. 2012. "The Domestication of Animals." Journal of Anthropological Research. V. 68. No. 2. Summer. Pp. 161-190. P. 169.
"The most remarkable and fastest-growing area of ongoing animal domestication, however, focuses on aquatic species. By one account 97% of the nearly 450 managed aquatic species were under human control in the past 100 years, with nearly a quarter of these species domesticated in the past decade or so." Zeder, Melinda. 2012. "The Domestication of Animals." Journal of Anthropological Research. V. 68. No. 2. Summer. Pp. 161-190. P. 178.
"Society itself is seen as a structural coupling of a communication system with biophysical compartments (such as: a human population, livestock, and physical infrastructure). The social metabolism serves to maintain and reproduce these biophysical compartments within a certain territory, and is organized by society through its communication systems such as the economy." Wiedenhofer, Dominik, E. Rovenskaya, W. Haas, F. Krausmann, I. Pallua & M. Fischer-Kowalski. 2013. "Is there a 1970s syndrome? Analyzing structural breaks in the metabolism of industrial economies." Energy Procedia. 40: 182-191. P. 183.
"A next acceleration began after World War II (WWII), through the expansion of the oil – steel – auto cluster, together with electricity. This also marked the beginning of mass production and consumption and can be looked upon as ‘the’ acceleration phase of the industrial transition, which has also been termed ‘1950s syndrome’, characterized by rapid biophysical and economic growth. But in the 1970s this seems to have ended and a per capita stabilization at high levels set in." Wiedenhofer, Dominik, E. Rovenskaya, W. Haas, F. Krausmann, I. Pallua & M. Fischer-Kowalski. 2013. "Is there a 1970s syndrome? Analyzing structural breaks in the metabolism of industrial economies." Energy Procedia. 40: 182-191. Pp. 185-6.
"Interestingly not just for these four countries [UK, USA, Austria, Japan], but also for most high income countries of the capitalist Western system the 1970s marked a turning point towards stabilization of per capita energy and materials use, while GDP continued to rise." Wiedenhofer, Dominik, E. Rovenskaya, W. Haas, F. Krausmann, I. Pallua & M. Fischer-Kowalski. 2013. "Is there a 1970s syndrome? Analyzing structural breaks in the metabolism of industrial economies." Energy Procedia. 40: 182-191. P. 187.
"Thus, a keystone species, Homo economus, is artifically isolated from the ecosystems in which it functions because of limited paradigms in both ecology and economics. The ecological paradigm isolates human activity in a box labeled ‘disturbances.’ The economic paradigm, in turn, isolates ecosystem dynamics in a box labeled ‘externalities.’ Such abstractions are successful as long as the assumption holds that human activity occurs on a relatively small scale. But the assumption is clearly violated when human activity reaches the global dimensions of the latter half of the twentieth century." O’Neill, Robert & J. Kahn. 2000. "Homo economus as a Keystone Species." BioScience. April. V. 50. No. 4. P. 333.
"... there is no rule of thumb on the interplay between apex consumers and autotrophs in intact ecosystems. This is largely a consequence of natural variation in food chain length. In some cases, the influence of apex consumers is to suppress herbivory and to increase the abundance and production of autotrophs. The sea otter/kelp forest system [with kelp-eating sea urchins] in the North Pacific Ocean and the wolf/ungulate/forest system in temperate and boreal North America function in this manner. Apex consumers in other systems reduce the abundance and production of autotrophs. The largemouth bass/planktivore/zooplankton/phytoplankton system in U.S. Midwestern lakes functions in such a manner." Estes, James, J. Terborgh, J. Brashares, M. Power, J. Berger, W. Bond, S. Carpenter, T. Essington, R. Holt, J. Jackson, R. Marquis, L. Oksanen, T. Oksanen, R. Paine, E. Pikitch, W. Ripple, S. Sandin, M. Scheffer, T. Schoener, J. Shurin, A. Sinclair, M. Soule, R. Virtanen & D. Wardle. 2011. "Trophic Downgrading of Planet Earth." Science. July 15. V. 333. P. 303. "Here, we describe some of the known or suspected indirect effects of losing these apex consumers. "Herbivory and wildfire.... The resulting increase in herbivory drove these systems from shrublands to grasslands, thus decreasing the fuel loads and reducing the frequency and intensity of wildfires.... "Disease .... In freshwater systems, the localized rise and fall of human malaria is associated with the impacts of predatory fishes on planktivores, which are in turn important consumers of mosquito larvae. "Physical and chemical influences.... This trophic cascade causes lakes to switch from net sinks for atmospheric CO2 when predatory fishes are absent to net sources of atmospheric CO2 when these fishes are present.... From land, the demise of Pleistocene megaherbivores may have contributed to or even largely accounted for the reduced atmospheric methane concentration and the resulting abrupt 9 C temperature decline that defines the Younger-Dryas period.... "Invasive species. A common feature of many successful invasive species is that they have left behind their natural predators and free themselves from top-down control. Likewise, the loss of native predators leaves ecosystems more vulnerable to invasion by nonnative species." Estes, James, J. Terborgh, J. Brashares, M. Power, J. Berger, W. Bond, S. Carpenter, T. Essington, R. Holt, J. Jackson, R. Marquis, L. Oksanen, T. Oksanen, R. Paine, E. Pikitch, W. Ripple, S. Sandin, M. Scheffer, T. Schoener, J. Shurin, A. Sinclair, M. Soule, R. Virtanen & D. Wardle. 2011. "Trophic Downgrading of Planet Earth." Science. July 15. V. 333. Pp. 304-5.
"A longer time horizon can be obtained from the Canadian island of Anticosti, where white-tailed deer have persisted in the absence of predation for more than a century, causing the successive elimination of saplings of less and less palatable trees and shrubs and increasing graminoid dominance in the understory. The Scottish island of Rum, from which wolves have been absent for 250 to 500 years, provides a view of the likely final outcome of predator loss and elevated herbivory in many temperate forests. Rum has transitioned over this same period from a forested environment to a treeless island." Estes, James, J. Terborgh, J. Brashares, M. Power, J. Berger, W. Bond, S. Carpenter, T. Essington, R. Holt, J. Jackson, R. Marquis, L. Oksanen, T. Oksanen, R. Paine, E. Pikitch, W. Ripple, S. Sandin, M. Scheffer, T. Schoener, J. Shurin, A. Sinclair, M. Soule, R. Virtanen & D. Wardle. 2011. "Trophic Downgrading of Planet Earth." Science. July 15. V. 333. P. 306.
"The very features that demonstrate our supreme potentials as a species – instrumental rationality and the power of technology – also become the cause of the gravest of normative challenges: if humans carry on succeeding at what they do best, they will eventually destroy themselves. Put differently, the Anthropocene thesis is sustained on the notion that humans are intrinsically unable to abandon their self-centred perspective: anthropocentrism is the alpha and omega of who we are as a species. "This is what we may call the anthropocentric paradox that the Anthropocene debate brings into full view: the same human ability to alter the Earth’s natural environment, the fantastic might of our human powers, is also the source of the normative defeatism that sees an ecological catastrophe as inevitable: humans have proved so successful at changing nature that they are now falling victim of their own success. The ultimate normative implication of this instrumental success in transforming the world is the real prospect of human-induced self-annihilation." Chernilo, Daniel. 2017. "The question of the human in the Anthopocene debate." European Journal of Social Theory. 20(1): 44-60. P. 50.
"A thesis that was arguably first put forward by Gaston Bachelard in the late 1930s, the development of a genuine scientific approach requires humans to abandon their (naive) anthropocentrism: modern science was only able to emerge as humans leave behind the narcissistic idea that they are at the centre of the universe. This motif informs various of the best-known critiques of anthropocentrism of the past few decades: an explicit focus on the human blocks from view the extent to which power (Foucault), language (Derrida), society (Luhrmann) and capitalism (Althusser) are in fact autonomous ontological domains.... ... if anthropocentrism is now demonstrably a perspective that prevents humans from understanding the world as it actually is, then we must equally abandon humanism as its normative counterpart. If there is no such a thing as the human being in the singular, then all normative programmes that treat the human as source of value are themselves misguided." Chernilo, Daniel. 2017. "The question of the human in the Anthopocene debate." European Journal of Social Theory. 20(1): 44-60. P. 52.
"Human alterations of photosynthetic production in ecosystems and the harvest of products of photosynthesis, often referred to as ‘human appropriation of net primary production (NPP)’ or HANPP have received considerable attention.... HANPP not only reduces the amount of energy available to other species, it also influences biodiversity, water flows, carbon flows between vegetation and atmosphere, energy flows within food webs, and the provision of ecosystem services." Haberl, Helmut, K. Erb, F. Krausmann, V. Gaube, A. Bondeau, C. Plutzar, S. Gingrich, W. Lucht & M. Fischer-Kowalski. 2007. "Quantifying and mapping the human appropriation of net primary production in earth’s terrestrial ecosystems." PNAS. July 31. V. 104. N. 31. P. 12942.
"Human activities have a substantial effect on global NPP and its pathways through ecological and social systems. Our calculations show that humans appropriated ~15.6 Pg C/yr, which represents 23.8% of global terrestrial NPP0 [potential annual vegetation] in the year 2000. Because humans mostly use aboveground NPP, it is relevant from a socioeconomic perspective to consider this compartment. Here, we find an even stronger impact: aboveground HANPP amounted to 10.2 Pg C/yr or 28.8% of aboveground NPP0. Overall, biomass harvest contributed 53% to total HANPP, land-use induced productivity changes contributed 40%, and human-induced fires contributed 7%." Haberl, Helmut, K. Erb, F. Krausmann, V. Gaube, A. Bondeau, C. Plutzar, S. Gingrich, W. Lucht & M. Fischer-Kowalski. 2007. "Quantifying and mapping the human appropriation of net primary production in earth’s terrestrial ecosystems." PNAS. July 31. V. 104. N. 31. P. 12943.
"Cropland and infrastructure areas are used most intensively, resulting in global average HANPP values on these areas of 83% and 73%. HANPP is much lower on grazing land (19% and in forestry (7%)." Haberl, Helmut, K. Erb, F. Krausmann, V. Gaube, A. Bondeau, C. Plutzar, S. Gingrich, W. Lucht & M. Fischer-Kowalski. 2007. "Quantifying and mapping the human appropriation of net primary production in earth’s terrestrial ecosystems." PNAS. July 31. V. 104. N. 31. P. 12943.
"Comparisons of humans and dogs before and after they interact with each other have revealed notable increases in circulating oxytocin, as well as endorphins, dopamine, and prolactin, in both species. In addition, exogenous administration of oxytocin causes dogs to initiate more social contact with other dogs and humans, and allows dogs to tune into human social cues even more faithfully." MacLean, Evan & B. Hare. 2015. "Dogs hijack the human bonding pathway." Science. April 17. V. 348. No. 6232. P. 281.
"Nagasawa et al’s findings suggest that dogs have taken advantage of our parental sensitivities–using behaviors such as staring into our eyes–to generate feelings of social reward and caretaking behavior. Because these processes are bidirectional, dogs themselves likely experience similar rewards, ensuring that the feedback loop is propagated. From an evolutionary perspective, the challenge for dogs may simply have been to express a behavioral (and morphological) repertoire that mimicked the cues that elicit caregiving toward our own young.... Once dogs were capable of eliciting such responses in humans, inter-specific bonds could be maintained through the feedback loop, which originally evolved to promote bonding between mother and child." MacLean, Evan & B. Hare. 2015. "Dogs hijack the human bonding pathway." Science. April 17. V. 348. No. 6232. P. 281. Reference: Nagasawa, Miho, S. Mitsui, S. En, N. Ohtani, M. Ohta, Y. Sakuma, T. Onaka, K. Mogi & T. Kikusui. 2015. "Oxytocin-gaze positive loop and the coevolution of human-dog bonds." April 17. V. 348. No. 6232.
"Regardless of these uncertainties, however, it is increasingly apparent that all of the different kinds of data and methods of analysis point in the same direction of drastic and increasingly rapid degradation of marine ecosystems." Jackson, Jeremy. 2008. "Ecological extinction and evolution in the brave new ocean." PNAS. August 12. V. 105. Suppl. 1. Pp. 11458-65. P. 11458.
"Beginning in the 1950s, accelerating increases in the number of introduced species and degradation of water quality due to excess nutrients from the land have surpassed fishing as the major factors in the degradation of estuaries and coastal seas, although fishing still plays a major role." Jackson, Jeremy. 2008. "Ecological extinction and evolution in the brave new ocean." PNAS. August 12. V. 105. Suppl. 1. Pp. 11458-65. P. 11459.
"Coral reefs: Critically endangered ... "Estuaries and coastal seas: Critically endangered ... "Continental shelves: Endangered ... "Open ocean pelagic: Threatened ... Jackson, Jeremy. 2008. "Ecological extinction and evolution in the brave new ocean." PNAS. August 12. V. 105. Suppl. 1. Pp. 11458-65. P. 11463.
"Following Sieferle, we distinguish sociometabolic regimes, each characterized by a specific metabolic profile, that correspond to a set of impacts on the environment. These regimes are conceptualized as dynamic equilibria of complex systems of society-nature interaction, between them, transitions may occur." Krausmann, Fridolin, M. Fischer-Kowalski, H. Schandl & N. Eisenmenger. 2008. "The Global Sociometabolic Transition: Past and Present Metabolic Profiles and Their Future Trajectories." Journal of Industrial Ecology. V. 12. No. 5/6. P. 638. Reference: Sieferle, RP. 1997. The subterranean forest: Energy systems and the Industrial Revolution. Nature in retrospective: A history of Man and his Environment. White Horse Press.
"Accordingly, socioecological systems that have in common the main source of energy and the main technologies of energy conversion will also share many other basic characteristics, such as patterns and levels of resource use (metabolic profile), demographic and settlement patterns, patterns of use of human time and labor (time allocation profile), institutional characteristics, and communication patterns." "We address the classes of socioecological systems sharing a common energy system as sociometabolic regimes." Krausmann, Fridolin, M. Fischer-Kowalski, H. Schandl & N. Eisenmenger. 2008. "The Global Sociometabolic Transition: Past and Present Metabolic Profiles and Their Future Trajectories." Journal of Industrial Ecology. V. 12. No. 5/6. P. 639.
"Due to the predominance of ‘bio-converters’ such as humans and animals, for the provision of useful energy, the overall efficiency of the conversion of primary into final and useful energy remains low, at less than 5%." Krausmann, Fridolin, M. Fischer-Kowalski, H. Schandl & N. Eisenmenger. 2008. "The Global Sociometabolic Transition: Past and Present Metabolic Profiles and Their Future Trajectories." Journal of Industrial Ecology. V. 12. No. 5/6. P. 640.
"The inherent limitations of the biomass-based energy system–namely low energy density, lack of conversion technologies, reliance on animate power, and high energy costs of transport–shape the patterns of material use." Krausmann, Fridolin, M. Fischer-Kowalski, H. Schandl & N. Eisenmenger. 2008. "The Global Sociometabolic Transition: Past and Present Metabolic Profiles and Their Future Trajectories." Journal of Industrial Ecology. V. 12. No. 5/6. P. 642.
"Thus, in general, agrarian societies face sustainability problems related to the limited availability of natural resources, the long-term maintenance of soil fertility, and the balance between food supply and population growth." Krausmann, Fridolin, M. Fischer-Kowalski, H. Schandl & N. Eisenmenger. 2008. "The Global Sociometabolic Transition: Past and Present Metabolic Profiles and Their Future Trajectories." Journal of Industrial Ecology. V. 12. No. 5/6. P. 642.
"Coal-based industrialization, although it allowed for the introduction of the new industrial sociometabolic regime, was characterized by a strong linkage between industrial production and a growing demand for human and animal labor and population growth.... In the United Kingdom as well as in most of Europe, the penetration of the fossil fuel-based energy system was only completed after the 1950s, when oil, electricity, and the internal combustion engine replaced the older coal-based technologies and led to a final decoupling of industrial production and human labor and to the industrialization of agriculture. Direct (mechanical power) and indirect (artificial fertilizer) fossil fuel-based energy subsidies for agriculture removed the last limitation to increasing biomass production...." Krausmann, Fridolin, M. Fischer-Kowalski, H. Schandl & N. Eisenmenger. 2008. "The Global Sociometabolic Transition: Past and Present Metabolic Profiles and Their Future Trajectories." Journal of Industrial Ecology. V. 12. No. 5/6. P. 643.
"The availability of an area-independent source of energy and the fossil fuel-powered transformation of agriculture from an energy-providing activity to a sink of useful energy are the two main factors that made it possible to almost completely decouple energy provision from land use and the control of territory." Krausmann, Fridolin, M. Fischer-Kowalski, H. Schandl & N. Eisenmenger. 2008. "The Global Sociometabolic Transition: Past and Present Metabolic Profiles and Their Future Trajectories." Journal of Industrial Ecology. V. 12. No. 5/6. P. 643.
"The German environmental historian Rolf Peter Sieferle thus speaks of ‘the controlled solar energy system’ of agrarian societies. Krausmann, Fridolin & M. Fischer-Kowalski. 2013. "Global Socio-metabolic Transitions." Pp. 339-65. From: Singh, Simron, H. Haberl, M. Chertow, M. Mertl & M. Schmid (Eds.) Long Term Socio-ecological Research. Springer. P. 341. Reference: Sieferle, RP. 2001. The subterranean forest: Energy systems and the Industrial Revolution. White Horse Press.
"Globally speaking, this [agrarian] metabolism remains within the framework of existing biogeochemical cycles, since the carbon that is released into the atmosphere through digestion and combustion processes will be reabsorbed in the course of new vegetation growth. However, in practical terms this is only partly the case. Deforestation of original woodland vegetation releases large quantities of carbon, whereas the plants that are preferred in agriculture (largely grasses) store much less carbon in their plant mass and often also in soil than forests. Thus the spread of agrarian societies involving the loss of forested land has led to an accumulation of CO2 enrichment of the atmosphere today [that] can be traced back to changes in vegetation." Krausmann, Fridolin & M. Fischer-Kowalski. 2013. "Global Socio-metabolic Transitions." Pp. 339-65. From: Singh, Simron, H. Haberl, M. Chertow, M. Mertl & M. Schmid (Eds.) Long Term Socio-ecological Research. Springer. Pp. 344-5.
"At several 1,000 m per km2, the density of the road network was greater than that of the rail network by one or two orders of magnitude [in the twentieth century];..." Krausmann, Fridolin & M. Fischer-Kowalski. 2013. "Global Socio-metabolic Transitions." Pp. 339-65. From: Singh, Simron, H. Haberl, M. Chertow, M. Mertl & M. Schmid (Eds.) Long Term Socio-ecological Research. Springer. P. 352.
"In general, agriculture has been altered during the course of the sociometabolic transformation from being the most important source of useful energy to becoming an energy sink." Krausmann, Fridolin & M. Fischer-Kowalski. 2013. "Global Socio-metabolic Transitions." Pp. 339-65. From: Singh, Simron, H. Haberl, M. Chertow, M. Mertl & M. Schmid (Eds.) Long Term Socio-ecological Research. Springer. P. 355.
"Altogether, the second phase of the metabolic transition on a global scale during the last 100 years [since 1900] has led to an increase in yearly material flows from 8 to 60 billion tonnes, while primary energy consumption has increased from 50 to 480 EJ/year. The fact that societal metabolism has become so much larger is partly driven by the pronounced increase in global human population, which roughly quadrupled during the same period." Krausmann, Fridolin & M. Fischer-Kowalski. 2013. "Global Socio-metabolic Transitions." Pp. 339-65. From: Singh, Simron, H. Haberl, M. Chertow, M. Mertl & M. Schmid (Eds.) Long Term Socio-ecological Research. Springer. P. 357.
"In 1950, 86% of all global metal extraction occurred in the United States of America, Europe, and the Soviet Union. Ninety percent of global iron was mined in these countries where it accounted for over 92% of all ore extraction.... In 1990, the 15 states of the Former Soviet Union and 3 individual countries (Australia, China, and Brazil) accounted for over 50% of global metal extraction." "By 2010, 76% of all metals and 80% of iron mined globally were extracted in just four countries (Australia, China, India, and Brazil) and only 6% of metals stemmed from Europe or North America." Schaffartzik, Anke, A. Mayer, N. Eisenmenger & F. Krausmann. 2016. "Global patterns of metal extractivism, 1950-2010: Providing the bones for the industrial society’s skeleton." Ecological Economics. 122: 101-110. P. 104.
"While approximately 0.9 Gt/a of gross ore was globally extracted in 1950, this figure rose to 6 Gt/a by 2010." Schaffartzik, Anke, A. Mayer, N. Eisenmenger & F. Krausmann. 2016. "Global patterns of metal extractivism, 1950-2010: Providing the bones for the industrial society’s skeleton." Ecological Economics. 122: 101-110. P. 107.
"It has been estimated that for some metals the amount in use and deposited in landfills exceeds natural reserves." Schaffartzik, Anke, A. Mayer, N. Eisenmenger & F. Krausmann. 2016. "Global patterns of metal extractivism, 1950-2010: Providing the bones for the industrial society’s skeleton." Ecological Economics. 122: 101-110. P. 108.
"In a coupled human-environment system (HES), a human system influences an environment system that in turn influences the human system." Bauch, Chris, R. Sigdel, J. Pharaon & M. Anand. 2016. "Early warning signals of regime shifts in coupled human-environment systems." PNAS. December 20. V. 113. No. 51. P. 14560.
"In forest systems, the relationship between public opinion and forest conservation often exemplifies coupled HES dynamics." Bauch, Chris, R. Sigdel, J. Pharaon & M. Anand. 2016. "Early warning signals of regime shifts in coupled human-environment systems." PNAS. December 20. V. 113. No. 51. P. 14560.
"We analyze its [a coupled model’s] regime shifts, showing that the coupled HES has a wider variety of dynamical regimes than either human or environment subsystem in isolation from the other.... We also show how human feedback partially mutes the early warning signal observed in either subsystem, making the regime shift harder to predict." Bauch, Chris, R. Sigdel, J. Pharaon & M. Anand. 2016. "Early warning signals of regime shifts in coupled human-environment systems." PNAS. December 20. V. 113. No. 51. Pp. 14561-2.
"In summary, human feedback in the coupled HES partially mutes the early warning signal, making the increase in variance before a regime shift smaller than it would be in the corresponding uncoupled system." Bauch, Chris, R. Sigdel, J. Pharaon & M. Anand. 2016. "Early warning signals of regime shifts in coupled human-environment systems." PNAS. December 20. V. 113. No. 51. P. 14565.
"Finally, the Earth System includes humans, our societies, and our activities; thus, humans are not an outside force perturbing an otherwise natural system but rather an integral and interacting part of the Earth System itself." Steffen, Will, P. Crutzen & J. McNeill. 2007. "The Anthropocene: Are Humans Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of Nature." Ambio: A Journal of the Human Environment. 36(8):614-621. P. 615.
"Industrial societies as a rule use four or five times as much energy as did agrarian ones, which in turn used three or four times as much as did hunting and gathering societies." Steffen, Will, P. Crutzen & J. McNeill. 2007. "The Anthropocene: Are Humans Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of Nature." Ambio: A Journal of the Human Environment. 36(8):614-621. P. 616.
"Between 1800 and 2000 population grew more than six-fold, the global economy about 50-fold, and energy use about 40-fold." Steffen, Will, P. Crutzen & J. McNeill. 2007. "The Anthropocene: Are Humans Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of Nature." Ambio: A Journal of the Human Environment. 36(8):614-621. P. 616.
"Only about 10% of the global terrestrial surface had been ‘domesticated’ at the begining of the industrial era around 1800, but this figure rose significantly to about 25-30% by 1950. Human transformation of the hydrological cycle was also evident in the accelerating number of large dams, particularly in Europe and North America. The flux of nitrogen compounds through the coastal zone had increased over 10-fold since 1800." Steffen, Will, P. Crutzen & J. McNeill. 2007. "The Anthropocene: Are Humans Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of Nature." Ambio: A Journal of the Human Environment. 36(8):614-621. P. 616.
"The global-scale transformation of the environment by industrialization was, however, nowhere more evident than in the atmosphere. The concentrations of CH4 and nitrous oxide (N2O) had risen by 1950 to about 1250 and 288 ppbv, respectively, noticeably above their preindustrial values of about 850 and 272 ppbv. By 1950 the atmospheric CO2 concentration had pushed above 300 ppmv, above its preindustrial value of 270-275 ppmv, and was beginning to accelerate sharply." Steffen, Will, P. Crutzen & J. McNeill. 2007. "The Anthropocene: Are Humans Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of Nature." Ambio: A Journal of the Human Environment. 36(8):614-621. P. 616.
"More nitrogen is now converted from the atmosphere into reactive forms by fertilizer production and fossil fuel combustion than by all of the natural processes in terrestrial ecosystems put together." Steffen, Will, P. Crutzen & J. McNeill. 2007. "The Anthropocene: Are Humans Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of Nature." Ambio: A Journal of the Human Environment. 36(8):614-621. P. 617.
"Nearly three-quarters of the anthropogenically driven rise in CO2 concentration has occurred since 1950, and about half of the total rise (48 ppm) has occurred in just the last 30 years." Steffen, Will, P. Crutzen & J. McNeill. 2007. "The Anthropocene: Are Humans Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of Nature." Ambio: A Journal of the Human Environment. 36(8):614-621. P. 618.
"Changes in marine ecosystem dynamics are influenced by socioeconomic activities (for example, fishing, pollution) and human-induced biophysical change (for example, temperature, ocean acidification) and can interact and severely impact marine ecosystem dynamics and the ecosystem services they generate to society. Understanding these direct–or proximate–interactions is an important step towards sustainable use of marine ecosystems. However, proximate interactions are embedded in a much broader socioeconomic context where, for example, economy through trade and finance, human migration and technological advances, operate and interact at a global scale, influencing proximate relationships. These indirect–or distal–interactions add dimensionality and complexity to the global marine social-ecological system." Osterblom, Henrik, B. Crona, C. Folke, M. Nystrom & M. Troell. 2017. "Marine Ecosystem Science on an Intertwined Planet." Ecosystems. 20: 54-61. P. 56.
"It would be remarkable enough if any species, in the 4-7 my time-span suggested for human evolution, had developed just one of these traits [language and cooperation]. That each developed independently in the same species, with its own separate evolutionary history, seems unlikely. "Could co-operation have led to language, or vice versa?" Bickerton, Derek & E. Szathmary. 2011. "Confrontational scavenging as a possible source for language and cooperation." BMC Evolutionary Biology. 11:261. P. 1.
"In the late Pliocene the East African climate became considerably drier and more variable, giving rise to large areas of savannah and many new species including herbivorous megafauna. Carcasses of such megafauna offered immense quantities of meat. However, that meat could not be accessed immediately, because the toughness of megafauna hides made them impossible for mammalian teeth to breach until build-up of interior gases split them. This left a window of at least several hours that could be exploited by any species capable of penetrating hides.... "Both the Oldowan and Acheulean industries provided flakes as a by-product of hand-axe and hammer-stone manufacture. It has been experimentally demonstrated that flake tools will quite easily cut through the hides of elephants, while Acheulean hand-axes are well adapted for subsequent butchery. "Hand-axes could have had a dual function in confrontational scavenging, since the latter would inevitably involve hostile interactions with competing scavengers. Hand-axes have aerodynamic properties that would have made them useful projectiles; scepticism about their effectiveness relates to hunting rather than scavenging, where deterrence rather than killing or capture would be the goal. With flakes and hand-axes at their disposal, hominins had all the tools they needed to practice effective confrontational scavenging." Bickerton, Derek & E. Szathmary. 2011. "Confrontational scavenging as a possible source for language and cooperation." BMC Evolutionary Biology. 11:261. P. 2.
"Since endurance hunting would have separated one or a very few individuals from the rest of the group, exposing them to predation at a time before there were spears or arrows for self-defense, confrontational scavenging (which might have involved covering long distances, but in larger groups) seems a more plausible selective pressure for the suite of behavioral and physiological characteristics found in erectus." Bickerton, Derek & E. Szathmary. 2011. "Confrontational scavenging as a possible source for language and cooperation." BMC Evolutionary Biology. 11:261. P. 3.
"To simultaneously butcher a carcass and drive off competitive scavengers required more numbers than such smaller groups could provide, necessitating the active co-operation of a large majority in each band. "To recruit adequate numbers, two critical acts had to be performed. The carcass finders had to communicate information that lay far outside the sensory range of potential recruits, and they had to convince those recruits to abandon whatever they were doing and travel to a perhaps quite distant site for an invisible goal." Bickerton, Derek & E. Szathmary. 2011. "Confrontational scavenging as a possible source for language and cooperation." BMC Evolutionary Biology. 11:261. P. 4.
"Comparisons of mentalizing skills between apes reveal that among apes, only human infants develop cooperative-communicative skills that facilitate human forms of cultural cognition; however, dogs possess some social skills that resemble those seen in human infants. Research with experimentally domesticated foxes and bonobos shows how selection for prosociality can lead to increases in the cooperative-communicative flexibility observed in dogs and infants. This comparative developmental work provides the basis for the self-domestication hypothesis, which proposes that unique human psychology evolved as part of a larger domestication syndrome that converges with other domesticated animals." Hare, Brian. 2017. "Survival of the Friendliest: Homo sapiens Evolved via Selection for Prosociality." Annual Review of Psychology. 68:155-86. Pp. 156-7.
"The human self-domestication hypothesis (HSD) draws on comparative, developmental, fossil, and neurobiological evidence to show that late human evolution was dominated by selection for intragroup prosociality over aggression. As a result, modern humans possess traits consistent with the syndrome associated with domestication in other animals. The HSD suggests this selective pressure also led to enhanced cooperation in intergroup conflicts. The hypothesis proposes that the reduced emotional reactivity that results from self-domestication and increased self-control created a unique form of human tolerance allowing the expression of more flexible social skills only observed in modern humans. Expanded developmental windows like those seen in domesticated animals allow this unique form of human tolerance and social cognition to develop and left H. sapiens as the last human standing." Hare, Brian. 2017. "Survival of the Friendliest: Homo sapiens Evolved via Selection for Prosociality." Annual Review of Psychology. 68:155-86. P. 157.
"Several studies have suggested that chimpanzees understand what others know, but there remains no compelling evidence for explicit false belief understanding in any animal, including great apes." Hare, Brian. 2017. "Survival of the Friendliest: Homo sapiens Evolved via Selection for Prosociality." Annual Review of Psychology. 68:155-86. Pp. 157-9.
"Domestic dogs are more skillful at using human gestures than nonhuman apes. Dogs follow the direction of a human gaze or point to locate hidden food or toys. If a human points to one of two locations, dogs are more likely to search where a human has indicated.... In a way similar to the way young children learn words, several border collies have acquired hundreds of object labels using the principle of exclusion after single interactions with each new toy. Dogs seem to understand the cooperative-communicative intent of human signals in ways resembling those of the youngest human infants." Hare, Brian. 2017. "Survival of the Friendliest: Homo sapiens Evolved via Selection for Prosociality." Annual Review of Psychology. 68:155-86. P. 160.
"When tested on the same cognitive measures of cooperative-communication used with apes, dogs and wolves, fox kits from the experimental line are more skilled than same-age control kits. The experimental foxes spontaneously use basic human gestures in two different paradigms and perform similarly to dog puppies of the same age. Controls demonstrate that the experimental and control foxes are similarly motivated even though only the experimental line responded to human gestures. Although the experimental line was never selected (or even evaluated) on the basis of their cooperative-communicative abilities with humans, experimental kits perform like dog puppies when responding to human gestures. "The foxes’ performance with human gestures supports the hypothesis that dogs’ social skills evolved not only during domestication but also as a result of it." Hare, Brian. 2017. "Survival of the Friendliest: Homo sapiens Evolved via Selection for Prosociality." Annual Review of Psychology. 68:155-86. P. 161.
"Thus began the most successful interspecific cooperative-communicative relationship in mammalian evolutionary history [dogs and humans]. This led to a bond so strong that exogenous administration of oxytocin in dogs also modulates increases in mutual gaze, physical contact, and endogenous oxytocin expression in the humans with which they interact. Not only have the emotional systems of dogs evolved but they have also hijacked our emotional systems for at least 15,000 years." Hare, Brian. 2017. "Survival of the Friendliest: Homo sapiens Evolved via Selection for Prosociality." Annual Review of Psychology. 68:155-86. P. 162.
"Hare et al proposed that male bonobos evolved to be more prosocial through sexual selection.... According to the self-domestication hypothesis, bonobos evolved to be less aggressive because females were able to express a preference for less aggressive males." Hare, Brian. 2017. "Survival of the Friendliest: Homo sapiens Evolved via Selection for Prosociality." Annual Review of Psychology. 68:155-86. P. 163. Reference: Hare, Brian, V. Wobber & R. Wrangham. 2012. "The self-domestication hypothesis: Evolution of bonobo psychology is due to selection against aggression." Anim. Behav. 83: 573-85.
"Even when small amounts of prized food (four apple pieces) are placed in one easily monopolizable location, bonobos cooperate and, on average, split the reward in half. The temperament of bonobos, which is conflict averse and uses social interaction to ease tension, allows them to solve more cooperative problems with a wider range of social partners than chimpanzees." Hare, Brian. 2017. "Survival of the Friendliest: Homo sapiens Evolved via Selection for Prosociality." Annual Review of Psychology. 68:155-86. P. 164.
"On the basis of this type of comparative work, Hare & Tomasello proposed the emotional reactivity hypothesis. This hypothesis suggests that human levels of cooperative communication were a result of an increase in social tolerance generated by a decrease in emotional reactivity.... "Consistent with this hypothesis, infants with the least aggressive and most socially reserved temperaments show the earliest expression of the false belief understanding that supports cooperative forms of communication–including language." Hare, Brian. 2017. "Survival of the Friendliest: Homo sapiens Evolved via Selection for Prosociality." Annual Review of Psychology. 68:155-86. P. 164. Reference: Hare, Brian & M. Tomasello. 2005. "The emotional reactivity hypothesis and cognitive evolution: reply to Miklosi and Topal." Trends Cogn. Sci. 9:464-5.
"The HSD goes beyond the emotional reactivity hypothesis proposed by Hare & Tomasello in recognizing the likelihood that interaction between subcortical and cortical pathways led to unprecedented human tolerance. The HSD predicts that humans have reduced reactivity that increases the reward for social interactions, but it also predicts that, unlike any other domestic species, human tolerance is also due to massive increases in inhibition. The HSD suggests that it is this self-control combined with reduced reactivity that creates the human-specific adaptation for more flexible tolerance and unique forms of human social cognition. "The HSD may play a role in explaining three major moments in human cognitive evolution: (a) the initial appearance of the human adaptive package in Homo erectus, (b) increases in brain size between 2 million hyears ago and 80 kya, and (c) the lag between reaching the lower range of modern human brain size 500 kya and the expression of full-blown modern cultural behavior approximately 50 kya. Although all three moments are touched on in this review, the focus is largely on HSD as an explanation for the paradox of behavioral modernity in late human evolution (i.e., the temporal gap between the appearance of human morphology and the consistent expression of modern behavior)." Hare, Brian. 2017. "Survival of the Friendliest: Homo sapiens Evolved via Selection for Prosociality." Annual Review of Psychology. 68:155-86. Pp. 165-6. Reference: Hare, Brian & M. Tomasello. 2005. "Human-like social skills in dogs?" Trends Cogn. Sci. 9:439-44.
"Both theoretical models and ethnographic studies suggest that the modern toolkit was a product of demographic expansion. Before the Upper Paleolithic, H. sapiens transitioned from a low-density distribution to a larger, high-density distribution across a greater range of ecologies. This created a larger etwork of innovators and resulted in the technology revolution of the Upper Paleolithic. "The challenge for this hypothesis is explaining the sudden appearance of cultural ratcheting as competition for scarce resources increased with population density. Without extreme levels of social tolerance, this type of competition would not only impede the social transmission of innovations but also prevent prosocial interactions. Cieri et al predicted that an increase in tolerance and demographic pressure allowed a wider network of demonstrators to interact and learn from each other. This allowed existing cognitive skills to be expressed in a wider range of contexts across a broader social network." Hare, Brian. 2017. "Survival of the Friendliest: Homo sapiens Evolved via Selection for Prosociality." Annual Review of Psychology. 68:155-86. P. 167. Reference: Cieri, R.L., S. Churchill, R. Franciscus, J. Tan & B. Hare. 2014. "Craniofacial feminization, social tolerance, and the origins of behavioral modernity." Curr. Anthropol. 55:419-43.
"In 13 modern human fossil crania from the Middle Stone Age and Middle Paleolithic (prior to 80 kya), 41 Later Stone Age/Upper Paleolithic (38-10 kya) crania, and more than 1,300 Holocene (less than 10 kya) crania, a temporal decrease in brow ridge size and the length of the face was observed. The brow ridge projection index of the Middle Stone Age sample was 1.5 standard deviations above that of the Late Stone Age sample and as much as 3.0 standard deviations above the Holocene samples. This difference was present in both the hunter-gatherer and agricultural subsamples within the recent human sample." Hare, Brian. 2017. "Survival of the Friendliest: Homo sapiens Evolved via Selection for Prosociality." Annual Review of Psychology. 68:155-86. P. 167.
"Fossil evidence suggests craniofacial feminization occurred just as cultural ratcheting was pushing us toward behavioral modernity. When human populations became increasingly connected and concentrated at high densities during the Holocene, human brains were reduced in size, which in other species is associated with an increase in serotonin. Although brain size generally increased during the evolution of Homo, there was a modest reduction in brain size late in human evolution that resembles reductions in domesticated animals." Hare, Brian. 2017. "Survival of the Friendliest: Homo sapiens Evolved via Selection for Prosociality." Annual Review of Psychology. 68:155-86. P. 168. "Visible eyes also promote cooperative behavior in humans. People donate more in a public goods game when they are watched by a robot with large eyes." Hare, Brian. 2017. "Survival of the Friendliest: Homo sapiens Evolved via Selection for Prosociality." Annual Review of Psychology. 68:155-86. P. 169.
"Humans are helpful or hurtful toward others based on perceived similarity to themselves. As adults, this like-me psychology manifests itself as in-group favoritism across a variety of contexts and cultures." Hare, Brian. 2017. "Survival of the Friendliest: Homo sapiens Evolved via Selection for Prosociality." Annual Review of Psychology. 68:155-86. P. 170.
"The neuropeptide oxytocin is the strongest candidate for explaining the human-unique pattern of empathy and dehumanization. Oxytocin not only increases eye contact and social bonding in humans but also exaggerates in-group favoritism." Hare, Brian. 2017. "Survival of the Friendliest: Homo sapiens Evolved via Selection for Prosociality." Annual Review of Psychology. 68:155-86. P. 171.
"The HSD predicts that the in-group bonds of our species coevolved with out-group distrust due to changes in the serotonergic and androgen systems that allowed oxytocin to have a greater impact on cortical regions related to social decision making." Hare, Brian. 2017. "Survival of the Friendliest: Homo sapiens Evolved via Selection for Prosociality." Annual Review of Psychology. 68:155-86. P. 171.
"... evolutionary modeling supports the idea that any intensification of out-group aggression could be a by-product of selection for intragroup prosociality late in human evolution. If each behavior evolves in isolation, the payoff is not as adaptive. If they emerge simultaneously, in-group favoritism in combination with out-group hostility is a highly successful strategy. The interaction of oxytocin, serotonin, and testosterone suggests a way in which enhanced in-group prosociality and out-group aggression may have coevolved.... "Humans became kinder and crueler as a result of selection for intragroup prosociality." Hare, Brian. 2017. "Survival of the Friendliest: Homo sapiens Evolved via Selection for Prosociality." Annual Review of Psychology. 68:155-86. Pp. 171-2.
"Increases in brain size are the defining characteristic of evolution in our genus and a morphological signal of increased tolerance through self-control. Larger brains are associated with increased self-control. Self-control supports executive function and allows cortical regions to govern subcortical regions. The effects of self-control thus include inhibiting aggressive responses in favor of prosocial reactions. This effect contrasts with high or low subcortical reactivity that may sacrifice inhibition, as in bonobos and some dog populations." Hare, Brian. 2017. "Survival of the Friendliest: Homo sapiens Evolved via Selection for Prosociality." Annual Review of Psychology. 68:155-86. P. 172.
"A large-scale phylogenetic study suggests the relationship between brain size and self-control. An average of 15 individuals from 36 species of mammals and birds (N > 550) were tested for their ability to spontaneously inhibit a prepotent response in two different tasks.... "Brain size explained up to 70% of the variance in self-control across primate species. This indicates that increases in absolute brain size in humans were likely accompanied by increases in self-control.... "Unlike other taxa, which show reduced neuron densities in larger-brained animals, primate neuron numbers scale isometrically with brain size. In primates, larger brains have the same densities of neurons, leading to exponential growth in potential networks between them... Thus brain size, neural numbers, and self-control can evolve as by-products of selection for body size." Hare, Brian. 2017. "Survival of the Friendliest: Homo sapiens Evolved via Selection for Prosociality." Annual Review of Psychology. 68:155-86. P. 172.
"A slight increase in self-control would have brought the energetic payoffs of cooking within reach." Hare, Brian. 2017. "Survival of the Friendliest: Homo sapiens Evolved via Selection for Prosociality." Annual Review of Psychology. 68:155-86. P. 173.
"The HSD predicts that increases in self-control as a result of an increase in brain size steadily drove the evolution of tolerance and social cognitive skills. Late in human evolution, selection for in-group tolerance intensified and acted on our emotional axis, which, together with preexisting self-control, created unprecedented levels of social tolerance." Hare, Brian. 2017. "Survival of the Friendliest: Homo sapiens Evolved via Selection for Prosociality." Annual Review of Psychology. 68:155-86. P. 173.
"The HSD predicts that the evolution of developmental pathways is the unifying mechanism leading to the social cognition, temperament, and self-control that create unique human intragroup tolerance. "The widening of developmental windows is a common consequence of domestication. In domesticated animals, ancestral behavioral traits appear earlier and persist for longer. This heterochrony suggests that a similar shift in human development provided the mechanism for increases in tolerance and cooperative communication." Hare, Brian. 2017. "Survival of the Friendliest: Homo sapiens Evolved via Selection for Prosociality." Annual Review of Psychology. 68:155-86. P. 173.
"Mechanist and vitalist conceptions of living systems were not irreconcilable but rather two ends of a continuum; many physicians and natural philosophers embraced intermediate positions.... Indeed, mechanist and vitalist speculations produced hybrid medical systems in the 18th century, such as that of Georg Ernst Stahl (1659-1734) which emphasized the mechanical nature of chemical transformations but the need for vital powers to organize and govern living systems." Principe, Lawrence. 2011. The Scientific Revolution: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford UP. P. 107.
"... on a larger scale [Francis] Bacon saw the goal of such operative knowledge [practical knowledge such as to help expand Britain] as to regain the power and human dominion over nature bestowed by God in Genesis, but lost with Adam’s Fall." Principe, Lawrence. 2011. The Scientific Revolution: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford UP. P. 121.
"In Bensalem [a utopian island that Bacon describes in his fable The New Atlantis from 1626], Baconian natural philosophers form an honoured and privileged social class, supported by the government, and in service to state and society." Principe, Lawrence. 2011. The Scientific Revolution: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford UP. P. 121.
"In the mind of Linnaeus individuals, species, biological entities were present in god’s will, and he considered himself a ‘novel Adam’ in the act of naming them." Casiraghi, M., A. Galimberti, A. Sandionigi, A. Bruno & M. Labra. 2016. "Life with or without Names." Evol. Biol. 43:582-595. P. 582.
"It is a false premise to imagine the biological world as a mere collection of species just waiting for taxonomists to be brought to light. We should view species as ‘suggested’ over ‘discovered’." Casiraghi, M., A. Galimberti, A. Sandionigi, A. Bruno & M. Labra. 2016. "Life with or without Names." Evol. Biol. 43:582-595. P. 583.
"We know that viruses have their own genomes, but this property is not considered sufficient to classify them as living, because viruses lack an independent lifestyle. On the contrary, many symbionts (e.g. parasites, intracellular bacteria, among others) are considered ‘alive’ under the same conditions." Casiraghi, M., A. Galimberti, A. Sandionigi, A. Bruno & M. Labra. 2016. "Life with or without Names." Evol. Biol. 43:582-595. P. 583.
"APMV was not an isolated case, Arslan et al described Megavirus and Philippe et al Pandoravirus, with these latter viruses possessing larger genomes than those present in the smallest eukaryotes." Casiraghi, M., A. Galimberti, A. Sandionigi, A. Bruno & M. Labra. 2016. "Life with or without Names." Evol. Biol. 43:582-595. P. 583. "Table 1 provides a non-exhaustive list of 29 species concepts." Casiraghi, M., A. Galimberti, A. Sandionigi, A. Bruno & M. Labra. 2016. "Life with or without Names." Evol. Biol. 43:582-595. P. 585.
"In many parts of the Tree of Life, boundaries are fuzzy and the choice of different species concepts results in different species counts. Species are evolving biological entities, and considering species as static objects, i.e. as in the typological species concept, is far from theoretically correct. Species are more like clouds, everyone can see them, and even count them when they are few and scattered in a blue sky; but when the sky is cloudy and when the clouds merge into one another, it is impossible to place boundaries around them." Casiraghi, M., A. Galimberti, A. Sandionigi, A. Bruno & M. Labra. 2016. "Life with or without Names." Evol. Biol. 43:582-595. P. 585.
"During Linnaeus’ time, morphology was the only feature used to discriminate organisms. Today, we use a vast set of discriminators (e.g. morphology, anatomy, biogeography, embryology, molecular data, among others) to support relationships and classifications." Casiraghi, M., A. Galimberti, A. Sandionigi, A. Bruno & M. Labra. 2016. "Life with or without Names." Evol. Biol. 43:582-595. P. 585.
"In the last 4 billion years of evolution, billions of biological entities have appeared on Earth. By definition, evolution is changing, but not only phenotypes, or genotypes are changing as many could think. Evolutionary processes, i.e. ‘the rules’, too are under modification, because they do not exist without life. It is quite naive to expect that species concepts are immutable over 4 billion years." Casiraghi, M., A. Galimberti, A. Sandionigi, A. Bruno & M. Labra. 2016. "Life with or without Names." Evol. Biol. 43:582-595. P. 588.
"‘Individual’ is Latin for something ‘not divisible’; specific parts of an individual are not independent from the whole, because these parts are not self-sustaining." Casiraghi, M., A. Galimberti, A. Sandionigi, A. Bruno & M. Labra. 2016. "Life with or without Names." Evol. Biol. 43:582-595. P. 588.
"Moya et al and Casiraghi reported that there are thousands of intracellular symbiosis cases, particularly where the fusion of individuals of different species occurred.... Other cases are ‘on the edge’: almost all the animal guts host a rich bacterial biodiversity, traditionally known as ‘gut or intestinal flora’, and now defined as a ‘microbiota or microbiome.’" Casiraghi, M., A. Galimberti, A. Sandionigi, A. Bruno & M. Labra. 2016. "Life with or without Names." Evol. Biol. 43:582-595. Pp. 589-90. References: Moya, A., J. Pereto, R. Gil & A. Latorre. 2008. "Learning how to live together: Genomic insights into prokaryote-animal symbioses." Nature Reviews Genetics. 9: 218-29. Casiraghi, M. 2012. "Being an individual (or a species) in a symbiotic world." Paradigmi. 3:59-69. "For example, human body is formed by around 1013 cells, while 10 times more cells form the gut microbiota alone. Studies acknowledge the challenges to formerly recognise bacterial species, however the count indicates about 1000 bacterial species reside in our gut and up to 2000 species occur throughout the human body. This is not merely a matter of numbers. The microbiome is most interesting due to the following: (1) it is involved in metabolism (vitamins and hormones production); (2) it is a part of the innate immune system; (3) it produces an antibiotics [sic]; (4) it is the first barrier against foreign harmful and pathogenic bacteria; (5) it consumes unused energy substrates and many other functions are still to be uncovered... This microbiome in its entire[ty] comprises a physical structure quite present, because it represents up to 3 kg of our body weight." Casiraghi, M., A. Galimberti, A. Sandionigi, A. Bruno & M. Labra. 2016. "Life with or without Names." Evol. Biol. 43:582-595. P. 590.
"First, we do not have one type of individual among all the living forms, but at least eight. This results from all possible combinations of the three attributes of individuality: genetic uniqueness, genetic homogeneity, and autonomy and physiological independence." Casiraghi, M., A. Galimberti, A. Sandionigi, A. Bruno & M. Labra. 2016. "Life with or without Names." Evol. Biol. 43:582-595. P. 590.
"A possible operational definition of individuality derives from a bridge between evolutionary lineage and metabolism; individuals are organisms that share common ancestry and represent an ‘independent’ metabolic unit. However, we assume the concept of an independent metabolic unit is highly questionable, because all organisms depend on other living organisms to fulfil their metabolic requirements." Casiraghi, M., A. Galimberti, A. Sandionigi, A. Bruno & M. Labra. 2016. "Life with or without Names." Evol. Biol. 43:582-595. Pp. 590-1.
"The holobiont represents the modern view of the individual. It is now clear, the general rule is ‘in the light of evolution’, the individual is more a community than a single entity. The holobiont theory was proposed previous to the availability of HTS [high throughput DNA sequencing], but the existence of holobionts is deeply supported by the HTS technologies, in particular in all the cases in which microbiomes/ microbiotas are involved." Casiraghi, M., A. Galimberti, A. Sandionigi, A. Bruno & M. Labra. 2016. "Life with or without Names." Evol. Biol. 43:582-595. P. 591.
"... taxonomy, nomenclature, and phylogeny are interconnected subjects, often applied together. It is possible and ‘not heretical’, to consider them as independent processes." Casiraghi, M., A. Galimberti, A. Sandionigi, A. Bruno & M. Labra. 2016. "Life with or without Names." Evol. Biol. 43:582-595. P. 591.
"Put another way, why is the living material that we call an organism packaged into units of common purpose? The modern answer to this problem is: natural selection leads to organisms that appear designed for a single purpose, that purpose being maximization of their inclusive fitness. "Queller and Strassmann turn this around, arguing that it is exactly this shared purpose that defines an organism...." "Given this argument, it then becomes possible to assess where any living thing stands on a scale of ‘organismality’, by considering two variables: the extent of cooperation, and the extent of conflict. Organisms are defined by when cooperation is high and conflict low. If both cooperation and conflict are high we have societies. If both conflict and cooperation are low we have simple groups. If cooperation is low and conflict is high we have competitors." West, Stuart & E. Kiers. 2009. "Evolution: What is an Organism?" Current Biology. December 15. V. 19. N. 23. P. R1080. Reference: Queller, D. & J. Strassman. 2009. "Beyond sociality: the evolution of organismality. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B. 364:3143-56.
"Briefly said, humans are especially cooperative. Somewhat analogous to the way that bees and ants are especially cooperative among insects, humans are especially cooperative among mammals and other primates. Bee and ant ultra-sociality is based in kin selection and the special way that members of the same colony are genetically interrelated. Human ultra-sociality, in contrast, is based in some special psychological mechanisms–both cognitive and motivational–that have evolved to support humans’ ultra-cooperative lifeways." Tomasello, Michael. 2014. "The ultra-social animal." European Journal of Social Psychology. 44: 187-194. P. 187.
"In this context, in many mammalian species, individuals cooperate with one another in order to better compete for resources. Among primates, such coalitions are especially prevalent and require sophisticated skills of social cognition for maintaining simultaneously two social relationships of different natures." Tomasello, Michael. 2014. "The ultra-social animal." European Journal of Social Psychology. 44: 187-194. P. 187.
"Importantly, intragroup competition for food (and also for sexual partners) is a zero-sum game independent of whether individuals act alone or together... There is one major exception, and it involves humans’ closest living relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos. Both species engage in the group hunting of small mammals, mostly monkeys." Tomasello, Michael. 2014. "The ultra-social animal." European Journal of Social Psychology. 44: 187-194. Pp. 187-8.
"The first step was new ways of collaborating in foraging, perhaps due to ecological changes that severely reduced or eliminated food sources that individuals could obtain on their own. It was collaborate or die. The second step was a scaling up of the collaboration of two or a few individuals to collaboration among all of the members of a more or less large social (cultural) group, perhaps due to increased competition with other human groups.... This means that the sense of belonging to a social group characteristic of contemporary humans has two evolutionary bases: interdependent collaboration, as the more basic, and group-minded (perhaps cultural) identification built on that foundation.... "We may make this comparison most usefully in terms of our two proposed evolutionary steps, succinctly: collaboration and culture." Tomasello, Michael. 2014. "The ultra-social animal." European Journal of Social Psychology. 44: 187-194. P. 188.
"For cooperation to become an evolutionarily stable strategy in this situation, three basic challenges must be met: (i) to keep everyone incentivized over time, there must be a way of sharing the spoils that is mutually satisfactory to all; (ii) to make sure that no one incurs inordinate risk in leaving their hare toward no good end, there must be some way of coordinating decisions, and (iii) to make sure that everyone is incentivized to put in collaborative work, free riders (cheaters) must be excluded from the spoils." Tomasello, Michael. 2014. "The ultra-social animal." European Journal of Social Psychology. 44: 187-194. P. 188.
"Even more dramatically, using a direct physiological measure of arousal, pupil dilation, Hepach, Vaish, and Tomasello found that young children are equally satisfied when they help someone in need and when they see that person being helped by a third party–and more satisfied in both of these cases than when the person is not being helped at all. Young children’s motivation is not so much to help but to see the other helped. This means that a concern for self-reputation and reciprocity cannot be the main motivation for young children’s helping behavior...." Tomasello, Michael. 2014. "The ultra-social animal." European Journal of Social Psychology. 44: 187-194. P. 190. Reference: Hepach, R., A. Vaish & M. Tomasello. 2013. "A new look at children’s prosocial motivation." Infancy. 18(1): 67-90.
"The small-scale, ad hoc collaborative foraging characteristic of early humans was a stable adaptive strategy–for a while. In the hypothesis of Tomasello et al, it was destabilized by two essentially demographic factors. First was competition with other humans. Competition with other humans meant that a loosely structured group of collaborators had to turn into a more tightly knit social group in order to protect their way of life from invaders. The end result was group competition. Second was increasing population size. As human populations grew, they tended to split into smaller groupings, leading to so-called tribal organization in which a number of different social groupings were still a single super-group or ‘culture’." Tomasello, Michael. 2014. "The ultra-social animal." European Journal of Social Psychology. 44: 187-194. P. 191. Reference: Tomasello, M., A. Melis, C. Tennie, E. Wyman & E. Herrmann. 2012. "Two key steps in the evolution of cooperation: The interdependence hypothesis." Current Anthropology. 53(6): 673-692.
"Contemporary human beings thus actively identify with their cultural group. They conform to its conventions and norms, and participate in its social institutions." Tomasello, Michael. 2014. "The ultra-social animal." European Journal of Social Psychology. 44: 187-194. P. 192.
"Humans have thus become ultra-social in two major evolutionary steps: one in which individuals became more collaborative with one another and another in which individuals became more identified with their cultural group and its conventions, norms, and institutions." Tomasello, Michael. 2014. "The ultra-social animal." European Journal of Social Psychology. 44: 187-194. P. 192.
"First, although great apes and other primates can cognitively represent situations and entities at least somewhat abstractly, only humans can conceptualize one and the same situation or entity under differing, even conflicting, social perspectives... Second, although many primates make simple causal and intentional inferences about external events, only humans make socially recursive and self-reflective inferences about others’ or their own intentional states (e.g., she thinks that I think ...).... Third, although many animals monitor and evaluate their own actions with respect to instrumental success, only humans self-monitor and evaluate their own thinking with respect to the normative perspectives and standards (‘reasons’) of others or the group. Such social self-monitoring is responsible for human norms of rationality." Tomasello, Michael. 2014. "The ultra-social animal." European Journal of Social Psychology. 44: 187-194. P. 192.
"Interdependence breeds altruism." Tomasello, Michael. 2014. "The ultra-social animal." European Journal of Social Psychology. 44: 187-194. P. 192.
"... because they [great apes] are not obligate collaborative foragers, they do not deal with issues of distributive justice; and because they do not identify with their social group, they do not possess a group-mindedness that leads them to conform to their groups’ conventions and norms as an end in itself. Human morality represents the internalized interactive processes–both cognitive and motivational–that structure humans’ ultra-cooperative ways of living and being." Tomasello, Michael. 2014. "The ultra-social animal." European Journal of Social Psychology. 44: 187-194. P. 193.
"Interdependence of the human variety led humans to put their heads together in acts of shared intentionality in which they acted on and understood the world together as a kind of plural subject." Tomasello, Michael. 2014. "The ultra-social animal." European Journal of Social Psychology. 44: 187-194. P. 193.
"... transition studies have proliferated the last years, most of them concentrating on radical transformation towards sustainable societies." Vasileiadou, Eleftheria & K. Safarzyfiska. 2010. "Transitions: Taking complexity seriously." Futures. 42:1176-86. P. 1176.
"It has been stated many times and in different forms that for prebiotic evolution to be accepted as a scientific endeavor must adhere to the following continuity assumption: "Abiogenesis has been a continuous process." Serafino, Loris. 2016. "Abiogenesis as a theoretical challenge: Some reflections." Journal of Theoretical Biology. 402: 18-20. P. 18.
"The historical path that goes from the end of the late bombardment to first prokaryotes covers around 300 million years." Serafino, Loris. 2016. "Abiogenesis as a theoretical challenge: Some reflections." Journal of Theoretical Biology. 402: 18-20. P. 19.
"Scientific interest in systems tends to be related to a desire to understand, to explain or, at least, to describe the behaviour of system components as well as the behaviour of the system as a whole, and, ideally, to deduce the properties of the system from the properties of the system’s components. The latter ambition implies that one wishes to understand emergence. For a property of a system to be characterised as emergent, it needs to satisfy three criteria: (i) the thesis or notion of being a systemic (organizational) property (a property that is not exhibited by elements in isolation), (ii) the thesis of physical monism, and (iii) the thesis of synchronous determinism. The thesis of it being a systemic property restricts what can be considered as emergent. The thesis of physical monism restricts the nature of elements. It states that the system should consist only of physical entities, denying any supernatural influences. The thesis of synchronous determinism restricts how systemic properties and the system’s microstructure are related to each other: it states that there can be no difference in systemic properties without changes in the structure of the system or in the properties of the components." Kolodkin, Alexey, E. Simeonidis & H. Westerhoff. 2013. "Computing life: Add logos to biology and bios to physics." Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology. 111: 69-74. P. 70.
"It has become traditional to divide emergence into weak emergence and strong emergence, depending on whether specific behaviour of the system’s components derive or not from the components’ behaviour in isolation and in simpler configurations. This separation has a deep intuitive background. Let us consider the classic example. A piece of diamond is hard and a piece of graphite is soft because atoms of carbon are arranged differently in these two systems; the emergent property (hardness or softness) depends on the interactions between the system’s components. If we consider a simpler configuration of the system, e.g. a small piece of diamond, we can find the way in which atoms of carbon should be arranged in order to give rise to hardness. In other words, systemic properties of a big piece of diamond can be deduced from the components’ behaviour in simpler configurations. Consequently, the emergence would be classified as weak emergence. Let us consider now a live cell. Obviously, if we cut the cell into a hundred small pieces, each piece would be dead in isolation. From here, we can intuitively jump to the conclusion that the property of being alive is a strongly emergent property." Kolodkin, Alexey, E. Simeonidis & H. Westerhoff. 2013. "Computing life: Add logos to biology and bios to physics." Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology. 111: 69-74. P. 70. "The properties of carbon atoms in a diamond are the same in bigger or smaller pieces; components properties do not depend on the state of the system (e.g. the size and the geometrical shape of the diamond). On the contrary, properties of macromolecules in the cell, e.g. how macromolecules interact with each other, depend on the state of the cell. For instance, assume that we alter the concentration of just one component in the cell, e.g. an enzyme. This will change the concentration of the substrates and products of this enzyme. It is very likely that one of the substrates or products will be an activator, inhibitor or substrate for another protein. This second protein may be the transcription factor for a different enzyme or an activator for a third protein, and the effect of the initial change will carry on until, eventually, the properties (behaviour, concentrations, activity) or all components in the cell are altered. Components are fit to the system as a whole; their properties depend on the presence of other components, on the boundary conditions and on the initial conditions of the cell. The component properties of the pieces of diamond are not state-dependent. On the other hand, the component properties of pieces of the cell are state-dependent to a large extent. If we imagine a small piece of the cell with the same composition of amino acids, lipids, ribonucleotides and other molecules as the intact cell, some state-dependent information about interactions between molecules, e.g. the information about purposeful arrangement of these molecules as it was in the cell would be missing in cell parts. The reconstruction of the emergent property of the whole cell would require information about these state-dependent properties of molecules. The emergence in the diamond differs from that occurring in the cell by the degree to which components properties in these two systems are state dependent." Kolodkin, Alexey, E. Simeonidis & H. Westerhoff. 2013. "Computing life: Add logos to biology and bios to physics." Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology. 111: 69-74. P. 70.
"There is no emergence that is only weak or only strong; rather, emergence can be stronger or weaker, depending on how much we need to know about the components properties (how state dependent the component properties are) in order to reconstruct this emergence. This would also imply that, even if some properties might seem very strongly emergent, their emergence can still be reconstructed from the knowledge of component properties. The real question is whether we can know all the component properties that are engaged in the emergence." Kolodkin, Alexey, E. Simeonidis & H. Westerhoff. 2013. "Computing life: Add logos to biology and bios to physics." Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology. 111: 69-74. P. 70.
"In fact, we can simplify biology, taking into account that the same property of a biological system might be viewed as having different strengths of emergence, the strength of emergence being related to the way in which we model the object, or the complexity of the components we use within the model. We can describe an object in such a way that the property of interest is as weakly emergent as possible. Doing this used to be considered the ‘art’ of good modelling: the less the components properties are state dependent, the easier it should be to deduce them from the knowledge of elemental properties in isolation, the less one needs to know about the system as a whole, and the easier it should be to parameterize the model. "We believe that such a reductionist approach is flawed from the perspective of the fundamental aim of biology, i.e. to understand Life, and must therefore be challenged." Kolodkin, Alexey, E. Simeonidis & H. Westerhoff. 2013. "Computing life: Add logos to biology and bios to physics." Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology. 111: 69-74. Pp. 71-2.
"Only experimentation and modelling should then deliver data that demonstrate that certain components or interactions are not important. This principle may apply both to internal and to external players: since biological systems are semi-open, e.g. open to some molecules and closed to others, and, even more remarkably, the openness is controlled by the system itself, it is not so easy to distinguish which molecule is external and which is a component of the system." Kolodkin, Alexey, E. Simeonidis & H. Westerhoff. 2013. "Computing life: Add logos to biology and bios to physics." Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology. 111: 69-74. P. 73.
"Behavior, however, is not conceived as merely the bodily movements of the organism, as in biology or psychology, but includes any artifacts participating in the interaction." Skibo, James & M. Schiffer. 2008. People and Things: A Behavioral Approach to Material Culture. Springer. P. 6.
"... it is inconceivable to us that one can study humans without considering the material goods that surround them and, in fact, make them who they are. We define artifact very broadly as any human-made phenomenon from the stone tool and kitchen sink, to landscapes, televisions, and airplanes. Humans live in a material world of their making." Skibo, James & M. Schiffer. 2008. People and Things: A Behavioral Approach to Material Culture. Springer. P. 8.
"The life history approaches found in archaeology, engineering, and anthropology, however, are sufficient for only the most general explanations. To understand a technology more completely, one must focus on specific activities and their constituent interactions, throughout its life, which we refer to as the ‘behavioral chain.’" Skibo, James & M. Schiffer. 2008. People and Things: A Behavioral Approach to Material Culture. Springer. P. 9.
"... our concept of behavioral chain has much in common with the French concept of ‘chaine operatoire’.... "A multifunctional vessel was designed as the potter peered down the behavioral chain and selected which performance characteristics to highlight in the design." Skibo, James & M. Schiffer. 2008. People and Things: A Behavioral Approach to Material Culture. Springer. Pp. 9-10. Reference (chaine operatoire): Lemonnier, P. 1986. "The study of material culture today: Toward an anthropology of technical systems." Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. 5:147-86. "For example, an everyday cooking pot may boil beans in the morning and be used in a shamanic ritual at night, or be placed on the floor as an offering just before a house is burned. The function of this pot – and what its visual performance may communicate – changes as it moves along the behavioral chain. A complete understanding must consider, to the fullest extent possible, how an object performs during all links in the behavioral chain." Skibo, James & M. Schiffer. 2008. People and Things: A Behavioral Approach to Material Culture. Springer. P. 12.
"The relationship between people and things are profitably conceived as a set of performances, occurring at micro and macroscales, played by artifacts and individuals or groups of people trying to make a technology that works at a utilitarian level, yet is made and used in a social context unique to a time and place." Skibo, James & M. Schiffer. 2008. People and Things: A Behavioral Approach to Material Culture. Springer. P. 16.
"... we envision the need for a new grand challenge in biology, such as the proposed Atlas of the Biology of Cells. The fundamental idea here is to develop a database for cellular/subcellular features for a judiciously chosen, phylogenetically broad set of organisms, with the goal of sampling the functional diversity of metabolic and cellular morphological traits in the fullest possible sense." Lynch, Michael, M. Field, H. Goodson, H. Malik, J. Pereira-Leal, D. Roos, A. Turkewitz & S. Sazer. 2014. "Evolutionary cell biology: Two origins, one objective." PNAS. December 2. V. 111. No. 48. 16990-16994. P. 16993.
"The view that intracellular structures are essentially invariant in diverse organisms engenders the false impression that an evolutionary biologist has little to gain by pursuing studies at the cellular level." Lynch, Michael, M. Field, H. Goodson, H. Malik, J. Pereira-Leal, D. Roos, A. Turkewitz & S. Sazer. 2014. "Evolutionary cell biology: Two origins, one objective." PNAS. December 2. V. 111. No. 48. 16990-16994. P. 16993.
"Augustine’s relatively narrow range of philosophical interests and sources helps bold together his account under philosophically artificial conditions. With the reintroduction of Aristotle’s texts, these artificial conditions are exposed for what they are, and the old Augustinian unity of doctrine is no longer attainable." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2006. The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity 1210-1685. Oxford UP. P. 73.
"The basic problem identified in the various thirteenth-century condemnations of Aristotelianism that came to a head in 1277 was that Aristotelian natural philosophy had embraced doctrines in clear and indisputable conflict with Christian teachings, doctrines such as the eternity of the world, and the denial of the possibility of creation ex nihilo." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2006. The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity 1210-1685. Oxford UP. P. 74. "In the case of mechanics, optics, and cosmology, there were, outside the question of the formation of the earth, few reasons to question the elimination of teleology once Aristotelianism had been abandoned. Physiology was a different matter, however, and among the phenomena that a mechanized physiology had to deal with were a number of processes that seemed clearly goal-directed.... The question of the apparent goal-directedness of certain physiological processes constitutes the most serious challenge to a mechanist physiology, and Descartes deals with the issue head on, eliminating any element of goal-directedness in the key case of foetal development, but his target is intrinsic, not extrinsic, goals." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2006. The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity 1210-1685. Oxford UP. Pp. 337-8.
"At one level, Descartes is not denying that there is a question as to why foetal matter behaves in such a way that the foetus develops into an adult of a particular species. What he is saying is that the explanation for that is not something internal to the development of the foetus but external to it: God made it so, and God is the only final cause." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2006. The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity 1210-1685. Oxford UP. P. 338.
"We must not forget that what is at issue here is the replacement of intrinsic by extrinsic goals. Descartes does not deny that the development of the embryo is a goal-directed process, and the womb of a particular animal does not just happen to have passages of the right kind, or chemical processes of the right kind. God has created the womb with these passages and chemical processes in order that material placed there can undergo a particular kind of foetal development. The upshot of Descartes’ position is that the goals that direct this development are not intrinsic and hence not part of the subject matter of natural philosophy. Boyle argues in much the same way in connection with the idea of ‘living’ things. Rejecting the Aristotelian doctrine of intrinsic specific forms, he argues that there is no essential difference between living and non-living things, defining life as a special case of motion or activity that arises from a specific organization of corpuscles which has been preordained in God’s original design of nature. This general line of argument has a crucial parallel with the primary/secondary quality distinction, namely that as the explanandum of mechanist natural philosophy expands beyond the range of mechanics, massive surgery has to be performed on the new domains to remove those areas not amenable to mechanistic treatment. This is often undertaken with remarkable ingenuity, not just in securing gains for a mechanistic natural philosophy but also for Christian orthodoxy: goals are taken out of the realm of the material and placed firmly back in the realm of the divine. The replacement of intrinsic by extrinsic goals in the case of foetal development secures a sharp divide between the natural and the supernatural, ridding individual material things of any role in their own development and placing all such goals in the divine realm." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2006. The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity 1210-1685. Oxford UP. P. 340.
"Cartesianism, however, he [Cudworth, a Cambridge Platonist] rejects on the grounds that it allows only the categories of the extended and the cogitative, and on the grounds that Descartes conceives of the latter in terms of consciousness. This restricts us to a choice between a universe in which everything works mechanically and independently of God, at least after he has created it, and a universe which God is called upon to maintain at every instant. Cudworth maintains that Descartes opts for the former view, driving out ‘all final and mental causality’ from the world and allowing only mechanical causation. "Cudworth’s own position, by contrast, is that it is absurd to imagine divine interference in every earthly event, but that mechanical processes alone are insufficient. He therefore attempts to defend a combination of mechanism and teleology, not by conceiving of mechanism teleologically, but by attempting to construe these as two independent but complementary processes. To this end, he postulates the existence of ‘a plastick or spermatick nature’, a shaping principle in the world, above the purely mechanical processes, and distinct from God himself,.... "This plastick nature is active within us as vital energy, and manifests itself in the goal-directed actions that we unwittingly perform, such as instinctual behaviour. It is the unconscious tool of a superior will working without understanding ‘the Reason of what itself doth’, an impersonal, unconscious nature that directs the course of events in the universe according to the idea of the divine architect. The elements of the material world, the atoms, may be governed by mechanical laws, but the mechanical processes are in turn governed by higher final causes." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2006. The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity 1210-1685. Oxford UP. Pp. 344-5.
"In his Histoire Naturelle (1749) the French naturalist Buffon did not define life but gave a very complete theory of life based on important concepts. His concept of organic molecules is a central point of his theory. He claimed that these microscopic entities are alive and constitute all organisms in nature. Indeed, plants receive organic molecules in soil with their roots and animals receive organic molecules when eating plants and others animals. When they die, living organisms release their molecules in soil. "Organic molecules are also central in the concept of species proposed by Buffon. He claims that during the generation of living organisms, organic molecules are responsible for the transmission of the interior mold that indicates the organization of each species." Tirard, Stephane. 2010. "Origin of Life and Definition of Life, from Buffon to Oparin." Orig Life Evol Biosph. 40:215-220. Pp. 215-6.
"... his [Lamarck’s] definition [of life] makes sense when he continues saying that animalized matter is in a gelatinous state, between solid and liquid states, a state in which transformation of structure can occur. The first characteristic of living matter is the presence of ‘vital orgasm’, a particular force that maintains molecules separated in spite of universal attraction. The causes of this ‘vital orgasm’ are the uncontainable fluids: electricity and heat.... "With Lamarck, we see that the definition of life depends on transformation processes that include spontaneous generation as well as species formation." Tirard, Stephane. 2010. "Origin of Life and Definition of Life, from Buffon to Oparin." Orig Life Evol Biosph. 40:215-220. P. 216.
"...it is not enough to list and itemize new processes nor, on the other side, to hide behind an unlikely ‘all is well’. We should understand which patterns of evolutionary explanation are now part of the core of the current evolutionary research programme (multiple sources of variation, various kinds of selective processes, genetic drift, and other non-selective samplings of variation, gene flows, and macroevolutionary factors, etc.) and which are part of the outer belt composed of open and non-essential problems, redefinitions, integrations (for example, in which cases speciation occurs gradually or punctuationally; at which levels selection acts; genes, organisms, groups)." Pievani, Telmo. 2016. "How to Rethink Evolutionary Theory: A Plurality of Evolutionary Patterns." Evol Biol. 43:446-455. P. 450.
"In the case of Punctuated Equilibria theory, after decades of debates the emerging consensus around the mechanism of speciation is that we need a multiplicity of processes and modes of birth of new species (punctuated in some ecological circumstances and gradual in others), a multiplicity of possible rates of speciations, and a multiplicity of levels of change (from an ecological and a genealogical point of view) to be considered." Pievani, Telmo. 2016. "How to Rethink Evolutionary Theory: A Plurality of Evolutionary Patterns." Evol Biol. 43:446-455. P. 450.
"Evolutionary patterns are the constituent entities of the structure of evolutionary research programme." Pievani, Telmo. 2016. "How to Rethink Evolutionary Theory: A Plurality of Evolutionary Patterns." Evol Biol. 43:446-455. P. 452.
"Then, if we look at the current literature in evolutionary biology, we recognize a set of corroborated patterns cited in the explanations: "1. Variational patterns (multiple sources of inheritable variation, genetic and epigenetic, including the inheritance of ecological niches and cultural transmission; phenotypic and developmental plasticity; lateral gene transfer); "2. Selective and competitive patterns (including all the processes showing the fundamental Darwinian algorithm, at different and sometimes antagonistic levels; natural selection, sexual selection, kin selection, group selection, artificial selection, sexual conflicts, spermatic competition, feedback effects, such as niche construction, co-adaptations, etc.); "3. Naturalistic patterns and constraints (genetic drift; historical contingencies; non-selective structural effects due to genetic constraints; structural constraints; developmental constraints and channelings); "4. Macro-evolutionary patterns (speciation patterns; coevolution patterns; turnover pulses of species; adaptive radiations; mass-extinctions; major transitions by symbiogenesis..." Pievani, Telmo. 2016. "How to Rethink Evolutionary Theory: A Plurality of Evolutionary Patterns." Evol Biol. 43:446-455. P. 452.
"Such higher level patterns [as claimed under hierarchy theory] are nonetheless highlighted here in a future, possible unifying frame in which life emerges from a complex architecture of intersecting hierarchies of levels: the genealogical hierarchy of reproduction; the economic hierarchy of survival and finding resources; the outer hierarchy of physical structures of the Earth’s crust." Pievani, Telmo. 2016. "How to Rethink Evolutionary Theory: A Plurality of Evolutionary Patterns." Evol Biol. 43:446-455. P. 454.
"The development of science in the West has, until recently, been quite unlike that in those other societies in which there were successful scientific traditions. Science in these latter cases effectively came to an end once a set of original aims had been achieved. In the West, by contrast, it underwent a unique form of cumulative development in the early-modern era, one in which it was consolidated through the integration into and shaping of a culture." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. P. 1.
"Indeed, we can locate the problem period more precisely as being that between the collapse of mechanism in the early decades of the eighteenth century and the emergence of a new intimate relationship between science and technology in the mid-nineteenth century." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. P. 7.
"By the last decades of the eighteenth century, the naturalization of the human and the humanization of nature existed in a complex interplay which had significant consequences for scientific, religious, and philosophical questions: as Kant put it in his lectures on anthropology, ‘nature exists for the sake of the human, the human being is the purpose of nature’." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. P. 9. Reference: Kant, Immanuel. 2012. Lectures on Anthropology.
"In the middle of the eighteenth century, mechanism had relinquished any role in those disciplines at the cutting edge of developments in the physical and life sciences. In the case of chemistry, a complex experimental-phenomenological approach yielded significant progress in the understanding of chemical processes, but it remained remote from other areas, such as electricity, until late in the century. At the end of the eighteenth century this changed, with the assimilation of electricity to vital forces, the discovery of the ability of electrical currents to effect chemical processes and vice versa, and the construal of basic properties of matter exclusively in terms of forces. These suggested a new factor unifying the physical and the life sciences: the existence of some basic force underlying all natural phenomena. In short, we explore the move from a reductionist account, along mechanist lines, to the attempts to establish autonomous disciples, notably in chemistry and the life sciences, to attempts to provide a new unifying synthesis." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. P. 10.
"... it was Condorcet’s defence of the inevitability of progress that would quickly become the default notion of civilization in the early decades of the nineteenth century, and it has remained so for many thinkers since that time, at least up to the second half of the twentieth century, displacing religion, the humanities, politics, and the arts in any claims they might have made to this role. The key argument is that progress in the physical sciences brings with it progress in the moral sciences and in practical applications: mastery of one’s physical environment through the physical sciences leads to mastery of one’s social and political environment by means of the moral sciences. The association of science and civilization consolidates a social role and standing for science that establishes it as the core of modern culture." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. P. 18.
"Before the modern era, Christian theologians treated all religious differences in terms of differences in doctrine, and they construed Islam and Judaism, for example, as forms of heresy, rather than as different religions, for there was no concept of ‘religions’ in the plural." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. P. 29.
"But the mathematical sophistication of rational mechanics was not mirrored in its physical relevance, and it became effectively insulated from the main body of physical sciences, which were the successors to the seventeenth-century ‘experimental natural philosophy’ tradition, and, in areas like chemistry and electricity, were concerned largely with making sense of a mass of complicated experimental results. Rational mechanics could provide no guidance at all here, any more than could micro-corpuscularianism." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. P. 32.
"Two things are distinctive about these statistical and probabilistic procedures for our purposes. First, not only do they not originate in developments in highly quantified areas of the sciences, such as mechanics, but they cover all disciplines–natural and moral sciences–without distinction, by contrast with geometry and analysis for example. Second, they are models of rigorous quantitative enquiry. Yet, whether in celestial mechanics or population studies, their value consists in showing how to determine reliable approximations rather than establishing certainty." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. P. 66. "By the end of the [eighteenth] century, there were moves to reintroduce some unity and coherence into the understanding of matter, one that eschewed the dominance of post-Lavoisian chemistry for example, and sought a single overriding conception that could be used to underpin not just the inert substances studied in chemistry, but also the material effects of electrical currents, and the properties of living tissue. This was motivated in part by the fact that various connections were beginning to be made between chemical, electrical, and vital phenomena at the level of force. As this idea was developed, force began to replace micro-corpuscular notions of matter as the underlying basis of all natural processes. This was particularly attractive in the case of living things, which could now be accounted for in a way that avoided the reductionism of mechanist accounts." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. Pp. 70-1.
"The abandoning of micro-corpuscularianism provoked a fundamental rethinking of matter theory, and by the 1740s the question of what the activity of matter consists in was no longer one for mechanics, but rather one on which chemistry, electricity, and the life sciences each had a claim." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. P. 74.
"At the same time, the life sciences were also claiming autonomy, and it was being argued that they had a fundamental standing. Matter as studied in mechanics and chemistry, it was maintained, was simply matter that lacked living properties. As Diderot put it in his Pensees sur l’interpretation de nature of 1753; ‘Could so-called living matter not simply be matter which moves by itself? And could so-called dead matter not be one type of matter moved by another?’" Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. P. 75.
"In the eighteenth century, the paradigmatic form of substances was not of course the crystal. In fact in the early decades of the century it shifted from solids to liquids, and this is a revealing development. The contrast with mechanics is instructive here, for mechanics and chemistry operate with different paradigm forms of material substances. Mechanics was ultimately about solids, whereas chemistry was ultimately about fluids or liquids." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. P. 81.
"Even more remarkably, when cut into multiple parts, each part would regenerate, with all the features of the whole polyp–mouth, arms, legs, stomach–appearing, no matter from what segments of the original the cut part came. This was the most disconcerting discovery of the eighteenth-century life sciences.... It suggested that life was not a property of the whole animal but of the matter from which it was constituted, for what else was there in the slices of the polyp? If matter could regenerate into a living organism, the conclusion drawn was that matter itself could harbour life." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. P. 107.
"Galvani had had the ambitious project of establishing a connection between electricity and vital forces. Volta’s electric pile, the first electrical battery, converted one kind of force to another, chemical to electrical. Nicholson and Carlisle’s electrolysis broke chemical bonds electrically, decomposing water into hydrogen and oxygen. The consequences for matter theory were enormous." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. P. 110.
"This was Condillac’s view: the faculty of imagination is gradually developed as human beings come to dissociate natural and gestural language from its associative contexts and to employ them as arbitrary signs. This is a process in which human beings gradually manage to free themselves from their instinctual response to their environment. "But here we are back with Rousseau’s problem: how can human beings with no reflective reason invent conventional signs for abstract notions? Herder bites the bullet: human ability to reflect is constitutive of what it means to be human. As such, it is not, and could not be, the product of an evolutionary development: there is simply no gradual development from natural language to human language. Human beings do not have to free themselves from their instincts because they do not have any instincts. Unlike animals, human beings are not restricted to particular fields of activity or responses." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. P. 187.
"Language is not just a means of representation for him [Herder], but above all a means of expression, and it is the expressive role of language that is crucial to his account of the shaping of character, which is the end point of his anthropology. Representation alone could never play this role. The importance of language lies in the fact that it provides an embodied medium for expression: self-understanding comes not from the deliberations of a disembodied rational soul, but from concrete forms of expression, and here it is theories of art, rather than theories of language as such, that are able to serve as the model." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. P. 190.
"Questions of teleology in the late eighteenth century hinged on the issue of whether there could be a fundamental force in nature that accounted not just for the behaviour of matter, but also for the living realm, that is, on the problem of whether the material world could harbour ends or aims. It should be said from the outset that part of the problem with the way in which Kant and his contemporaries argued about the nature of life lay in the assumption that it was matter theory to which one must turn to account for the behaviour of living things. Cell theory, as set out by Schleiden and Schwann in 1839, would change this: not by solving the question of the nature of life, but by specifying where in the biological realm life is located. This would remove an inappropriate and indeed misleading responsibility from matter theory but, before cell theory, the debate had to centre around matter theory." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. P. 203.
"God has created nature with a purpose. This was a commonplace view. But once Kant has developed the citical philosophy, with its severe restrictions on what we can and cannot know, he could no longer talk about God playing this role. Since the study of nature cannot proceed without purposes or ends, one thing he could have done was to make these extrinsic purposes intrinsic, but that would have been incompatible with his mechanical conception of nature. The only other option was to remove real independent ends and simply grant them a regulative standing, so that the question of whether they are extrinsic, or intrinsic cannot arise: we act as if there were purposes, because of something about us, not something about nature." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. P. 212.
"The study of rocks, minerals, and fossils gave rise to profound problems in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as questions began to be asked about the extent to which geological features were the outcome of changes so long term that they contradicted not only traditional Christian views about the age of the earth, but also traditional Christian views about how it could have been created for the benefit of mankind." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. P. 221.
"The realization of the great age of the earth threw doubt on the idea that it had been created for the benefit of mankind." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. P. 222.
"Buffon argues that life emerged only once the temperature dropped sufficiently to support it, through the effects of heat on matter. Not only did animals and plants come into existence through purely natural means, but they emerged at a comparatively late stage in the development of the earth. "Buffon’s account is not an evolutionary one. He believed that fully formed animals and plants emerged spontaneously at the point at which the temperature dropped sufficiently to support life.... The sudden emergence of fully formed elephants and other large quadrupeds, for example, was a great price to pay for his terrestrial cooling theory. An alternative was to embrace the idea of transformation of species, and by the last decade of the century transformationism was being proposed by a number of writers. This approach was developed into a theory of the emergence of species, for example, by Erasmus Darwin in 1794...." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. Pp. 224-5. "Although the natural histories of classical antiquity, notably that of Aristotle, had treated the human being as an animal, for example, this was on the basis of anatomical analogies, not systematic anatomical comparisons, still less on the basis of a zoological taxonomy. Moreover there was considered to be an unbridgeable gulf separating human beings from other animals. Human beings alone were considered to possess reason, and despite numerous anatomical similarities, this is effect put them in a class of their own, as a very different kind of creature from animals." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. P. 229.
"The key to the former project [natural history of man such as in the study of feral children] lies in a rejection of the idea of order in nature and its replacement by natural relations as guided by, and indeed constituted by, human interests. The human being is embedded in a wholly natural realm and the relationship is reciprocal: the human being gives meaning and significance to nature, but nature in its turn gives meaning and significance to human existence." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. P. 234.
"This claim was by no means unchallenged, and the inclusion of humans with apes attracted significant critical attention. Some editors of Linnaeus’ Systema, for example, either simply omitted the offending material, or quietly changed Homo troglodytes into Simia troglodytes so that, as one commentator has put it, ‘with a stroke of the classifier’s pen, the chimpanzee became an ape.’" Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. P. 241.
"Natural history has, moreover, a principle on which to reason, which is peculiar to it, and which it employs advantageously on many occasions; it is that of the conditions of existence, commonly termed final causes. As nothing can exist without the concurrence of those conditions which render its existence possible, the component parts of each must be so arranged as to render possible the whole living being, not only with regard to itself, but in its surrounding relations...." Cuvier, Baron. 1830 but cited in English edition of 1863. The Animal Kingdom arranged after its Organization. quoted in: Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. P. 242.
"Although there is progress in the transition from one stage to the next on Ferguson’s account [Adam Ferguson of 1773], from a moral point of view there is not wholly unqualified progress: primitive societies had virtues that may have been lost, and commercial society is subject to decay and corruption." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. P. 262.
"Traditional accounts of what came to be termed the human condition–those accounts that had been pursued within metaphysics, theology, and civic humanism–considered human behaviour in terms of what their proponents took to be universal human attributes.... what was at issue was an interplay between individual and universal characteristics.... Morality was in large part a function of whether one satisfied the responsibilities of one’s office or rank. When this conception was subsequently revamped along democratic lines, moral responsibility was relocated in the individual, irrespective of rank or office, so that moral demands were the same for everyone. It was above all Kant who was responsible for this reworking of moral agency. He thought of human development in terms of ‘inherently rational creatures’, and he construed history in terms of the unfolding movement towards a fully rational form of human life lived in peace with others. Although this has often been taken as a canonical form of Enlightenment thinking, Kant’s individual self-understanding is in reality a somewhat limited way of thinking about social and political questions. It does not work at all well for the kinds of societies that were emerging in the eighteenth century, or before that." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. P. 267.
"For Boyle–as for many of his Protestant contemporaries [late seventeenth century] and successors who, like Boyle, were at the forefront of natural philosophy, not mere onlookers–natural philosophy that was devoted to uncovering God’s purposes in his creation was a form of devotion; nature becomes a ‘temple’ and its investigators ‘priests’." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. P. 307.
"Here [in mid eighteenth century and the study of myth] there emerged an account of religions in historical quasi-evolutionary terms, ranking them from primitive to the most developed. At the apex of this development came Christianity, although the question subsequently began to be raised whether Christianity might in fact only be the penultimate stage, to be transformed into, or superseded by, humanism." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. Pp. 308-9.
"But there had been critics. Whether the cogito could even count as a form of knowledge at all had been questioned from an Aristotelian perspective: knowledge, it was argued, was associated with increasing one’s understanding, having an explanation or demonstration for something, and it was clear the grasping my own existence could not be knowledge on this conception." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. P. 314.
"The second main thesis of Das Leben Jesu [by David Strauss in 1835] sets out this philosophical understanding. It is that it was not just Jesus, but humanity as a whole that shared human and divine natures. This was the deep underlying truth of the Gospels, which was not evident in the mythical form that they took, but could finally be revealed once the message was translated into a philosophical form. The basic argument is that the doctrine that Jesus taught was not his own divinity but rather the dual nature of all humanity. However, because of the myths associated with him, what happened was that this message was lost and instead he was deified. By worshipping him, human beings alienated themselves from what was in fact their true spirit. The solution was to cease worshipping Jesus, and instead to follow his example and consciously participate in the life of humanity." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. P. 335.
"Zoolatry was regarded as the most degrading form of irreligion, far worse than atheism since it reversed the order of nature, in which human beings occupied the pinnacle of the natural realm." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. P. 338.
"Far more challenging was the combination of two developments: a stadial account, in which Christianity stood at the end point of the evolution of religious consciousness, with a Straussian conception of Christianity. This combination turned out to be explosive, yielding a Godless hut divine humanity as the final point of the evolution of religious consciousness." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. P. 339.
"The supposed entities that religion postulates [for Feuerbach] are ‘nothing but the subject’s own nature taken objectively’. This being the case, the goal of history cannot be the reconciliation of God and man, but must rather be the actualization and self-comprehension of human essential capacities and powers. This is an essentially collective activity, not one that it makes sense to ascribe to an individual. Moreover the historical dimension of this collective activity is crucial: religious consciousness goes through various stages of development and self-awareness until finally, in Christianity, God is identified with a man, Jesus, and it remains only to take the final step, namely that of accepting that God has been man, in the form of humanity, all along." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. Pp. 340-1.
"At the same time, the historicization of the world was closely linked with the dynamization of a world that had been rendered inert by seventeenth-century mechanism. And the means by which this dynamization was achieved reveals an important feature of naturalization that is obscured in its reductive forms: naturalization has a counterpart, the humanization of nature, whereby there is an explicit awareness that human interests guide inquiry. This took a range of forms, from the claim that the world is not already ‘carved up’ into genera and species, to the claim that religious discourse is at bottom about something human rather than something divine. This was a characteristic feature of the exercises in naturalization with which we have been concerned. Underlying all of these is the single most important outcome of the combination of naturalization and humanization: the insertion of the human being into the world in such a way that empirical evidence–whether historical, medical, linguistic, anatomical, or economic–can be deployed in exploring and accounting for the relationship between the human and the natural world." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2016. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841. Oxford UP. Pp. 351-2.
"While different kinds of hierarchies exist in biological systems, we focus on a particular class of hierarchies–nested compositional hierarchies–as a fundamental structural principle of real biological systems that lies at the heart of evolutionary phenomenology." Temkin, Ilya & N. Eldredge. 2015. "Networks and Hierarchies: Approaching Complexity in Evolutionary Theory." Pp. 183-226. From: Serrelli, Emanuele & N. Gontier. Macroevolution: Explanation, Interpretation, and Evidence. Springer. P. 185.
"Biocenosis is a highly integrated, discrete assemblage of non-conspecific avatars occupying a particular biotope (habitat). It roughly corresponds to the concept of community and represents a biotic component of an ecosystem, the network of interactions among organisms, and between organisms and their environment." Temkin, Ilya & N. Eldredge. 2015. "Networks and Hierarchies: Approaching Complexity in Evolutionary Theory." Pp. 183-226. From: Serrelli, Emanuele & N. Gontier. Macroevolution: Explanation, Interpretation, and Evidence. Springer. P. 197.
"Evolution occurs at the nexus between the economic and genealogical hierarchies, where the dynamic interactions in the former are translated into a historical pattern of the latter." Temkin, Ilya & N. Eldredge. 2015. "Networks and Hierarchies: Approaching Complexity in Evolutionary Theory." Pp. 183-226. From: Serrelli, Emanuele & N. Gontier. Macroevolution: Explanation, Interpretation, and Evidence. Springer. P. 203.
"Biocenoses are highly structured cybernetic systems of avatars interconnected by networks of energy and matter flow, exemplified by mutualistic relationships, trophic and host-parasite interactions, and competitive redistribution of resources. The resilience of biocenoses to perturbations emerges from the interplay of diverse ecological interavatar networks operating contemporaneously within ecosystems." Temkin, Ilya & N. Eldredge. 2015. "Networks and Hierarchies: Approaching Complexity in Evolutionary Theory." Pp. 183-226. From: Serrelli, Emanuele & N. Gontier. Macroevolution: Explanation, Interpretation, and Evidence. Springer. P. 213.
"NCT [niche construction theory] offers a taxonomy of niche construction processes according to several key classifications; the mode by which the organism modifies its niche defines it as perturbational or relocational and its manner of interaction with the environment (initiating changes in its niche’s selective pressures, or negating such changes) as inceptive or counteractive. Another classification relates to the consequences of the niche construction processes: They can be positive or negative according to their influence on the niche constructors’ fitness." Wallach, Efraim. 2016. "Niche construction theory as an explanatory framework for human phenomena." Synthese. 193: 2595-2618. P. 2597.
"NCT, especially when applied in a context wherein culture is relevant, is sometimes dubbed ‘the triple inheritance theory’, because the long-term results of niche construction activities are expected to show up in three legacies that the niche constructors transfer to future generations: ecological changes, cultural traditions, and genetic variations." Wallach, Efraim. 2016. "Niche construction theory as an explanatory framework for human phenomena." Synthese. 193: 2595-2618. P. 2597.
"... Broughton et al. use the conceptual framework of NCT to trace the linkage between resource depletion, violence and morbidity in a community of sedentary or semi-sedentary hunter-gatherers, who lived in the Sacramento valley between 4,000 and 500 years ago. They cite data that show a decrease in the use of high-value nutritional sources (large animals and marine fishes) throughout that period and a parallel increase in the exploitation of low-value ones (hares, rodents, small resident fishes and plant resources). Taken together, these data are interpreted as evidence of a progressive depression in high-value resources. Other archaeological data indicate a concurrent increase in interpersonal violence, with the percentage of skeletons bearing signs of violence rising (in some cases) from 4.3% in the early period to 26.6% in the final millennium.... "In a noticeable similarity to the Sacramento valley findings, several works present strong evidence of the replacement of high-value nutritional sources (gazelles, nuts and almonds, etc.) with low-value ones (tortoises, rodents, edible grasses, etc.) in the late phases of the Natufian culture. However, the ‘expected’ rise in interpersonal violence is simply not there, in fact the extensive archaeological records are marked by a paucity of evidence for violence-related traumas.... "So we have two instances of cultural niche construction with very similar background conditions and widely differing human behavior." Wallach, Efraim. 2016. "Niche construction theory as an explanatory framework for human phenomena." Synthese. 193: 2595-2618. Pp. 2602-3. Reference: Broughton, JM, M. Cannon & E. Bartelink. 2010. "Evolutionary ecology, resource depression, and niche construction theory: Applications to Central California Hunter-Gatherers and Mimbres-Mogollon Agriculturalists." Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory. 17:371-421.
"So we have here four hypotheses explaining the emergence of agriculture. They are all supposed to accord with NCT, in fact they claim to be in a certain sense derived from its premises and to be of general and generalizable import. Nevertheless, they offer differing, in some aspects conflicting, causal scenarios. Was the beginning of agriculture facilitated by an abundant or a deficient environment? Did the cold and arid spell of the Younger Dryas play a crucial role in the process, – and if so, why not in the Jomon Japan? Or was agriculture just a transformation waiting to happen, driven by the incessant human manipulation of resources? "Interestingly, none of the NCT hypotheses cited above seem to address the question of why was the movement from foraging to agriculture (with few exceptions) generally unidirectional and irreversible." Wallach, Efraim. 2016. "Niche construction theory as an explanatory framework for human phenomena." Synthese. 193: 2595-2618. Pp. 2605-6.
"NCT, at least as currently formulated, is ill-equipped to handle many aspects of human processes. It lacks the metrics, and barely possesses the language, to discuss issues like the stability and dynamics of human cultural niches, their boundaries (both physical and cultural) and permeability, propensity to change or conservatisms, etc. "Remarkably, NCT even lacks any measure for the relative intensity of niche creation processes." Wallach, Efraim. 2016. "Niche construction theory as an explanatory framework for human phenomena." Synthese. 193: 2595-2618. P. 2611.
"A critical evaluation of several accounts underlain by Niche Construction Theory shows that it fails as an explanatory framework for episodes and phenomena related to human evolution. Characterizing such episodes and phenomena as instances of human cultural niche construction does little to resolve the casual [sic, =causal?] factors leading to different behaviors and to diverging evolutionary trajectories under apparently similar circumstances. When several conflicting NCT-inspired accounts are offered for the same human phenomenon, NCT lacks the resources for evaluating their merits and deciding among them." Wallach, Efraim. 2016. "Niche construction theory as an explanatory framework for human phenomena." Synthese. 193: 2595-2618. Pp. 2613-4.
"The big issues are a part of science. To abandon them to non-scientists would be a catastrophe for the public image of science." Morange, Michel. 2010. "The Resurrection of Life." Orig Life Evol Biosph. 40: 179-182. P. 181.
"The goal of the supramolecular chemist is to synthesize the simplest molecular structures that are able to form supramolecular assemblies with novel functions that cannot be fulfilled by a single molecule or collection of molecules. The functions that arise from these supramolecular architectures can be as diverse as novel magnetic and optical properties, catalysis, molecular recognition, and transport processes." Tu, Yingfeng, F. Peng, A. Adawy, Y. Men, L Abdelmohsen & D. Wilson. 2016. "Mimicking the Cell: Bio-Inspired Functions of Supramolecular Assemblies." Chemical Reviews. 116: 2023-78. P. 2023.
"I have been trying to think of the earth as a a kind of organism, but it is no go. I cannot think of it this way.... Then, satisfactorily for that moment, it came to me: it is most like a single cell." Thomas, Lewis. 1974. The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher. Penguin. P. 5.
"Actions, by definition, affect the agent’s environment. In so far as agents share the same environment, the action of the one will have an effect on the situation of the other. This effect may be positive (synergy), negative (friction), or neutral (indifference). Therefore, the part of the environment that is shared (meaning that it is experienced by both agents) functions as a medium that carries their interactions. This medium affects, and is affected by, the agents. Agent and medium intimately interact and, therefore, co-evolve (although the medium is initially a purely passive, physical system, it too undergoes evolution, i.e. it experiences variations, some of which are selectively retained, some of which are eliminated)." Heylighen, Francis. 2008. "Accelerating socio-technological evolution: From ephemeralization and stigmergy to the Global Brain." Pp. 284-309. From: Modelski, George, T. Devezas & W. Thompson (Eds). Globalization as Evolutionary Process. Routledge. P. 293.
"This mechanism [stigmergy] is general enough to explain the evolution of cooperation even in the absence of any form of rationality or ability to foresee the consequences of one’s actions." Heylighen, Francis. 2008. "Accelerating socio-technological evolution: From ephemeralization and stigmergy to the Global Brain." Pp. 284-309. From: Modelski, George, T. Devezas & W. Thompson (Eds). Globalization as Evolutionary Process. Routledge. P. 294.
"The mechanism of stigmergy – i.e., indirect, environment-mediated cooperation – brings additional advantages. Because this form of action is directed at the shared environment, it will gradually reshape this medium into a structure that supports increasingly efficient and synergetic interactions." Heylighen, Francis. 2008. "Accelerating socio-technological evolution: From ephemeralization and stigmergy to the Global Brain." Pp. 284-309. From: Modelski, George, T. Devezas & W. Thompson (Eds). Globalization as Evolutionary Process. Routledge. P. 294.
"The main idea is that the external interaction medium, a role that is increasingly dominated by the Internet, will evolve into a mediator. This mediator will not only facilitate, but direct, and eventually control, interactions so as to maximize their synergy. To achieve that, the medium needs to develop a form of intelligent management of the communication processes that it supports, leading to what may be called collective intelligence. When this distributed intelligence spans the world, the resulting system may be called the Global Brain." Heylighen, Francis. 2008. "Accelerating socio-technological evolution: From ephemeralization and stigmergy to the Global Brain." Pp. 284-309. From: Modelski, George, T. Devezas & W. Thompson (Eds). Globalization as Evolutionary Process. Routledge. P. 296.
"According to the global workspace theory, higher-level consciousness is nothing more than the ‘working memory’ or ‘theater’ within the brain where these interiorized symbols are produced and combined, so that they can be submitted to the scrutiny of the various more specialized modules. This global workspace is a shared internal environment or mediator that the brain has evolved in order to facilitate the coordination and control of its otherwise largely autonomous and instinctively reacting modules." Heylighen, Francis. 2008. "Accelerating socio-technological evolution: From ephemeralization and stigmergy to the Global Brain." Pp. 284-309. From: Modelski, George, T. Devezas & W. Thompson (Eds). Globalization as Evolutionary Process. Routledge. P. 300.
"The thrust of the argument is that there is no need for intentional use or design of such a workspace: any medium that can accumulate changes produced by the agents tends to evolve into a mediator that coordinates their actions, and thus promotes synergy. This is because the variation-and-selection dynamics that underlie individual evolution are extended to collective evolution via the mechanism of stigmergy, where the changes to the medium made by one agent indirectly affect the actions of the other agents." Heylighen, Francis. 2008. "Accelerating socio-technological evolution: From ephemeralization and stigmergy to the Global Brain." Pp. 284-309. From: Modelski, George, T. Devezas & W. Thompson (Eds). Globalization as Evolutionary Process. Routledge. P. 301.
"A major effect of stigmergy is the acceleration of evolution: a solution to an evolutionary problem found by one agent can now, by impressing it upon the medium, be used and improved by other agents. Since the medium benefits all agents’ fitness, there will be a selective pressure on the agents to find solutions that make the medium itself more powerful. The further the medium extends, and the easier it becomes for agents to interact with it, the quicker innovations will spread and undergo further improvements. This leads to a self-reinforcing process: improvement of the medium facilitates further innovation, which in turn helps improve the medium. This explains the explosive advance in science and technology over the last few centuries, as exemplified by the exponential increase in the number of scientific publications." Heylighen, Francis. 2008. "Accelerating socio-technological evolution: From ephemeralization and stigmergy to the Global Brain." Pp. 284-309. From: Modelski, George, T. Devezas & W. Thompson (Eds). Globalization as Evolutionary Process. Routledge. P. 301.
"In the realm of technology, this progress is most visible as ephemeralization, the on-going increase in ‘total factor productivity.’ It can conceptualized most simply as a reduction in the friction that normally produces the dissipation of energy, information and other resources. As a consequence, ever more results can be achieved with ever fewer resources. On the level of society, this entails a spectacular expansion in the flows of matter, energy and information that circulate across the globe. Thus, the obstacles of time, distance and material scarcity have largely vanished, making the different parts of the world increasingly interconnected. "Connectivity implies an increase in the number of agents that one is interacting with, and therefore an increase in social complexity, with the concomitant threats of competition, conflict and confusion. These problems too can be conceptualized most generally as a form of friction, i.e. the (generally unintended) obstruction of one agent’s actions by one or more other agents’ actions. As in the case of technological progress, the trial-and-error of evolution will tend to reduce this social friction by creating adapted institutions. Institutions, or more generally mediators, are systems that coordinate the activities of different agents so as to minimize friction and maximize synergy." Heylighen, Francis. 2008. "Accelerating socio-technological evolution: From ephemeralization and stigmergy to the Global Brain." Pp. 284-309. From: Modelski, George, T. Devezas & W. Thompson (Eds). Globalization as Evolutionary Process. Routledge. P. 305.
"Aristotle’s own view, in De partibus animalium, had been that biological subject matter in general was so complex and varied that the application of basic classificatory principles was not possible, leaving biology outside the kind of theoretical understanding to which natural philosophy aspired." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2010. The Collapse of Mechanism and the Rise of Sensibility: Science and the Shaping of Modernity 1680 - 1760. Oxford UP. P. 189.
"Preformation–in this case in the form of pre-existence–was by contrast a perfect complement to mechanism, since it avoided the impossible task of explaining how undifferentiated matter could be formed into an infant of a particular species simply by mechanical means. Along with Malebranche, the other great defender of oval pre-existence was Leibniz, not of course for reasons of compatibility with mechanism, but rather because of the idea that each and every member of the progeny was contained in the mother, and existed there wholly self-contained and impervious to any external events." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2010. The Collapse of Mechanism and the Rise of Sensibility: Science and the Shaping of Modernity 1680 - 1760. Oxford UP. P. 359.
"Indeed, one of the unintended effects of the narrowness of the purview of mechanics had been to allow neo-Aristotelian and quasi-Aristotelian conceptions to thrive in those areas of natural history in which a mechanist model was either manifestly deficient or simply irrelevant. But in the course of the eighteenth century, especially with the rise of Lockeanism, this became an increasingly unattractive option. Buffon’s project–as set out in his immensely influential Histoire naturelle–was inspired in crucial respects by the Lockean programme, but rather than moving in a phenomenalist direction, it sought instead to understand structure through genesis, not through essence, with a view to putting developmental concepts at the centre of natural-philosophical thinking more generally." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2010. The Collapse of Mechanism and the Rise of Sensibility: Science and the Shaping of Modernity 1680 - 1760. Oxford UP. P. 366.
"... it [Buffon’s Histoire naturelle] can be read as a radically revisionary updating of Descartes’ account. In part, the revisions are due to the replacement of Cartesian mechanics by Newtonian mechanics, but the whole Cartesian project is transformed in Buffon’s hands. Descartes had attempted to incorporate an account of developmental processes into an essentially atemporal mechanist natural philosophy. Buffon effectively reverses the direction of explanation here, using the developmental processes as the skeleton on which to flesh out–and dynamize as it were–natural philosophy." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2010. The Collapse of Mechanism and the Rise of Sensibility: Science and the Shaping of Modernity 1680 - 1760. Oxford UP. P. 371. "But whereas the core problem for biomechanics is that of organized complexity, Buffon makes it clear that ‘the production of organized beings costs God nothing’, and such complexity is not the defining feature of living organisms for him." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2010. The Collapse of Mechanism and the Rise of Sensibility: Science and the Shaping of Modernity 1680 - 1760. Oxford UP. P. 379.
"Humane learning and theologically driven accounts of the human condition had come into conflict as early as Machiavelli, but by the middle of the eighteenth century there had emerged a form of naturalization of human behaviour which offered an alternative to both these." Gaukroger, Stephen. 2010. The Collapse of Mechanism and the Rise of Sensibility: Science and the Shaping of Modernity 1680 - 1760. Oxford UP. Pp. 380-1.
"Traditional accounts of language processing suggest that monologue – presenting and listening to speeches – should be more straightforward than dialogue – holding a conversation. This is clearly not the case. We argue that conversation is easy because of an interactive processing mechanism that leads to the alignment of linguistic representations between partners." Garrod, Simon & M. Pickering. 2004. "Why is conversation so easy?" Trends in Cognitive Sciences. V. 8. No. 1. January. P. 8.
"One aspect of joint action that is important concerns what we call ‘alignment’. To come to a common understanding, interlocutors need to align their situation models, which are multi-dimensional representations containing information about space, time, causality, intentionality and currently relevant individuals. The success of conversations depends considerably on the extent to which the interlocutors represent the same elements within their situation models (e.g. they should refer to the same individual when using the same name). Notice that even if interlocutors are arguing with each other or are lying, they have to understand each other, so presumably alignment is not limited to cases where interlocutors are in agreement. "But how do interlocutors achieve alignment of situation models? We argue that they do not do this by explicit negotiation. Not do they model and dynamically update every aspect of their interlocutors’ mental states. Instead, they use a largely unconscious process of ‘interactive alignment.’" Garrod, Simon & M. Pickering. 2004. "Why is conversation so easy?" Trends in Cognitive Sciences. V. 8. No. 1. January. Pp. 8-9.
"We propose to distinguish two kinds of cultural affordances: ‘natural’ affordances and ‘conventional’ affordances. Natural affordances are possibilities for actions, the engagement with which depends on an organism or agent exploiting or leveraging reliable correlations in its environment with its set of abilities.... Conventional affordances are possibilities for action, the engagement with which depends on agents’ skillfully leveraging explicit or implicit expectations, norms, conventions, and cooperative social practices. Engagement with these affordances requires that agents have the ability to correctly infer (implicitly or explicitly) the culturally specific sets of expectations in which they are immersed–expectations about how to interpret other agents, and the symbolically and linguistically mediated social world. Thus, a red light affords stopping not merely because red lights correlate with stopping behavior, but also because of shared norms, conventions, and rules." Ramstead, Maxwell, S. Veissiere & L. Kirmayer. 2016. "Cultural Affordances: Scaffolding Local Worlds Through Shared Intentionality and Regimes of Attention." Frontiers of Psychology. July 26. V. 7. Article 1090. P. 2.
"Affordance: A relation between a feature or aspect of organisms’ material environment and an ability available in their form of life. "Landscape of affordances: The total ensemble of available affordances for a population in a given environment. This landscape corresponds to what evolutionary theories in biology and anthropology call a ‘niche’. "Field of affordances: Those affordances in the landscape with which the organism, as an autonomous individual agent, dynamically copes and intelligently adapts. The field refers to those affordances that actually engage the individual organism because they are salient at a given time, as a function of the interests, concerns, and states of the organism. "Cultural affordance: The kind of affordance that humans encounter in the niches that they constitute. There are two kinds of cultural affordances: natural and conventional affordances. "Natural affordance: Possibilities for action, the engagement with which depends on the exploitation or leveraging by an organism of ‘natural information’, that is, reliable correlations in its environment, using its set of phenotypical and encultured abilities. "Conventional affordance: Possibilities for action, the engagement with which depends on agents’ skillfully leveraging explicit or implicit expectations, norms, conventions, and cooperative social practices in their ability to correctly infer the culturally specific sets of expectations of which they are immersed. These are expectations about how to interpret other agents, and the symbolically and linguistically mediated social world." Ramstead, Maxwell, S. Veissiere & L. Kirmayer. 2016. "Cultural Affordances: Scaffolding Local Worlds Through Shared Intentionality and Regimes of Attention." Frontiers of Psychology. July 26. V. 7. Article 1090. P. 3.
"One of the distinctive contributions of ecological, radical embodied, and enactivist theories of cognition is their shared emphasis on the point of the view of the organism itself, understood as an intentional center of meaningful behavior. The implication of these ‘perspectivist’ approaches in cognitive science is that the world is disclosed as a set of ‘affordances,’ that is, possibilities for action afforded to organisms by the things and creatures that populate its environmental niche, as engaged through their perceptual and sensorimotor abilities. To paraphrase Wittgenstein, the world is the totality of possibilities of action, not of things." Ramstead, Maxwell, S. Veissiere & L. Kirmayer. 2016. "Cultural Affordances: Scaffolding Local Worlds Through Shared Intentionality and Regimes of Attention." Frontiers of Psychology. July 26. V. 7. Article 1090. P. 3.
"A form of life is a set of behavioral patterns, relatively robust on socio-cultural or biographical time scales, which is characteristic of a group or population." Ramstead, Maxwell, S. Veissiere & L. Kirmayer. 2016. "Cultural Affordances: Scaffolding Local Worlds Through Shared Intentionality and Regimes of Attention." Frontiers of Psychology. July 26. V. 7. Article 1090. P. 4.
"There are thus at least two ways to change the affordances available to an organism: (i) by changing the material aspects of its environment and (ii) by altering its form of life or allowing it to learn new abilities already available in that form of life." Ramstead, Maxwell, S. Veissiere & L. Kirmayer. 2016. "Cultural Affordances: Scaffolding Local Worlds Through Shared Intentionality and Regimes of Attention." Frontiers of Psychology. July 26. V. 7. Article 1090. P. 4.
"... affordances are both descriptive and prescriptive: descriptive because they constitute the privileged mode for the perceptual disclosure of aspects of the environment; and prescriptive because they specify the kinds of action and perception that are available, situationally appropriate and, in the case of social niches, expected by others." Ramstead, Maxwell, S. Veissiere & L. Kirmayer. 2016. "Cultural Affordances: Scaffolding Local Worlds Through Shared Intentionality and Regimes of Attention." Frontiers of Psychology. July 26. V. 7. Article 1090. P. 5.
"Specifically, we argue that humans behave according to the way they expect others to expect them to behave in a given situation." Ramstead, Maxwell, S. Veissiere & L. Kirmayer. 2016. "Cultural Affordances: Scaffolding Local Worlds Through Shared Intentionality and Regimes of Attention." Frontiers of Psychology. July 26. V. 7. Article 1090. P. 5.
"Our hypothesis, to be explicated below, is that feedback loops mediating shared attention and shared intentionality are the principal mechanism whereby cultural (especially conventional) affordances are acquired." Ramstead, Maxwell, S. Veissiere & L. Kirmayer. 2016. "Cultural Affordances: Scaffolding Local Worlds Through Shared Intentionality and Regimes of Attention." Frontiers of Psychology. July 26. V. 7. Article 1090. P. 7.
"Generative models are used to generate a prediction about the upcoming sensory distribution. Between the predicted and actual sensory distributions, there almost always will be a discrepancy (‘prediction error’), which ‘tracks’ surprisal (in the sense that, mathematically, it is an upper bound on that quantity). The free-energy principle states that all living systems act to reduce prediction error (and thereby implicitly resist the entropic tendency toward thermodynamic equilibrium–dissipation and death). This can occur in one of two complementary ways: (i) through action, where the best action most efficiently minimizes free-energy by making the world more like the prediction (‘active inference’); and (ii) through perception and learning, by selecting the ‘hypothesis’ (or prediction, which corresponds to the probable distal cause of sensory distribution) that most minimizes error, or changing the hypotheses when none fits or when one fits better." Ramstead, Maxwell, S. Veissiere & L. Kirmayer. 2016. "Cultural Affordances: Scaffolding Local Worlds Through Shared Intentionality and Regimes of Attention." Frontiers of Psychology. July 26. V. 7. Article 1090. Pp. 9-10.
"The representational minimalism of embodied generative models nicely complements the representation-sparse phenomenology of affordances. Such minimal models might be described as exploiting (non-semantic) information for affordances, rather than (semantic) information about affordances;..." Ramstead, Maxwell, S. Veissiere & L. Kirmayer. 2016. "Cultural Affordances: Scaffolding Local Worlds Through Shared Intentionality and Regimes of Attention." Frontiers of Psychology. July 26. V. 7. Article 1090. P. 10.
"But the embodiment of generative models does not stop at the brain. Indeed, one radical implication of the free-energy principle is that the organism itself is a statistical model of its niche." Ramstead, Maxwell, S. Veissiere & L. Kirmayer. 2016. "Cultural Affordances: Scaffolding Local Worlds Through Shared Intentionality and Regimes of Attention." Frontiers of Psychology. July 26. V. 7. Article 1090. P. 10.
"One aspect of the architecture of predictive processing is crucial for our account of cultural affordances: the predictive processing model specifies a deep functional role for attention. Attention, on the predictive processing account, is modeled as ‘precision-weighting,’ that is, the selective sampling of high precision sensory data, i.e., prediction error with a high signal-to-noise ratio. The efforts of the cognitive system to minimize free-energy operate not only on first-order, correlational statistical information about the distal environment, but on second-order statistical information about the signal-to-noise ratio of ‘precision’ (that is, inverse variance) of the prediction error signal as well. This allows the system to give greater weight to less noisy signals that may provide more reliable information." Ramstead, Maxwell, S. Veissiere & L. Kirmayer. 2016. "Cultural Affordances: Scaffolding Local Worlds Through Shared Intentionality and Regimes of Attention." Frontiers of Psychology. July 26. V. 7. Article 1090. P. 11.
"Precision-weighting is centrally important in these architectures and has been proposed as a mechanism of neural gating. Gating is the process whereby effective connectivity in the brain, that is, the causal influence of some neural units on others, is controlled by the functioning of distinct control units. These are called ‘neural control structures’ by Clark. Attention-modulated ‘gating’ is the central mechanism that allows for the formation of transient task- and context-dependent coalitions or ensembles of neural units and networks." Ramstead, Maxwell, S. Veissiere & L. Kirmayer. 2016. "Cultural Affordances: Scaffolding Local Worlds Through Shared Intentionality and Regimes of Attention." Frontiers of Psychology. July 26. V. 7. Article 1090. Pp. 11-12. Reference: Clark, A. 1998. Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again. MIT Press.
"Affect, attention, and affordances interact to sculpt a field of solicitations out of the total landscape of available affordances, adaptively and dynamically moving the organism toward an optimal grip on situations through action-perception. As the organism moves along a gradient toward an optimal grip, the gradient dissipates. The field of affordances thus changes dynamically along with perception-action and changes to states of the organism and environment." Ramstead, Maxwell, S. Veissiere & L. Kirmayer. 2016. "Cultural Affordances: Scaffolding Local Worlds Through Shared Intentionality and Regimes of Attention." Frontiers of Psychology. July 26. V. 7. Article 1090. P. 13.
"We submit that these shared expectations–implemented in the predictive hierarchies, embodied in material culture, and enacted in patterned practices–contribute to the constitution of the landscape of affordances that characterizes a given community or culture." Ramstead, Maxwell, S. Veissiere & L. Kirmayer. 2016. "Cultural Affordances: Scaffolding Local Worlds Through Shared Intentionality and Regimes of Attention." Frontiers of Psychology. July 26. V. 7. Article 1090. P. 14.
"A local ontology, then, is a set of expectations that are shared by members of a cultural community. We claim that these sets of shared expectations are installed in agents through patterned practices that result in enculturation and enskillment. In the framework explored above, these ontologies codetermine the exact affordances that are available in a given niche, for they prescribe specific ways of being, thinking, perceiving, and acting in context[s] that are situationally appropriate." Ramstead, Maxwell, S. Veissiere & L. Kirmayer. 2016. "Cultural Affordances: Scaffolding Local Worlds Through Shared Intentionality and Regimes of Attention." Frontiers of Psychology. July 26. V. 7. Article 1090. P. 14.
"An ability, then, in the free-energy framework, includes a pattern of attention, in the specific sense employed by the free-energy framework. We use the term ‘attention’ not in the folk-psychological sense, as that effort or mechanism that allows us to attend to specific aspects of experience, but as the mechanism of precision-weighting that mediates neural gating and allows the agent to engage with specific affordances in action perception cycles. Attention, in our technical sense, therefore modulates effective connectivity and, as such, determines the trajectories taken by the rolling cycles of action-perception." Ramstead, Maxwell, S. Veissiere & L. Kirmayer. 2016. "Cultural Affordances: Scaffolding Local Worlds Through Shared Intentionality and Regimes of Attention." Frontiers of Psychology. July 26. V. 7. Article 1090. P. 16. "Cultural affordances are thus mediated by recursive regimes of shared attention, of which joint-attention is a special, signal case." Ramstead, Maxwell, S. Veissiere & L. Kirmayer. 2016. "Cultural Affordances: Scaffolding Local Worlds Through Shared Intentionality and Regimes of Attention." Frontiers of Psychology. July 26. V. 7. Article 1090. P. 16.
"The organization of agricultural production promotes a more elaborate differentiation of individuals (division of labor). In a sense it does not matter how species attain differentiation as long as they do so. In all cases the extensive division of labor around the active management of food production creates a profound interdependence." Gowdy, John & L. Krall. 2016. "The economic origins of ultrasociality." Behavioral and Brain Sciences. doi:10.1017/S0140525X150005X, e92. P. 5.
"Turchin points to increasing returns to scale in warfare as a major driver of ultrasociality. Turchin et al. argue that agriculture increased the payoff for aggression, which, in turn, necessitated more food production to feed the expanding military." Gowdy, John & L. Krall. 2016. "The economic origins of ultrasociality." Behavioral and Brain Sciences. doi:10.1017/S0140525X150005X, e92. P. 10. References: Turchin, P. 2013. "The puzzle of human ultrasociality: How did large-scale complex societies evolve?" From: Richerson, Peter & M. Christiansen. Cultural evolution. MIT Press. Turchin, P., T. Currie, E. Turner & S. Gavrilets. 2013. "War, space, and the evolution of Old World complex societies." PNAS. 110(41):16384-89.
"... I wrote an article ... which drew together the evidence regarding convergences between humans and social insects that may help explain their shared, spectacular ecological and evolutionary successes. Most of the similarities apply to human hunter-gatherer groups, within which we have spent most of our evolutionary history, and many are economic. They include: (1) life in cooperative groups with unique identities (semiochemicals or culture); (2) central place foraging; (3) extensive food sharing within groups; (4) highly diversified, and high-quality, foods; (5) divisions of labor, including extensive non-maternal care; (6) increased reproduction by females; relative to ancestral forms; (7) collective, cooperative decision making within groups; and (8) the group itself becoming a basic, necessary, social-ecological resource that enhances survival and reproduction.... "Ant religions aside, humans are also divergent from social insects in several fundamental ways that must temper comparisons. First, ... human agriculture led to decreased food sharing, and reduced collectivity in decisions, due in large part to hierarchies of power and wealth. The key difference here is that social-insect divisions of labor, especially in large-colony forms like ants and termites with agriculture, are virtually purely cooperative; by contrast, human divisions of labor are driven predominantly by competition.... "... a second key divergence of humans from social insects. Insect queens can evolve greatly increased fecundity by making many, tiny juveniles that are reared by workers, but humans, as mammals, are severely constrained in reproductive potential. Human females have evolved higher fecundity than other great apes, mainly through a halving of inter-birth interval combined with alloparental care, but it pales in comparison to ant or termite queens...." Crespi, Bernard. 2016. "The convergent and divergent evolution of social-behavioral economics." Behavioral and Brain Sciences. doi:10.1017/S0140525X15001028, e96. Pp. 19-20.
"I would like to expand on their [Gowdy & Krall’s] discussion of multilevel selection, and to argue that agriculture, whether by humans or social insects, has likely involved multi-species community selection as well as single-species group selection." Goodnight, Charles. 2016. "On the effectiveness of multilevel selection." Behavioral and Brain Sciences. doi:10.1017/S0140525X15001053, e99. P. 22.
"For example, Muir, using group selection to increase egg production in chickens, observed a 160% increase in egg production in the selected lines. The cause of the effectiveness of group selection is known to be primarily due to indirect genetic effects (IGEs). IGEs are defined as phenotypic effects in one individual due to genes in another individual. Muir’s chickens provide a good example of how these work. In his experiment, Muir, rather than selecting on the chickens that produced the most eggs, selected on the cages that produced the most eggs. Chickens are famous for having a pecking order; the most aggressive chickens get the majority of the food and lay the most eggs. The more subservient chickens get less food, lay fewer eggs, and get harassed by more dominant chickens, although they generally do survive if they can run away. In cages, however, the subservient chickens cannot run away, and they often get pecked to death. Individual selection will favor the most aggressive chickens, because they lay more eggs, resulting in more antagonistic interactions, and heightened mortality of subordinate chickens. "Muir, however, by selecting on the productivity of the cage favored those groups of chickens in which food was more equally shared, there was less mortality, and overall more eggs were laid." Goodnight, Charles. 2016. "On the effectiveness of multilevel selection." Behavioral and Brain Sciences. doi:10.1017/S0140525X15001053, e99. P. 22. Reference: Muir, W. 1996. "Group selection for adaptation to multiple-hen cages: Selection program and direct responses." Poultry Science. 75:447-58.
"Cultural complexity is known in popular discourse by the more common term ‘civilization,’ which we believe our ancestors achieved through the phenomenon called ‘progress.’" Tainter, Joseph. 2016. "Agriculture and the energy-complexity spiral." Behavioral and Brain Sciences. doi:10.1017/S0140525X15001193, e115. P. 37.
"It takes energy to maintain a system in a state of complexity. The most important point to understand about cultural evolution is that complex societies are costlier to maintain than simpler ones." Tainter, Joseph. 2016. "Agriculture and the energy-complexity spiral." Behavioral and Brain Sciences. doi:10.1017/S0140525X15001193, e115. P. 37.
"Complexity that emerges in this way will usually require additional energy. Complexity in problem solving compels increased resource production, including in agriculture. "This process is the energy-complexity spiral. Abundant energy allows complexity to grow, but higher complexity requires still more energy." Tainter, Joseph. 2016. "Agriculture and the energy-complexity spiral." Behavioral and Brain Sciences. doi:10.1017/S0140525X15001193, e115. P. 38.
"Evolutionary theory since Darwin has developed more or less continuously in the biological sciences, but has experienced a case of arrested development in relation to human affairs. The reasons are complex, but the bottom line is that terms such as ‘evolutionary psychology,’ ‘evolutionary anthropology,’ and ‘evolutionary economics’ only started appearing in the 1980s, signifying a renewed attempt to rethink these disciplines from a modern evolutionary perspective. A lot of progress has been made in the last three decades or so. An expansion of Dobzhansky’s dictum, to read ‘Nothing in biology or humanity makes sense except in the light of evolution,’ is increasingly within reach." Wilson, David Sloan. 2016. "Laying the foundation for evonomics." Behavioral and Brain Sciences. doi:10.1017/S0140525X15001223, e118. P. 40.
"Enlightened public policy requires becoming wise managers of evolutionary processes. One dystopic scenario is that lower-level selection prevails over higher-level selection, resulting in various ‘tragedies of the commons’ such as global warning, extreme inequality, and societal collapses that are already taking place in some parts of the world." Wilson, David Sloan. 2016. "Laying the foundation for evonomics." Behavioral and Brain Sciences. doi:10.1017/S0140525X15001223, e118. Pp. 39-40.
"It is also increasingly evident that the initial domestication of plants and animals was temporally separated from the subsequent emergence of ‘agriculture’ in different world areas by thousands of years. During the intervening millennia between initial domestication and the development of fully agricultural economies, small-scale societies had ‘low-level food production’ economies that included domesticates but were also strongly reliant on wild species of plants and animals. Although still often conflated, initial domestication and the emergence of agriculture actually represent two temporally and developmentally distinct evolutionary transitions." Smith, Bruce. 2016. "Neo-Darwinism, niche construction theory, and the initial domestication of plants and animals." Evol Ecol. 30: 307-324. P. 309.
"This default position [of evolutionary theory] includes the core assumption that adaptation to change is unidirectional or asymmetrical... organisms adapt to their environment..." Smith, Bruce. 2016. "Neo-Darwinism, niche construction theory, and the initial domestication of plants and animals." Evol Ecol. 30: 307-324. P. 309.
"In contrast to the default SET [standard evolutionary theory] unidirectional or asymmetrical definition of adaptation, Lewontin proposed that organisms do not simply respond to the environment but in fact interact with and modify their surroundings–they actively engineer ecosystems, and they shape their own niches. Odling-Smee et al. (2003) greatly expand on Lewontin’s original proposal, and argue that niche construction is universal and should be regarded, along with natural selection, as a second major participant in evolution:..." Smith, Bruce. 2016. "Neo-Darwinism, niche construction theory, and the initial domestication of plants and animals." Evol Ecol. 30: 307-324. P. 312. Reference 1: Lewontin, R. 1983. "Gene, organism, and environment." From: Bendall, D. (Ed). Evolution from molecules to men. Cambridge UP.
"Based on the symmetrical and balanced perspective on adaptation, an NCT-derived explanation of initial domestication does not cast small-scale foraging societies as, of necessity, adaptively responding to an imbalance between energy supply and demand, but rather argues that domestication emerged out of broad-scale human efforts at ecosystem enhancement that took place in the absence of any form of disequilibrium or resource depression." Smith, Bruce. 2016. "Neo-Darwinism, niche construction theory, and the initial domestication of plants and animals." Evol Ecol. 30: 307-324. P. 313.
"In the two world regions where SET and NCT-based explanations for initial domestication have been directly compared–eastern north America and the Neotropics, the proposed explanatory frameworks that are derived from standard evolutionary theory and based on the assumption of unidirectional adaptation find no support in currently available archaeological and paleoenvironmental data sets. Explanations incorporating niche construction theory, in contrast, gain considerable support from currently available empirical evidence, while also redirecting research toward relevant variables that are not considered in default SET efforts to explain initial domestication." Smith, Bruce. 2016. "Neo-Darwinism, niche construction theory, and the initial domestication of plants and animals." Evol Ecol. 30: 307-324. P. 320.
"The small-scale societies that established and maintained these resource rich catchments zones and occupied centrally placed semi-permanent to permanent settlements, like a wide range of similarly sized and situated present-day and historically described groups, developed and maintained a large corpus of shared traditional ecological knowledge regarding the management and enhancement of those target species that were of economic value to them. This corpus of knowledge was passed down from generation to generation in a variety of ways–stories, myths, rituals, and one-one-one inter-generational real world information transfer. Access to resources within the surrounding catchment zone was corporately held in varying degrees, with this corporate ‘ownership’ of resources within a defined and maintained area periodically confirmed and reinforced both through ceremonies of social integration and through corporate labor projects such as the construction of permanent landscape modifications in the form of group burial mounds or ceremonial structures. Central to the successful development and maintenance of corporate management and enhancement of important biotic resources would have been the restructuring of the social fabric and rules of interaction and cooperation within these small-scale societies, particularly in regard to responsibility for, and access to, different resources." Smith, Bruce. 2016. "Neo-Darwinism, niche construction theory, and the initial domestication of plants and animals." Evol Ecol. 30: 307-324. P. 321.
"Rather than starting from a default a priori assumption derived from SET that initial domestication represents an adaptive response to environmental disequilibrium, the NCT perspective encourages researchers to redirect their focus toward consideration of how a wide variety of different environmental and cultural variables formed networks of reciprocal causation." Smith, Bruce. 2016. "Neo-Darwinism, niche construction theory, and the initial domestication of plants and animals." Evol Ecol. 30: 307-324. P. 322.
"Domestication is the result of co-evolutionary mutualisms that develop in the context of active niche-construction by both humans and their plant/animal partners." Zeder, Melinda. 2016. "Domestication as a model system for niche construction theory." Evol Ecol. 30:325-348. P. 326.
"Niche-construction plays a role in each of three distinctive pathways that humans, plants and animals follow into domestication. Humans initiate the prey-harvest pathway through ecosystem engineering activities that manipulate the conditions of growth of an organism or its environment in order to increase its relative abundance and predictability. These activities include alterations to the physical environment (i.e., burning, preparing soil substrates, channeling water, expanding habitats, building traps or corrals), as well as to biotic communities (i.e., moving plants or animals into new environments, selectively culling competing species or specific sex and age classes within an animal population). Plants and animals following the commensal pathway, in contrast, initiate the relationship by moving into anthropogenic environments, practicing ‘relocative’ niche-construction to take advantage of new opportunities offered by these environments. These activities include the colonization of disturbed soils by ‘weedy’ plant species that move on to become domesticates, invasion of anthropogenic environments by animal species that feed off human refuse or on other animals that do so, and the exploitation of anthropogenic habitats to enhance competitive advantage within a larger guild of species. Humans take a more direct role in the third directed pathway that may involve deliberate breeding for specific traits or, more recently, manipulation of specific genes. This pathway also includes knock-on effects as evidenced by size reduction in the area of the brain that controls motor functions in domestic mink, or changes in brain size and function in farmed fish that can both be seen as responses to human constructed niches (cages and enclosures) that enhance captive animals’ reproductive fitness and thus their value as domesticates." Zeder, Melinda. 2016. "Domestication as a model system for niche construction theory." Evol Ecol. 30:325-348. Pp. 326-8.
"Species that practice relocative niche-construction by moving into anthropogenic niches and developing either neutral commensal (i.e. mice or weedy plants) or negative parasitic (i.e. lice or kudzu) relationships with humans will not move on to become domesticates without reciprocal niche-constructing activities by humans that encourage and deepen the relationship." Zeder, Melinda. 2016. "Domestication as a model system for niche construction theory." Evol Ecol. 30:325-348. P. 328. "The majority of co-evolutionary interactions in domestication, then, should be considered pairwise responses between two active niche-constructing species, regardless of whether the relationship was initiated by humans (through the prey-harvest or direct pathway) or the plant/animal (via the commensal pathway)." Zeder, Melinda. 2016. "Domestication as a model system for niche construction theory." Evol Ecol. 30:325-348. P. 328.
"Niche-constructing activities that create the context for domestication depend to a large degree on cooperative behaviors of both humans and their plant/animal partners. When plants and animals move into anthropogenic niches, for example, there is a premium on monopolizing these new niches to prevent ‘cheaters’ from reaping the benefits of their investment in these environments." Zeder, Melinda. 2016. "Domestication as a model system for niche construction theory." Evol Ecol. 30:325-348. P. 333.
"Gilded traps connote reinforcing feedbacks between social and ecological systems in which social drivers (e.g., population growth, globalization, and market demand) increase the value of natural resources as the ecological state moves closer to a tipping point." Steneck, R., T. Hughes, J. Cinner, W. Adger, S. Arnold, F. Berkes, S. Boudreau, K. Brown, C. Folke, L. Gunderson, P. Olsson, M. Scheffer, E. Stephenson, B. Walker, J. Wilson & B. Worm. 2011. "Creation of a Gilded Trap by the High Economic Value of the Maine Lobster Fishery." Conservation Biology. V. 25. N. 5. Pp. 904-912. P. 905.
"Large predatory groundfishes, especially Atlantic cod, dominated coastal zones from prehistoric to early historic times.... By 1949 coastal populations of these species were declared ‘depleted’ by Maine’s Commissioner of Sea and Shore Fisheries, and groundfish were no longer major predators of lobsters, sea urchins, and other species." Steneck, R., T. Hughes, J. Cinner, W. Adger, S. Arnold, F. Berkes, S. Boudreau, K. Brown, C. Folke, L. Gunderson, P. Olsson, M. Scheffer, E. Stephenson, B. Walker, J. Wilson & B. Worm. 2011. "Creation of a Gilded Trap by the High Economic Value of the Maine Lobster Fishery." Conservation Biology. V. 25. N. 5. Pp. 904-912. P. 906.
"Today, the Gulf of Maine is a highly simplified and arguably ‘domesticated’ ecosystem similar to many agricultural and aquacultural systems. The system is dominated by species that were formerly prey of extirpated predators. This release from predation has resulted in a high abundance of lobsters. The number of lobster traps in the Gulf of Maine has increased more than 10-fold since 1930 to well over 3 million since the year 2000." Steneck, R., T. Hughes, J. Cinner, W. Adger, S. Arnold, F. Berkes, S. Boudreau, K. Brown, C. Folke, L. Gunderson, P. Olsson, M. Scheffer, E. Stephenson, B. Walker, J. Wilson & B. Worm. 2011. "Creation of a Gilded Trap by the High Economic Value of the Maine Lobster Fishery." Conservation Biology. V. 25. N. 5. Pp. 904-912. P. 906.
"Today, the average population densities of lobsters in coastal Maine are higher than anywhere else in the world... Most of the lobsters’ diet today comes from herring bait supplied by the trap fishery, which effectively creates an artificial trophic link between a pelagic fish and a benthic scavenger. In many respects, harvesting lobsters in Maine shares many characteristics of aquaculture, such as control of predators, provision of food, and a greatly simplified food web." Steneck, R., T. Hughes, J. Cinner, W. Adger, S. Arnold, F. Berkes, S. Boudreau, K. Brown, C. Folke, L. Gunderson, P. Olsson, M. Scheffer, E. Stephenson, B. Walker, J. Wilson & B. Worm. 2011. "Creation of a Gilded Trap by the High Economic Value of the Maine Lobster Fishery." Conservation Biology. V. 25. N. 5. Pp. 904-912. P. 906.
"In the second half of the twentieth century, both the synthetic theory of evolution and the revolution of molecular biology created a scientific atmosphere that was in sharp opposition to organicist views, which, until very recently, remained marginal in biology. Conrad Waddington was one of the drivers of a movement that advocated an organisational approach in biology, and to save and to revive it for the emerging biology of the twentieth century. This movement included well-known biologists like Rosen, Piaget, Maturana and Varela, Pattee and Ganti." Rosslenbroich, Bernd. 2016. "Alvaro Moreno and Matteo Mossio: Biological autonomy: a philosophical and theoretical enquiry." Biol Philos. 31:591-601. P. 593.
"The largest and most challenging sustainability problems such as anthropogenic climate change, regional water depletion, biodiversity loss, pollution and overfishing share a number of common features. They involve entire populations, consume renewable resources, occur over large territories and play out over periods much longer than a human lifespan. These conditions create social-environmental dilemmas in which the short-term interests of the individual require resource consumption and conflict with the long-term survival and wellbeing of the population, which requires resource conservation." Waring, Timothy, S. Goff & P. Smaldino. 2017. "The coevolution of economic institutions and sustainable consumption via cultural group selection." Ecological Economics. 131: 524-532. P. 524.
"... irrespective of the content of the individual critiques [of evolutionary theory], the sheer volume and persistence of the discontent must be telling us something important about evolutionary biology. Broadly speaking, there are two possibilities, both dispiriting. Either (1) the field is seriously deficient, but it shows a peculiar conservatism and failure to embrace ideas that are new, true and very important, or (2) something about evolutionary biology makes it prone to the championing of ideas that are new but false or unimportant, or true and important, but already well studied under a different branding." Welch, John. 2017. "What’s wrong with evolutionary biology?" Biol Philos. 32:263-279. P. 264.
"During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in Europe and the British Isles, clerics exercised final judgment over which ideas were orthodox and which should be eliminated. Everyone, for example, is familiar with the tribulations of Galileo and Bruno. The climate harbored particular danger for those involved in the emerging sciences, even for those who were believers. Better to remain occupied with explicitly inanimate phenomena than to chance censure or worse by expressing opinions on any phenomenon bordering upon the living or the transcendental." Ulanowicz, Robert. 2016. "Process Ecology: Making Room for Creation." SOPHIA. 55:357-380. P. 358.
"The metaphysic [of Newtonian science] rested on five axioms, which at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century enjoyed almost universal acceptance among scientists. The consensus held that nature possesses the following attributes: "* Closure–Only material and mechanical causes are operant in nature. "* Atomism–Systems can be taken apart and the pieces studied individually. The behavior of the ensemble is the sum of the behaviors of the individual parts. "* Reversibility–The laws of nature are reversible. They appear the same whether time is played forward or backward. "* Determinism–Given some small tolerance, å, the behavior of a system can be predicted to within some corresponding tolerance, ä. "* Universality–The laws of nature are valid at all temporal and spatial scales." Ulanowicz, Robert. 2016. "Process Ecology: Making Room for Creation." SOPHIA. 55:357-380. P. 359.
"One thus sees that Monod’s crisp dichotomy between ‘chance and necessity’ is a gross oversimplification. Instead, there exists and entire spectrum of contingencies ranging from radical chance at one extreme to blind chance, conditional probabilities, propensities, and finally to deterministic phenomena. Not even intentionalities can be excluded from boundary constraints." Ulanowicz, Robert. 2016. "Process Ecology: Making Room for Creation." SOPHIA. 55:357-380. P. 363.
"One consequence of autocatalytic selection is absolutely essential to life but is almost universally ignored–namely, the mutual beneficence of autocatalysis induces a centripetal flow of resources into the loop.... That is, autocatalysis works to increase the amount of resources that are pulled into its orbit. Such centripetality, or radial attraction, is evident, for example, in coral reef communities, which sequester major concentrations of nutrients well over and above those in the oceanic desert that surrounds them. "This ratcheting up of activity and its accompanying centripetality together constitute what commonly is referred to as ‘growth.’" Ulanowicz, Robert. 2016. "Process Ecology: Making Room for Creation." SOPHIA. 55:357-380. P. 367. "Contemporary discussions of evolution strongly emphasize the eliminative role of nature, commonly referred to as ‘natural selection,’ but the enormous advantages imparted to some species via their participation in autocatalysis appear almost nowhere in the Modernist narrative." Ulanowicz, Robert. 2016. "Process Ecology: Making Room for Creation." SOPHIA. 55:357-380. P. 367.
"It does not take much effort, however, to uncover what actually drives competition: Place two autocatalytic systems within a field of finite resources and their centripetalities eventually will intersect. It follows that competition will not take place unless centripetal drives are already active at the next level down. Hence, the mutualism that generates centripetality is a primary agency, whereas competition itself is a derivative phenomenon that plays a decidedly secondary role." Ulanowicz, Robert. 2016. "Process Ecology: Making Room for Creation." SOPHIA. 55:357-380. P. 368.
"It is helpful to take account of how autocatalytic configurations evolve through time. Each new feature of a given repertoire is the result of selection exercised by the autocatalytic structure on some new incident contingency, be it radical, blind, or somehow already ordered. That earlier configuration in its turn came into being through a previous inclusion of some other contingency, and so forth back into the past. The system at any time is built upon a history of serial contingent events that could be referred to as ‘frozen contingencies’. The development of the system can thus be seen as indeterminate, but nonrandom. Any particular inclusion of a contingency is not totally random, because it was selected by the configuration as it existed at the time of encounter." Ulanowicz, Robert. 2016. "Process Ecology: Making Room for Creation." SOPHIA. 55:357-380. P. 368.
"It happens more recently that physicists have also discovered networks, so that a huge literature has grown around the topic. Unfortunately, the great bulk of this research is devoted to the search for mechanical explanations as to why certain types of networks occur under various conditions. That is, emphasis focuses almost entirely upon the constraints inherent in the networks. But the emphasis here has been upon the strong role of contingency and indeterminacy in natural dynamics. Such indeterminacy also resides in networks, albeit it is usually ignored." Ulanowicz, Robert. 2016. "Process Ecology: Making Room for Creation." SOPHIA. 55:357-380. P. 370.
"... but Cartesian duality is not where this narrative is leading. Rather two interpenetrating realms of causality have emerged, each following its own separate metaphysics. "Demarcation between the two domains lies more along the dimensions of complexity (heterogeneity) and density than with time and space. Ironically, science began with models that represented rarified, homogeneous and weakly interacting systems which only could have emerged very late in cosmic evolution. Under such circumstances, the four force laws allow for determinate predictions, whenever the accompanying boundary statement can be predicated in full. "Manifold heterogeneity and significant interactions, however, erode the validity of the classical assumptions that allowed the laws to be formulated. Although the laws are not necessarily violated in the dense, heterogeneous realm of living phenomena, they do lose their power to discriminate among enormous numbers of possibilities that characterize the second realm.... "Causalities in the two realms work in opposing directions as in a Heraclitian dialectic. The laws as they apply among rarefied, homogeneous, and independently acting entities do not impart coherence, and so centrifugality dominates, as with entropic decay. The dynamics in heterogeneous systems, by contrast, are dominated by centripetality and order-building, and give rise to structures of ever more effective autocatalysis." Ulanowicz, Robert. 2016. "Process Ecology: Making Room for Creation." SOPHIA. 55:357-380. P. 374.
"... as the transactional scenario for ecosystem development unfolded, it was necessary to invoke three fundamental axioms along the way: "i. Contingency–Systems are continually being impacted by arbitrary events that are not amenable to complete description by laws subject to closed-form boundary specifications. "This axiom posits contingency as an ontological reality. It is not that the contingent events violate any law; it is that the accompanying requisite, associated boundary statements, cannot be formulated in closed form. "ii. Feedback–Processes, via interaction with other processes, are capable of influencing themselves. "This is a radical assumption. It violates closure and the Aristotelian prohibition against circular reasoning. It legitimates mereology and sets the stage for autocatalysis and its attributes, which are fundamental aspects of living systems. "iii. History–Systems differ from one another according to their histories, some of which is recorded in their material configurations. "This assumption formalizes what Darwin long ago tacitly assumed about the natural world–that there is simply no way to create history using only reversible laws. "Of particular interest, each of these last three statements stands as the antithesis to one of the fundamental assumptions of Enlightenment physics: Contingency is the opposite of determinism; feedback violates closure and history negates reversibility. Atomism and universality have no counterparts in the revised metaphysics." Ulanowicz, Robert. 2016. "Process Ecology: Making Room for Creation." SOPHIA. 55:357-380. P. 375. "To doubt that belief [that physics can fully describe living systems] is to exhibit what Haught calls ‘metaphysical impatience.’ If the immediate world of the senses does not seem to correspond to the rarefied, homogeneous, detached models upon which the Enlightenment worldview rests, then one is encouraged to adjust his/her attitude to believe that it does.... "Dense, heterogeneous systems do not entirely escape the constraining influence of universal laws, but they come to possess the freedom (indeterminacy) to satisfy those constraints in a virtual infinity of possible ways." Ulanowicz, Robert. 2016. "Process Ecology: Making Room for Creation." SOPHIA. 55:357-380. P. 376. Reference: Haught, J. 2000. God after Darwin: a theology of evolution. Westview Press.
"Life is process and ecology is explicitly so." Ulanowicz, Robert. 2016. "Process Ecology: Making Room for Creation." SOPHIA. 55:357-380. P. 376.
"Darwin’s original narrative was essentially about a balanced transaction between Malthusian growth and (exogenous) natural selection. Since Darwin, however, the generative side of the evolutionary transaction has atrophied, so that almost all attention is now focused upon the eliminative actions of external conditions (natural selection)." Ulanowicz, Robert. 2016. "Process Ecology: Making Room for Creation." SOPHIA. 55:357-380. P. 376.
"An indeterminate world can entertain creativity of all kinds–natural, human, and possibly even Divine. Philip Hefner needs no longer worry about God lacking any ‘wiggle room’ to act in the natural world." Ulanowicz, Robert. 2016. "Process Ecology: Making Room for Creation." SOPHIA. 55:357-380. P. 377. Reference: Hefner, Philip. 2000. "Why I don’t believe in miracles" Newsweek.
"According to the mechanistic view, which prevailed in the scientific world of last century, and which is partly retained even now, the understanding of life in general comprises simply a complete explanation in terms of physics and chemistry, a complete account of all living phenomena as physical and chemical processes. If one adopts this position there is no place for any specifically biological laws of nature. In reality there is only one law which governs both the inorganic world and all the phenomena occurring in living organisms. This is, in fact, to deny that there is any qualitative difference between organism and inorganic objects. We thus reach a position where we must say either that inorganic objects are alive or that life does not really exist." Oparin. Alexander. 1964 (2010). Life: Its Nature, Origin, and Development. Translated by Ann Synge. Academic Press. Pp. 70-87. From: Bedau, Mark & C. Cleland. The Nature of Life: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives from Philosophy and Science. Cambridge UP. P. 72.
"Organisms are many-level ordered systems, quite unlike anything found in the inanimate world. The philosophy that eventually incorporated the best principles from both physicalism and vitalism became known as organicism, and this is the paradigm that is dominant today." Mayr, Ernst. 1997. This is Biology: The Science of the Living World. Harvard UP. Pp. 88-101. From: Bedau, Mark & C. Cleland. 2010. The Nature of Life: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives from Philosophy and Science. Cambridge UP. P. 89.
"The last support of vitalism as a viable concept in biology, disappeared about 1930." Mayr, Ernst. 1997. This is Biology: The Science of the Living World. Harvard UP. Pp. 88-101. From: Bedau, Mark & C. Cleland. 2010. The Nature of Life: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives from Philosophy and Science. Cambridge UP. P. 94.
"It is curious that a form of vitalism survived in the minds of some reputable physicists long after it had become extinct in the minds of reputable biologists." Mayr, Ernst. 1997. This is Biology: The Science of the Living World. Harvard UP. Pp. 88-101. From: Bedau, Mark & C. Cleland. 2010. The Nature of Life: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives from Philosophy and Science. Cambridge UP. P. 95.
"The demise of vitalism, rather than leading to the victory of mechanicism, resulted in a new explanatory system.... The unique characteristics of living organisms are not due to their composition but rather to their organization. This mode of thinking is now usually referred to as organicism." Mayr, Ernst. 1997. This is Biology: The Science of the Living World. Harvard UP. Pp. 88-101. From: Bedau, Mark & C. Cleland. 2010. The Nature of Life: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives from Philosophy and Science. Cambridge UP. P. 95.
"I will list five common requirements [for life]: "A boundary is needed to separate life from non-life. "An energy source is needed to drive the organization process. "A coupling mechanism must link the release of energy to the organization process that produces and sustains life. "A chemical network must be formed to permit adaptation and evolution. "The network must grow and reproduce." Shapiro, Robert. 2007. "A Simpler Origin for Life." Scientific American. June. Pp. 129-136. From: Bedau, Mark & C. Cleland. 2010. The Nature of Life: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives from Philosophy and Science. Cambridge UP. Pp. 131-4.
"... there is a most basic common denominator which binds together all researchers of the emergence of life. This common element, which I will coin ‘the continuity thesis,’ is the assumption that there is no unbridgeable gap between inorganic matter and living systems, and that under suitable physical conditions the emergence of life is highly probable.... "I claim that the continuity thesis, which is a philosophical presupposition, though strengthened by research in the field, is not derived from it." Fry, Iris. 2004 (2010). "Are the different hypotheses on the emergence of life as different as they seem?" Pp. 137-156. From: Bedau, Mark & C. Cleland. 2010. The Nature of Life: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives from Philosophy and Science. Cambridge UP. P. 137.
"My objectives in this chapter are the following:... to discuss the views expressed by the opponents of the thesis within the scientific community, who comprise "the almost miracle camp’..." Fry, Iris. 2004 (2010). "Are the different hypotheses on the emergence of life as different as they seem?" Pp. 137-156. From: Bedau, Mark & C. Cleland. 2010. The Nature of Life: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives from Philosophy and Science. Cambridge UP. P. 138.
"It is indeed trivial to point out that a creationist position on the origin of life is anti-scientific. It is, on the other hand, far from trivial to draw the philosophical connection between such an explicit position and its implicit counterparts within the scientific community. This connection, which I will attempt to portray, has two important aspects. First, based on historical and philosophical analysis it can be shown that the ‘happy accident’ hypothesis precludes the possibility of scientific research of the question, how life emerged. Second, the ‘almost miracle’ point of view is based on the traditional mechanistic view of matter as passive, and as devoid of any capability of self-organization." Fry, Iris. 2004 (2010). "Are the different hypotheses on the emergence of life as different as they seem?" Pp. 137-156. From: Bedau, Mark & C. Cleland. 2010. The Nature of Life: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives from Philosophy and Science. Cambridge UP. P. 138.
"... there is a strong philosophical connection between the theological and the ‘random’ hypotheses–both come to view the emergence of life as a sort of miracle." Fry, Iris. 2004 (2010). "Are the different hypotheses on the emergence of life as different as they seem?" Pp. 137-156. From: Bedau, Mark & C. Cleland. 2010. The Nature of Life: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives from Philosophy and Science. Cambridge UP. P. 140.
"... life arose through the succession of an enormous number of small steps, almost each of which, given the condition at the time, had a very high probability of happening.’ This assumption, he adds, has to be made simply because the alternative amounts to a miracle, that falls outside the scope of scientific inquiry. We encounter here, in an explicit way, the resolution to adopt the continuity thesis in order to be able to choose the scientific course." Fry, Iris. 2004 (2010). "Are the different hypotheses on the emergence of life as different as they seem?" Pp. 137-156. From: Bedau, Mark & C. Cleland. 2010. The Nature of Life: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives from Philosophy and Science. Cambridge UP. P. 144. Subquote/reference: De Duve, Christian. 1991. Blueprint for a cell. Neil Patterson.
"... chance and telos–converge philosophically. In addition, both of them imply the end of scientific investigation. My analysis so far substantiates the claim that the genuine dichotomy is between the continuity thesis, according to which life arose from inanimate matter through probable physical mechanisms of self-organization, and the ‘almost miracle’ thesis, which regards the origin of life as a highly improbable event." Fry, Iris. 2004 (2010). "Are the different hypotheses on the emergence of life as different as they seem?" Pp. 137-156. From: Bedau, Mark & C. Cleland. 2010. The Nature of Life: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives from Philosophy and Science. Cambridge UP. P. 145.
"It is Wicken’s claim that dissipation through structuring is an evolutionary first principle." Fry, Iris. 2004 (2010). "Are the different hypotheses on the emergence of life as different as they seem?" Pp. 137-156. From: Bedau, Mark & C. Cleland. 2010. The Nature of Life: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives from Philosophy and Science. Cambridge UP. P. 151. Reference: Wicken, J. 1987. Evolution, thermodynamics and information. Stanford University Press.
"Is it to be grouped with the living or with the non-living? But the very asking of the question in this form depends on a prior assumption–namely, that a defining, essential property for the category of life objectively exists, or that life is what philosophers call a ‘natural kind.’ Is life in fact a natural kind, and not merely a human kind? Is it not the case, as Foucault so provocatively argued, that the demarcation between life and non-life ought better to be viewed as a product of human than of evolutionary history?" Fox Keller, Evelyn. 2002. Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors and Machines. Harvard UP. Pp. 289-94. From: Bedau, Mark & C. Cleland. 2010. The Nature of Life: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives from Philosophy and Science. Cambridge UP. P. 291.
"Francois Jacob, following Foucault, is one of many who believe that it did [notion of a definition of life]. He claims that, prior to the nineteenth century, ‘The concept of life did not exist.’" Fox Keller, Evelyn. 2002. Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors and Machines. Harvard UP. Pp. 289-94. From: Bedau, Mark & C. Cleland. 2010. The Nature of Life: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives from Philosophy and Science. Cambridge UP. P. 291.
"‘What is life’ is a historical question, answerable only in terms of the categories by which we as human actors choose to abide, the differences that we as human actors choose to honor, and not in either logical, scientific, or technical terms. It is in this sense that the category of life is a human rather than a natural kind." Fox Keller, Evelyn. 2002. Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors and Machines. Harvard UP. Pp. 289-94. From: Bedau, Mark & C. Cleland. 2010. The Nature of Life: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives from Philosophy and Science. Cambridge UP. P. 292.
"Perreault assembled a sample of 573 cases from the archaeological record (mainly for Holocene North America) and compared the measured rates of change to those in Gingrich’s sample of paleontologically measured rates. The effect of the type of transmission on the per generation rate of change estimated in a multivariate analysis is approximately a factor of 50. All other things being equal, the rate of cultural change of the dimensions of pots, points, and houses is fifty times greater than the rate of change in the dimensions of mandibles, molars, and femurs." Boyd, Robert, P. Richerson & J. Henrich. 2013. "The Cultural Evolution of Technology." Pp. 119-142. From From Richerson, Peter & M. Christiansen. Cultural Evolution: Society, Technology, Language, and Religion. MIT Press. P. 127.
"... the history of technology makes it clear that most technological change is gradual, and models of cultural change suggest that gradual accumulation is to be expected when individual innovation is costly or difficult. This leaves two crucial questions unanswered. First, we know that there is heritability of cultural variation at the population level. Technologies and other forms of cultural variation persist in time and in ways that are not related to differences in the external environment. Without heritability there can be no cumulative cultural evolution. However, we do not know the causes of heritability at the population level.... "In addition, we do not know the extent to which people have causal understandings of the technologies on which they depend. Once again there are two extreme models. On one hand, innovation is the rate-limiting step, but when innovations do occur they are accompanied by causal understandings of how the innovation works, and why it is better than previously used alternatives. The innovation spreads rapidly because causal understanding spreads with it. Innovation driven by modern science in some domains may approximate this hypothesis. At the other extreme, behavior varies randomly and learners adopt behavior that is associated with prestige or other observable markers of success; as a result, better technologies spread due to a process of selective retention. A variety of intermediate hypotheses are also possible." Boyd, Robert, P. Richerson & J. Henrich. 2013. "The Cultural Evolution of Technology." Pp. 119-142. From From Richerson, Peter & M. Christiansen. Cultural Evolution: Society, Technology, Language, and Religion. MIT Press. Pp. 1421-2.
"Human ultrasociality represents a major evolutionary transition." Turchin, Peter. 2013. "The Puzzle of Human Ultrasociality: How Did Large-Scale Complex Societies Evolve?" Pp. 61-73. From From Richerson, Peter & M. Christiansen. Cultural Evolution: Society, Technology, Language, and Religion. MIT Press. P. 62. "Evolution of human ultrasociality fits quite well into this scheme [transition to a higher level of individuality], but with one important twist: it occurred in several stages. Thus, it is perhaps best to think of multiple transitions instead of a single one. The first stage was the evolution of cooperation in small-scale groups (i.e., groups of hundreds or, at most, a few thousand of people).... Mechanisms involved at this state were: "* Increasing returns to scale: examples include big-game hunting and coordinated defense against predators, risk pooling through extended networks, economic returns from trade and division of labor, and ability to generate new and retain existing knowledge.... "* Inequity aversion and other leveling mechanisms: examples include food sharing, monogamy, and social control of ‘upstarts’. These mechanisms reduce within-group variation in fitness and, thus, the strength of individual-level selection relative to between-group selection. "* Moralistic punishment and other mechanisms that control free-riding. "* Culture, which (via conformist transmission) reduces within-group variability and enhances between-group variability.... "The second stage–evolution of large-scale sociality (ultrasociality)–was enabled by several additional key adaptations. First, humans evolved the capacity to demarcate group membership with symbolic markers; the first symbolic artifacts appeared around 60,000 years ago. Markers such as dialect/language, cult/religion, clothing, and ornamentation allowed humans to determine whether someone personally unknown to them was a member of their cooperating group or, vice versa, an alien and an enemy. Second, hierarchical organization allowed unlimited growth in the scale of cooperating groups, simply by adding extra organization levels. Centralized hierarchies are also much more effective in war, which is why all armies have chains of command. However, the downside of hierarchical social organization is that it inevitably leads to inequality. As a result, evolution of complex societies reversed the trend to greater egalitarianism that had previously characterized human evolution...." Turchin, Peter. 2013. "The Puzzle of Human Ultrasociality: How Did Large-Scale Complex Societies Evolve?" Pp. 61-73. From From Richerson, Peter & M. Christiansen. Cultural Evolution: Society, Technology, Language, and Religion. MIT Press. Pp. 62-4.
"Ultrasociality is the ability of humans to cooperate with huge numbers (millions and more) of genetically unrelated individuals. As far as we know, it is unique to humans. Ultrasociality is the term used by evolutionary scientists; another closely related term is social complexity." Turchin, Peter. 2013. "The Puzzle of Human Ultrasociality: How Did Large-Scale Complex Societies Evolve?" Pp. 61-73. From From Richerson, Peter & M. Christiansen. Cultural Evolution: Society, Technology, Language, and Religion. MIT Press. Pp. 65-6.
"... the second phase of the evolution of human sociality (from small-scale to large-scale societies) actually involved several fairly major evolutionary transitions. The first one was the rise of centralized hierarchical societies, chiefdoms (first chiefdoms appeared around 7,500 years ago in the Near East). The second was the appearance of first urban state societies (ca. 5,000 years ago), followed by the rise of large multiethnic territorial states, mega-empires (ca. 2,500 years ago). Finally, the last 200 years have seen the evolution of the modern nation-state." Turchin, Peter. 2013. "The Puzzle of Human Ultrasociality: How Did Large-Scale Complex Societies Evolve?" Pp. 61-73. From From Richerson, Peter & M. Christiansen. Cultural Evolution: Society, Technology, Language, and Religion. MIT Press. Pp. 66-7.
"Institutions can be thought of as self-reinforcing, dynamically stable equilibria that arise as individuals’ norms converge and complement each other over time." Turchin, Peter. 2013. "The Puzzle of Human Ultrasociality: How Did Large-Scale Complex Societies Evolve?" Pp. 61-73. From From Richerson, Peter & M. Christiansen. Cultural Evolution: Society, Technology, Language, and Religion. MIT Press. P. 67.
"Ultrasocial institutions are institutions that enable cooperation at the level of larger-scale human groups. They are characterized by the tension between benefits they yield at the higher level of social organization and costs borne by lower-level units." Turchin, Peter. 2013. "The Puzzle of Human Ultrasociality: How Did Large-Scale Complex Societies Evolve?" Pp. 61-73. From From Richerson, Peter & M. Christiansen. Cultural Evolution: Society, Technology, Language, and Religion. MIT Press. P. 68.
"In the MLS framework the central question is What is the balance of forces favoring cooperation of lower-level units and, therefore, their ability to combine into higher-level collectives?... The success of each transition depends on the balance of forces favoring integration versus those favoring fission." Turchin, Peter. 2013. "The Puzzle of Human Ultrasociality: How Did Large-Scale Complex Societies Evolve?" Pp. 61-73. From From Richerson, Peter & M. Christiansen. Cultural Evolution: Society, Technology, Language, and Religion. MIT Press. P. 71.
"The track record of nation-building is, however, not particularly impressive. Why is it that what works in some countries fails in others? I suggest that a major part of the problem is the lack of a theoretical framework that could guide concrete actions. Here is where evolutionary science can be of tremendous use. We need to understand the nature and evolution of war better as well as its converse, large-scale cooperation." Turchin, Peter. 2013. "The Puzzle of Human Ultrasociality: How Did Large-Scale Complex Societies Evolve?" Pp. 61-73. From From Richerson, Peter & M. Christiansen. Cultural Evolution: Society, Technology, Language, and Religion. MIT Press. P. 72.
"In short, the fact that it is concerned with the boundary between language and the outside world, is ironically, a major reason why pragmatics is kept on the periphery of the discipline itself." Scott-Phillips, Thomas. 2017. "Pragmatics and the aims of language evolution." Psychon Bull Rev. 24:186-189. P. 186.
"In contrast, strong pragmatics is a capacity of mind, to communicate in a way that is fundamentally a matter of social cognition. More precisely, it is a capacity to communicate by expressing and recognizing intentions. This type of pragmatics commonly goes by the labels ‘Gricean communication’ or ‘ostensive communication’, and it is not only a further level of linguistic analysis. It is, rather, the social cognitive basis of a type of communication that is not reducible to codes and context dependence and is likely to be uniquely human." Scott-Phillips, Thomas. 2017. "Pragmatics and the aims of language evolution." Psychon Bull Rev. 24:186-189. P. 187. "For the first time in history, more people die today from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists, and criminals combined." Harari, Yuval. 2016. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. Vintage. P. 2.
"And having raised humanity above the beastly level of survival struggles, we will now aim to upgrade humans into gods, and turn Homo sapiens into Homo deus." Harari, Yuval. 2016. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. Vintage. P. 24. "Most people presume that reality is either objective or subjective, and that there is no third option.... "However, there is a third level of reality: the intersubjective level. Intersubjective entities depend on communication among many humans rather than on the beliefs and feelings of individual humans." Harari, Yuval. 2016. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. Vintage. P. 168.
"Meaning is created when many people weave together a common network of stories.... People constantly reinforce each other’s beliefs in a self-perpetuating loop. Each round of mutual confirmation tightens the web of meaning further, until you have little choice but to believe what everyone else believes.... "To study history means to watch the spinning and unravelling of these webs, and to realise that what seems to people in one age the most important thing in life becomes utterly meaningless to their descendants." Harari, Yuval. 2016. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. Vintage. Pp. 170-1.
"Animals such as wolves and chimpanzees live in a dual reality. On the one hand they are familiar with objective entities outside them, such as trees, rocks and rivers. On the other hand they are aware of subjective experiences within them, such as fear, joy and desire. Sapiens, in contrast, live in triple-layered reality. In addition to trees, rivers, fears and desires, the Sapiens world also contains stories about money, gods, nations and corporations. As history unfolded the impact of gods, nations and corporations grew at the expense of rivers, fears and desires. There are still many rivers in the world, and people are still motivated by their fears and wishes, but Jesus Christ, the French Republic and Apple Inc. have dammed and harnessed the rivers, and have learned to shape our deepest anxieties and yearnings." Harari, Yuval. 2016. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. Vintage. P. 181.
"Yet, in fact modernity is a surprisingly simple deal. The entire contract can be summarised in a single phrase: humans agree to give up meaning in exchange for power." Harari, Yuval. 2016. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. Vintage. P. 233.
"The humanist religion worships humanity, and expects humanity to play the part that God played in Christianity and Islam, and that the laws of nature played in Buddhism and Daoism.... "Accordingly, the central religious revolution of modernity was not losing faith in God; rather, it was gaining faith in humanity." Harari, Yuval. 2016. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. Vintage. P. 259. "In the twenty-first century, those who ride the train of progress will acquire divine abilities of creation and destruction, while those left behind will face extinction." Harari, Yuval. 2016. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. Vintage. P. 319.
"... the third and final part of the book will argue that attempting to realise this humanist dream will undermine its very foundations by unleashing new post-humanist technologies." Harari, Yuval. 2016. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. Vintage. P. 323.
"Liberals uphold free markets and democratic elections because they believe that every human is a uniquely valuable individual, whose free choices are the ultimate source of authority. In the twenty-first century three practical developments might make this belief obsolete: "1. Humans will lose their economic and military usefulness, hence the economic and political system will stop attaching much value to them. "2. The system will continue to find value in humans collectively, but not in unique individuals. "3. The system will still find value in some unique individuals, but these will constitute a new elite of upgrade superhumans rather than the mass of the population." Harari, Yuval. 2016. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. Vintage. P. 356.
"... liberals were right to argue that nobody can know me better than I know myself. Humans therefore had a very good reason to regard themselves as an autonomous system and to follow their own inner voices rather than the commands of Big Brother. "However, twenty-first century technology may enable external algorithms to ‘hack humanity’ and know me far better than I know myself. Once this happens the belief in individualism will collapse and authority will shift from individual humans to networked algorithms." Harari, Yuval. 2016. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. Vintage. P. 384.
"Thanks to our growing understanding of human biology, medicine can keep us alive long enough for our minds and ‘authentic selves’ to disintegrate and dissolve. All too often, what’s left is a collection of dysfunctional biological systems kept going by a collection of monitors, computers and pumps." Harari, Yuval. 2016. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. Vintage. P. 387.
"If medical hopes are realised, future humans will incorporate into their bodies a host of biometric devices, bionic organs and nano-robots, which will monitor our health and defend us from infections, illnesses and damage.... "The new technologies of the twenty-first century may thus reverse the humanist revolution, stripping humans of their authority, and empowering non-human algorithms instead. If you are horrified by this direction, don’t blame the computer geeks. The responsibility actually lies with the biologists. It is crucial to realise that this entire trend is fuelled more by biological insights than by computer science. It is the life sciences that concluded that organisms are algorithms. If this is not the case – if organisms function in an inherently different way to algorithms – then computers may work wonders in other fields, but they will not be able to understand us and direct our life, and they will certainly be incapable of merging with us. Yet once biologists concluded that organisms are algorithms, they dismantled the wall between the organic and inorganic, turned the computer revolution from a purely mechanical affair into a biological cataclysm, and shifted authority from individual humans to networked algorithms." Harari, Yuval. 2016. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. Vintage. Pp. 401-2.
"So far we have looked at two of the three practical threats to liberalism: firstly, that humans will lose their value, completely; secondly, that humans will still be valuable collectively, but will lose their individual authority, and instead be managed by external algorithms. The system will still need you to compose symphonies, teach history or write computer code, but it will know you better than you know yourself, and will therefore make most of the important decisions for you – and you will be perfectly happy with that. It won’t necessarily be a bad world; it will, however, be a post-liberal world. "The third threat to liberalism is that some people will remain both indispensable and undecipherable, but they will constitute a small and privileged elite of upgraded humans. These superhumans will enjoy unheard-of abilities and unprecedented creativity, which will allow them to go on making many of the most important decisions in the world. They will perform crucial services for the system, while the system could neither understand nor manage them. However, most humans will not be upgraded, and will consequently become an inferior caste dominated by both computer algorithms and the new superhumans." Harari, Yuval. 2016. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. Vintage. P. 403.
"Techno-humanism agrees that Homo sapiens as we know it has run its historical course and will no longer be relevant in the future, but concludes that we should therefore use technology in order to create Homo deus – a much superior human model. Homo deus will retain some essential human features, but will also enjoy upgraded physical and mental abilities that will enable it to hold its own even against the most sophisticated non-conscious algorithms." Harari, Yuval. 2016. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. Vintage. P. 410.
"Dataism declares that the universe consists of data flows, and the value of any phenomenon or entity is determined by its contribution to data processing.... Dataism puts the two [biology and computer science] together, pointing out that exactly the same mathematical laws apply to both biochemical and electronic algorithms. Dataism thereby collapses the barrier between animals and machines, and expects electronic algorithms to eventually decipher and outperform biochemical algorithms." Harari, Yuval. 2016. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. Vintage. P. 428.
"If, as argued, globalization is a set of processes that are historical, transformative, and multidimensional, it is easy to see why it is also evolutionary." Modelski, George. 2008. "Globalization as evolutionary process." Pp. 11-29. From: Modelski, George, T. Devezas & W. Thompson (Eds). Globalization as Evolutionary Process. Routledge. P. 14.
"Each period of the processes considered here, including the envelope one of globalization, is a phased, evolutionary, learning process and has a programmed time-structure: an event sequence that consists of four phases whose genetic names are variation, cooperation, selection, and amplification." Modelski, George. 2008. "Globalization as evolutionary process." Pp. 11-29. From: Modelski, George, T. Devezas & W. Thompson (Eds). Globalization as Evolutionary Process. Routledge. P. 17.
"The explanation of a regularity, described by a universal law embedded in a trend, Popper argued, differs from that of a singular event. It consists of the deduction of a law, containing the conditions under which the essential regularity holds, from a set of more general laws which have been tested and confirmed independently...." "In the light of Popper’s criteria, what is the status of the present analysis? First, we view the evolution of human society, and more precisely, in our case, that of its global layer of interactions and institutions, not as a single and unique process but rather as a cascade of processes that are analytically distinguishable but are also related, being nested (e.g. long cycles as embedded in global political evolution), and self-similar (all global processes exhibit the same basic algorithm, albeit in several flavors.)." Modelski, George. 2008. "Globalization as evolutionary process." Pp. 11-29. From: Modelski, George, T. Devezas & W. Thompson (Eds). Globalization as Evolutionary Process. Routledge. P. 19.
"In brief, how does the present approach differ from ‘historicist’ or ‘evolutionist’ theories that have appeared in the last century? It deploys: (1) a cascade of processes of several kinds, (2) at levels of resolution down to one generation, (3) specifying a universal mechanism of change, and (4) operating at the human species level. Historicist-evolutionist theories, by contrast, identify one basic process, frequently materialist, of a resolution extending over several centuries (e.g. feudalism to capitalism), operating according to laws of one particular epoch (e.g. laws of capitalism) that describe change in individual national societies." Modelski, George. 2008. "Globalization as evolutionary process." Pp. 11-29. From: Modelski, George, T. Devezas & W. Thompson (Eds). Globalization as Evolutionary Process. Routledge. Pp. 19-20.
"The first states in the Mesopotamian alluvium pop up no earlier than about 6,000 years ago, several millennia after the first evidence of agriculture and sedentism in the region" Scott, James. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale UP. P. 3.
"Still more remarkable, for those interested in the state form, is the fact that the very first small, stratified, tax-collecting, walled states pop up in the Tigris and Euphrates Valley only around 3,100 BCE, more than four millennia after the first crop domestications and sedentism." Scott, James. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale UP. Pp. 5-7.
"... sedentism is actually quite common in ecologically rich and varied, preagricultural settings–especially wetlands bordering the seasonal migration routes of fish, birds, and larger game." Scott, James. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale UP. P. 10.
"On a generous reading, until the past four hundred years, one-third of the globe was still occupied by hunter-gatherers, shifting cultivators, pastoralists, and independent horticulturalists, while states, being essentially agrarian, were confined largely to that small portion of the globe suitable for cultivation." Scott, James. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale UP. P. 14.
"In a good part of the world, the state, even when it was robust, was a seasonal institution." Scott, James. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale UP. P. 15.
"I think of the polities of early Mesopotamia as gradually becoming states. That is, ‘stateness,’ in my view, is an institutional continuum, less an either/or proposition than a judgment of more or less." Scott, James. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale UP. P. 23.
"Evidence for the extensive use of unfree labor–war captives, indentured servitude, temple slavery, slave markets, forced settlement in labor colonies, convict labor, and communal slavery (for example, Sparta’s helots)–is overwhelming... The attention to ‘husbanding’ the subject population, including women, as a form of wealth, like livestock, in which fertility and high rates of reproduction were encouraged, is apparent." Scott, James. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale UP. P. 29.
"The breathtaking four-millennia gap between the first appearance of domesticated grains and animals and the coalescing of agro-pastoral societies we have associated with early civilization commands our attention." Scott, James. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale UP. P. 58.
"By 3,200 BCE, Uruk was the biggest city in the world, with anywhere from twenty-five thousand to fifty thousand inhabitants, together with their livestock and crops, dwarfing the concentrations of the earlier Ubaid period." Scott, James. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale UP. P. 100.
"The multispecies resettlement camp was, then, not only a historic assemblage of mammals in numbers and proximity never previously known, but it was also an assembly of all the bacteria, protozoa, helminthes, and viruses that fed on them.... What was occurring was the first massive surge of pathogens across the species barrier, establishing an entirely new epidemiological order.... "The list of diseases shared with domesticates and commensals at the domus is quantitatively striking. In an outdated list, now surely even longer, we humans share twenty-six diseases with poultry, thirty-two with rats and mice, thirty-five with horses, forty-two with pigs, forty-six with sheep and goats, fifty with cattle, and sixty-five with our much-studied and oldest domesticate, the dog." Scott, James. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale UP. P. 104.
"The logistics of moving camp regularly make it burdensome, if not impossible, to have two infants who must be carried at the same time. As a result, the spacing of children of hunter-gatherers is on the order of four years,... Furthermore, some combination of strenuous exercise with a lean and protein-rich diet meant that puberty arrived later, ovulation was less regular, and menopause arrived earlier. Among sedentary agriculturalists, by contrast, the burden of a much shorter spacing of children as experienced by mobile foragers is much reduced and, as we shall see, the greater value of the children as a labor force in agriculture is enhanced." Scott, James. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale UP. P. 114.
"If a civilization is judged an achievement of the state, and if archaic civilization means sedentism, farming, the domus, irrigation, and towns, then there is something radically wrong with the historical order. All of these human achievements of the Neolithic were in place well before we encounter anything like a state in Mesopotamia. Quite the contrary. On the basis of what we now know, the embryonic state arises by harnessing the late Neolithic grain and manpower module as a basis of control and appropriation." Scott, James. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale UP. P. 116.
"Settled populations growing crops of domesticated grains, and small towns with a thousand or more inhabitants facilitating commerce, were an autonomous achievement of the Neolithic, being in place nearly two millennia before the appearance of the first states, around 3,300 BCE." Scott, James. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale UP. P. 117. "The key to the nexus between grains and states lies, I believe, in the fact that only the cereal grains can serve as a basis for taxation: visible, divisible, assessable, storable, transportable, and ‘rationable.’ Other crops–legumes, tubers, and starch plants–have some of these desirable state-adapted qualities, but none has all of these advantages." Scott, James. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale UP. P. 129.
"Grain, because it has higher value per unit volume and weight than almost any other foodstuff, and because it stores comparatively well, was an ideal tax and subsistence crop. It could be left unhusked until it was needed. It was ideal for distributing to laborers and slaves, for requiring as tribute, for provisioning soldiers and garrisons, for relieving a food shortage or famine, or for feeding a city while resisting a siege. It is hard to imagine the early state without grain as a basis for its sinew and muscle." Scott, James. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale UP. P. 134.
"The means by which a population is assembled and then made to produce a surplus is less important in this context than the fact that it does produce a surplus available to non-producing elites. Such a surplus does not exist until the embryonic state creates it." Scott, James. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale UP. P. 151.
"The state with the most people was generally richest and usually prevailed militarily over smaller rivals. One indication of this fundamental fact was that the prize of war was more often captives than territory, which meant that the losers’ lives, particularly those of women and children, were spared." Scott, James. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale UP. P. 154.
"Athens and Rome were formidable naval powers that imported slaves from throughout the known world, drawing virtually all their slave populations far and wide from non-Greek and non-Latin speaking societies. This social and cultural fact provided much of the foundation for the standard association of state peoples with civilization on the one hand and nonstate peoples with barbarism on the other. Mesopotamian city-states, by contrast, took their captives from much closer to home. For that reason, the captives were more likely to have been more culturally aligned with their captors." Scott, James. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale UP. P. 174.
"The greater the cultural and linguistic differences between slaves and their masters, the easier it is to draw and enforce the social and juridical separation that makes for the sharp demarcation typical of slave societies." Scott, James. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale UP. P. 175.
"The key point is that as a subspecies of sedentary grain communities, states were subject to the same perils of dissolution as sedentary communities in general, as well as to the fragility particular to states as political entities." Scott, James. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale UP. P. 184.
"When the apex [the top of the social hierarchy in ancient states associated with the large monuments that survive] disappears, one is particularly grateful for the increasingly large fraction of archaeologists whose attention was focused not on the apex but on the base and its constituent units.... One of their key insights has been to see much that passes as collapse as, rather, a disassembly of larger but more fragile political units into their smaller and often more stable components. While ‘collapse’ represents a reduction in social complexity, it is these smaller nuclei of power–a compact small settlement on the alluvium, for example–that are likely to persist far longer than the brief miracles of statecraft that lash them together into a substantial kingdom or empire." Scott, James. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale UP. P. 187.
"Given the unprecedented concentration of crops, people, livestock, and urban economic activity fostered by states, a whole series of effects–soil exhaustion, siltation, floods, ,salinization, epidemics, fire, malaria, none of which existed at anything like such levels before the state and any one of which could gradually or suddenly empty a city and destroy a state–were more common." Scott, James. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale UP. P. 212.
"The way we can best conceptualize this activity [raids by barbarians on states], I believe, is to see it as an advanced and lucrative form of hunting and foraging. Sedentary communities represented, for mobile foragers, an irresistible site for concentrated gathering." Scott, James. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale UP. P. 223.
"The period between the first appearance of states and their hegemony over nonstate peoples [arguably up until at least 1600 CE] represented, I believe, something of a ‘golden age of barbarians.’ What I mean is that it was in many ways ‘better’ to be a barbarian because there wer states–so long as those states were not too strong." Scott, James. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale UP. P. 223.
"Because states represented such narrow agro-ecologies, they relied on a host of products from outside the alluvium to survive. State and nonstate peoples were natural trading partners." Scott, James. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale UP. P. 226.
"If we step back and widen the lens, barbarian-state relations can be seen as a contest between the two parties for the right to appropriate the surplus from the sedentary grain–and-manpower module. It is this module that both is the basis for state formation and is equally essential for barbarian accumulation." Scott, James. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale UP. Pp. 242-3.
"The early agrarian states and the barbarian polities had broadly similar aims; both sought to dominate the grain-and-manpower core with its surplus. The Mongols, among other raiding nomads, compared the agrarian population to ra’aya, ‘herds.’" Scott, James. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale UP. P. 244.
"The list [of trade products that nonstate people in Central Eurasia could trade with states] is enormous, but an abbreviated version will illustrate its variety: copper, iron, horses, mules, furs, hides, wax, amber, swords, armor, fabrics, cotton, wool, carpets, blanket cloth, felt, tents, stirrups, bows, fine woods, linseed, nuts, and, never absent from the list, slaves." Scott, James. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale UP. P. 247.
"As trade grew, mobile nonstate peoples were able to dominate the arteries and capillaries of that trade and exact tribute for doing so." Scott, James. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale UP. P. 248.
"As states and durable gunpowder empires grew, the ability of nonstate peoples to raid and dominate small states shrank at a pace that depended greatly on the region and its geography." Scott, James. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale UP. P. 254.
"The life of ‘late barbarians’ would, on balance, have been rather good. Their subsistence was still spread across several food webs; being dispersed, they would have been less vulnerable to the failure of a single food source. They were more likely to be healthier and live longer–especially if they were female. More advantageous trade made for more leisure, thus further widening the leisure-drudgery ratio between foragers and farmers. Finally, and by no means trivial, barbarians were not subordinated or domesticated to the hierarchical social order of sedentary agriculture and the state." Scott, James. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale UP. P. 255.
"Hence, I suggest that we adopt the term globality to signify a social condition characterized by tight global economic, political, cultural, and environmental interconnections and flows that make most of the currently existing borders and boundaries irrelevant." Steger, Manfred. 2013. Globalization: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford UP. P. 9.
"Indeed, any affirmation of globalization implies three assertions: first, that we are slowly leaving behind the condition of modern nationality that gradually unfolded from the 18th century onwards; second, that we are moving towards the new conditions of postmodern globality; and, third, that we have not yet reached it." Steger, Manfred. 2013. Globalization: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford UP. P. 10.
"Globalization refers to the expansion and intensification of social relations and consciousness across world-time and world-space." Steger, Manfred. 2013. Globalization: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford UP. P. 15.
"Thus, we could say that globalization is an ancient process that, over many centuries, has crossed distinct qualitative thresholds." Steger, Manfred. 2013. Globalization: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford UP. P. 19.
"A 2009 comparison of gross domestic products (GDPs) and corporate sales reveals that forty-four of the world’s hundred largest economies are corporations; fifty-six are countries." Steger, Manfred. 2013. Globalization: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford UP. P. 54.
"In the second decade of the 21st century, the world finds itself in a transitional phase between the modern nation-state system and postmodern forms of global governance.... "In this early phase of global governance, these structures resemble an eclectic network of interrelated power centres such as municipal and provincial authorities, regional blocs, international organizations, and national and international private-sector associations." Steger, Manfred. 2013. Globalization: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford UP. P. 68.
"... the cosmopolitan democracy of the future would contain the following political features: "1. A global parliament connected to regions, states, and localities; "2. A new charter of rights and duties locked into different domains of political, social, and economic power; "3. The formal separation of political and economic interests; "4. An interconnected global legal system with mechanisms of enforcement from the local to the global." Steger, Manfred. 2013. Globalization: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford UP. P. 72. Referencing: Held, David. Pp. 96-120. From: Archibugi, Daniele & D. Held (Eds). 1995. Cosmopolitan Democracy. Polity. Considered the optimistic view of global governance prospects. "Kinship, rather than being a mal-adapted and necessarily closed system is extraordinarily malleable and elastic.... "Kinship is now understood in ‘terms of social relations among variably situated actors engaged in the practice of social reproduction’ and as multidimensional." Porter, Anne. 2012. Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Easter Civilizations: Weaving Together Society. Cambridge UP. P. 47. Subquote: Peletz, M. 1995. "Kinship Studies in Late Twentieth Century Anthropology." Annual Review of Anthropology. 24:343-72. P. 366.
"These two spheres, the public and the domestic, were in general characterized by the different ways kin structures operated. The domestic sphere was identified by horizontal ties linking members of the community, the public, by vertical ones." Porter, Anne. 2012. Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Easter Civilizations: Weaving Together Society. Cambridge UP. P. 48.
"Land sale documents of the third millennium BCE and records of adoption from diverse places in the second millennium BCE, all show that in order to maintain the inextricable links between family identity, community membership, and land tenure, nonbiological kin relations may be constructed through socially validated practice. The alienation of land, which is ostensibly the subject of these documents, must take place within a framework that maintains an ideology of kinship. In order to do this, one may ‘de-ancestralize’ the land by symbolically compensating the whole family, including previous generations, all of whom concur and participate in the sale. An alternative method is to avoid this ‘de-ancestralization’ on an ideological if not actual level, by adopting the buyer into the family, which is perhaps to be seen as the reverse process, ancestralization." Porter, Anne. 2012. Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Easter Civilizations: Weaving Together Society. Cambridge UP. P. 56.
"Descent is a strategy to be manipulatd as a means of inclusion or exclusion depending on what is deemed appropriate to the situation at hand." Porter, Anne. 2012. Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Easter Civilizations: Weaving Together Society. Cambridge UP. P. 57.
"Kinship, descent, residence, shared substances, tradition, and ritual all provide rules and resources, as well as principles of organization, upon which actors draw in the constitution of society." Porter, Anne. 2012. Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Easter Civilizations: Weaving Together Society. Cambridge UP. P. 58. Passage cites Giddens, A. 1984. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. U. of California Press.
"If a complex society is one where interpersonal relations and sociopolitical structure are no longer grounded in horizontal and vertical ties of kinship, whether in practice or in ideology, but is based only on class divisions and institutional affiliations, then the evidence does not in fact indicate that ancient Near Easter societies were structured in this way to the degree commonly assumed. What we have in the past interpreted as self-perpetuating and independent institutions are simply concretized versions of previously abstract social principles now operating in public domains. But those abstract social principles are still there. They still work, at both public and domestic levels. "There is, I would argue, a reason for this. And that is mobility. Not because pastoralists are tribal, but because the practices of kinship, among other things, facilitate the extension of both time and space so that those who are physically apart may remain conceptually together. No doubt the preexistence of kinship allowed for the practice of mobility, but mobility reproduced kinship in certain ways – primarily in the increased significance of genealogy and descent, variously constructed and deployed." Porter, Anne. 2012. Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Easter Civilizations: Weaving Together Society. Cambridge UP. Pp. 62-3.
"The very essence of genealogy is the fact that it is entirely malleable – at least until it is written down. It allows for the construction and deconstruction of social relationships whenever required." Porter, Anne. 2012. Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Easter Civilizations: Weaving Together Society. Cambridge UP. P. 63.
"Part of that economy was the burgeoning of a formalized textile industry that was increasingly focused on wool, giving rise in turn to the expansion of pastoralism. Two phenomena therefore occurred at once – the city expanded, incorporating a considerable amount of space, and more land had to be put under cultivation to feed the growing population. This reduced local areas available for grazing the flocks kept by city dwellers, as was argued in 1974 by Lees and Bates. "That the growth of Uruk outpaced its available sustaining area as early as the Early Uruk period has been demonstrated by Susan Pollock, who proposes that this therefore required the extraction of tribute from rural areas around it, which contributed to a centralizing administration that comprised the basis of state formation. There is an alternative to tribute however, one that does not require or result in centralized administration: commodity exchange. Textiles, the raw materials for which could be gleaned from animals herded far away, could be exchanged for food products, especially grains and vegetables produced in nearby areas, and this exchange could be entirely familial in basis.... Herd numbers would increase as the manufacture of woolen textiles increased. Expanded herds would require both more pasture to support the flocks and more people to manage them, so that, in addition to the small-scale, domestic, and localized herding that doubtless always existed as a subsidiary agricultural practice, a broader-scale form of pastoralism came into being, one with larger herds and longer movements." Porter, Anne. 2012. Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Easter Civilizations: Weaving Together Society. Cambridge UP. Pp. 137-8. References: Lees, S. & D. Bates. 1974. "The Origins of Specialized Nomadic Populations: A Systemic Model." American Antiquity. 39:187-93. Pollock, Susan. 2001. "The Uruk Period in Southern Mesopotamia." Pp. 181-232. Rothman, M. (Ed.) Uruk Mesopotamia and Its Neighbors: Cross-Cultural Interactions in the Era of State Formation. School of American Research Advanced Seminar Series.
"Or perhaps the newcomers failed to recognize that indigenous practice varied from their own; if exchange outside of kinship networks was prohibited, for example, marriage to local women would be required for trade to ensue. Such was the case with European interaction with southern Madagascar in the eighteenth century AD, which resulted in a century of extremely violent interaction." Porter, Anne. 2012. Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Easter Civilizations: Weaving Together Society. Cambridge UP. P. 144.
"And textiles, as soon as records become intelligible, are revealed to have been far and away the largest component of the Mesopotamian economy other than subsistence production of cereals, far exceeding metals and semiprecious stones, which were always in very limited distribution." Porter, Anne. 2012. Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Easter Civilizations: Weaving Together Society. Cambridge UP. P. 144.
"It was around c. 3400/3300 BCE that the first clay tablets, with the first notations generally counted as true writing, were produced in the ancient Near East.... ... some four thousand years earlier in the Neolithic period when small, plain stone or clay objects in a variety of shapes were used to denote a range of commodities and their quantities. Around the beginning of the fourth millennium this system was modified by the addition of more complicated objects. Shortly thereafter, tokens were kept on strings, the ends of which were sealed with lumps of mud or encased in clay balls or envelopes. In these instances the clay was impressed with a seal, the scene on which (we suppose) indicates either the person responsible for the transaction or the person recording it – and sometimes, when there are two sealings, both. But because the tokens were invisible once they were encased, or so the argument goes, the contents were subsequently marked on the outside of the envelope." Porter, Anne. 2012. Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Easter Civilizations: Weaving Together Society. Cambridge UP. Pp. 1447-8.
"However, immediately after the tablets that contain numerical impressions only, two kinds of tablet appear: tablets that record things and numbers, and tablets that record lists of things. There are tablets listing kinds of fish, birds, and cattle; metals, pots, or rather their contents; cheeses; and textiles. There are list of kinds of sheep, pigs, trees, and wooden objects; place names; textiles; grain; and occupations." Porter, Anne. 2012. Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Easter Civilizations: Weaving Together Society. Cambridge UP. P. 149.
"At first the introduction of writing and the classification of all aspects of existence were highly exclusionary and, I would suggest, intended to be so. It drew together those who shared the same language, a ‘collectively shared cognitive order’, as it rendered it impenetrable to those who did not." Porter, Anne. 2012. Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Easter Civilizations: Weaving Together Society. Cambridge UP. P. 152. Subquote: Kopytoff, I. 1986. "The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process." Pp. 64-91. Appadurai, A. (Ed) The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge UP.
"Only a handful of people, and we know some of them by name, had the opportunity to learn to read and write, and this remained the case for over fifteen hundred years." Porter, Anne. 2012. Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Easter Civilizations: Weaving Together Society. Cambridge UP. P. 152.
"So while writing is certainly one means of stretching time and space, it may also operate as a strategy to counter the effects of change, for it has the potential to reify knowledge, culture, and identity. Writing, then, goes hand in hand with religion as a means of integration and differentiation." Porter, Anne. 2012. Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Easter Civilizations: Weaving Together Society. Cambridge UP. P. 152.
"This is how we may understand their central location and position on acropoleis at Uruk and other sites – not as an expression of dominance and exclusivity, looking down on the lower echelons of society, but as rising above the mundane allegiances of ancestral groups and family networks, as linking people from any part of the city to the beings beyond, visually and conceptually. As for secular leadership at this juncture, whether in the form of a group of elders, a ruling family, or a powerful individual, it was likely vested in the maintenance of those same household and ancestral groupings." Porter, Anne. 2012. Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Easter Civilizations: Weaving Together Society. Cambridge UP. P. 153.
"Kinship forms past and present linkages between people so fundamental that they are rarely expressed but always practiced, linkages that serve to keep those who move far from home from leaving home altogether. Kinship also facilitates resolution of the practical and social difficulties inherent in a multiresource economy, such as integrating summer grazing in the agricultural lands along river courses and canals, a situation often cited as a locus of conflict." Porter, Anne. 2012. Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Easter Civilizations: Weaving Together Society. Cambridge UP. P. 161.
"It is simply not known why the Uruk expansion came to an end. All that is known is that at around 3100 BCE materials characteristic of southern Mesopotamia are no longer in evidence outside of southern Mesopotamia itself, the colonies of the Middle Euphrates disappear, and several local Late Chalcolithic sites come to an end or give way to new kinds of settlement, as is the case at Arslantepe. Thereafter, there is thought to have been a five-to-seven-hundred-year gap before anything of a complexity equal to that accomplished in the fourth millennium reemerges with the sudden rise and rapid spread of ‘secondary urbanism.’" Porter, Anne. 2012. Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Easter Civilizations: Weaving Together Society. Cambridge UP. P. 173.
"‘The nomad’s social round unfolds in numerous organizations which re neither hierarchically articulated, nor centrally controlled. Every person belongs at each moment to a large number of corporate groups, such as trading and herding partnerships and descent groups, maintains networks of kinsmen and friends.’ The same is equally true of sedentary – just as much as mobile – members of the ancient polity." Porter, Anne. 2012. Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Easter Civilizations: Weaving Together Society. Cambridge UP. P. 250. Subquote is from Marx E. 2006. "The Political Economy of Middle Eastern and North African Pastoral Nomads." Pp. 78-97. Chatty D (Ed) Nomadic Societies in the Middle East and North Africa, Entering the 21st Century. Brill. P. 90.
"All these rituals have to be properly executed and appropriately established for right order to exist: ‘the sacred marriage functions to re-establish annually a whole set of mutual obligations between the people and the gods who have become in-laws as a result of the marriage.’... "And what breaks right cosmological order? Usurpation." Porter, Anne. 2012. Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Easter Civilizations: Weaving Together Society. Cambridge UP. P. 273. Subquote: Cooper J. 1993. "Sacred Marriage and Popular Cult in Early Mesopotamia." Pp. 81-96. Matsushima E (Ed). Official Cult and Popular Religion in the Ancient Near East. Papers of the First Colloquium on the Ancient Near East. P. 91.
"With an anthropological sensibility brought to this evidence, it becomes clear that fragmentation is again both a concern and a dynamic – not, however, in the standard way, resulting in a split between pastoralist and farmer, but in its very opposite – as giving rise to mechanisms that defeat it. In this case, it is the consolidation of group identities – identities expressed especially as ancestral groups, in opposition to the hegemony of the center – that results in new political entities, but not new populations emerging in the land of the four riverbanks, from Ur to Mari and beyond." Porter, Anne. 2012. Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Easter Civilizations: Weaving Together Society. Cambridge UP. Pp. 324-5.
"Although organized in not just different but diametrically opposed ways, the geographies of expansion in both the Uruk period and Ur III period are remarkably similar, proceeding in successive bands, sweeping the line of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, and extending progressively northeastward. Key reasons behind the expansion are also remarkably similar: the integration and control of mobile pastoralists in support of the dominant industry of greater Mesopotamia, woolen textile production. If the family-based, decentralized approach practiced in the fourth millennium did not work (or rather, worked too well), the highly centralized, militaristic extension of control exercised at the end of the third millennium, in this instance clearly calculated to achieve its ends, also failed to accomplish its goals. Yet for two and a half thousand years, two fundamental relationships, with dynamics of their own, remained in play: one, the relationship between mobile and sedentary members of the ancestral group; two, the relationship between ancestral groups and the polity." Porter, Anne. 2012. Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Easter Civilizations: Weaving Together Society. Cambridge UP. P. 326.
"In the end, perhaps the most salient point to emerge from this delineation of how mobility changed the world is that the archaeological evidence is as much the product of practices that people perform in order to perpetuate their existences and the sociopolitical environments of those existences as it is the reflection of social hierarchy, economic function, and political organization. Those practices are often ritualized and, equally, often sanctioned within a religious context. They shape the nature of existence, with intended and unintended consequences. They are embodied." Porter, Anne. 2012. Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Easter Civilizations: Weaving Together Society. Cambridge UP. P. 329.
"Sillitoe found that both gathering and hunting in a tropical rain forest of the Papua New Guinea highlands to be costly, with foragers expending up to four times more energy on hunting than they obtained in food.... "Bailey and co-workers concluded that there were no unambiguous ethnographic accounts of foragers who lived in tropical rain forests without some reliance on domesticated plants and animals. Bailey and Headland later changed that conclusion as archaeological evidence from Malaysia indicated that high densities of sago and pigs would allow exceptions." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. P. 29. References: Sillitoe P. 2002. "Always been farmer-foragers? Hunting and gathering in the Papua New Guinea Highlands." Anthropological Forum. 12:45-76. Bailey R, Head G, Jenike M et al 1989. "Huntng and gathering in tropical rain forest: Is is possible" American Anthropologist. 91:59-82. Bailey R, Headland TN. 1991. "The tropical rain forest: Is it a productive environment for human foragers?" Human Ecology. 19:261-285.
"Approximate calculations for a small number of twentieth-century foraging groups show the highest net energy returns for the gathering of some roots. As many as 30-40 units of food energy were acquired for every unit expended. In contrast, many hunting forays, above all those for smaller arboreal or ground mammals in tropical rain forests, had a net energy loss or bare equivalence. Typical gathering returns were 10-20 fold, similar to those of hunting large mammals. Prehistoric returns were undoubtedly much higher in many biomass-rich environments, allowing for a gradual increase in social complexity." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. P. 37.
"Large-scale, long-term food storage changed foragers’ attitudes toward time, work, and nature and helped stabilize populations at higher densities. The need to plan and budget time, was perhaps the most important evolutionary benefit. This new mode of existence precluded frequent mobility and introduced a different way of subsistence based on surplus accumulation. The process was self-amplifying: the quest for the manipulation of an ever larger share of solar energy flows set the societies on the road toward higher complexity." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. P. 39.
"Reluctance to expand permanently cultivated land (a choice that entailed higher energy inputs, beginning with the clearing of primeval forests, the draining of swamps, or the building of terraced fields) led to much delayed reclamation of marginal lands... Medieval Europe saw waves of German peasants moving from densely populated western regions to open up new farmland in wooded or grassland areas of Bohemia, Poland, Romania, and Russia that were seen as undesirable by nearby cultivators... And everywhere, it took millennia to shift from regular, extensive fallowing to annual cropping and then to multicropping." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. P. 50.
"The advancing intensification of farming sustained higher population densities, but it also demanded higher energy expenditures, not only for direct farming activities but also for such critical supportive measures as the digging of wells, the building of irrigation canals, roads, and food storage structures, and the terracing of fields." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. P. 51.
"Rising share of starches in human diet resulted in a remarkable dietary adaptation of the first domesticated animal: genetic mutations increased starch digestion in dogs relative to the carnivorous diet of wolves, a crucial step in domesticating the species." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. P. 58.
"Draft animals became indispensable for fertilization, both as the source of nutrients in manures and as the prime mover distributing them to crops. In many places they also energized irrigation. More powerful prime movers and better water and nutrient supply also brought more multicropping and crop rotations. In turn, these advances could support large numbers of more powerful animals as the three intensification paths were linked by mutually reinforcing feedback loops." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. P. 65.
"The traditional variety of crops and their rotation schemes was enormous. For example, Buck’s second survey of Chinese farming counted an astonishing 547 different cropping systems in 168 localities." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. P. 86. Reference: Buck JL. 1937. Land Utilization in China. University of Nanking.
"Human-powered water lifting was tedious and time-consuming, and its energy costs were rather high–but so were the rewards of higher yields. When irrigation supplied additional water to crops during their critical growth periods its net food direct energy return (excluding the cost of building and maintaining irrigation canals) was easily around 30. Making up water shortfalls during less sensitive growth periods could still return around 20 times as much food energy in the additional harvest as the food consumed by peasants while treading water ladders." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. Pp. 92-3.
"But no culture surpassed the highest known applications of organic wastes that supported intensive farming in the dike-and-pond region of Guangdong province in South China, between 50 and 270 t of pig and human excrements per hectare." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. P. 93.
"Not surprisingly, at least 10% of all labor in Chinese traditional farming was devoted to managing fertilizers, and on the North China Plain heavy fertilization of wheat and barley was commonly the most time-consuming part of the human labor (close to one fifth) as well as of the animal draft power (about one-third) devoted to those crops. But this investment was very rewarding: its net energy return was commonly over 50." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. Pp. 93-4.
"A chinampa could yield up to four times as much as nonirrigated land. An excellent corn harvest of 3 t/ha would produce, after subtracting about one-tenth for seed and waste, about 30 GJ more food energy than a dryland plot. Fields were raised at least 1.5 m above the water level, so 1 ha of chinampa required a buildup of some 15,000 m3 of lake silt and mud. A man working five to six hours a day would emplace no more than 2.5 m3. Raising 1 ha of fields thus required about 6,000 man-days of labor. With a labor energy cost of 900 kJ/h, the task called for about 30 GJ of additional food energy–an amount gained in increased harvest in just a single year." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. P. 98.
"A hectare of a high-yielding chinampa could feed as many as 13-16 people deriving 80% of their food energy from the grain." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. P. 99.
"Unlike densely populated core regions of China, where the shortage of grazing land an a high population density precluded extensive ownership of livestock, European farming always had a strong component of animal husbandry." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. P. 100.
"As a result, the net energy return of the early nineteenth-century. Dutch farming was more than 160-fold compared to less than 40-fold gain in medieval English wheat cultivation and a less than 25-fold return in Roman grain farming in Italy around 200 CE." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. Pp. 104-5.
"During the first two decades of the twentieth century the numbers of American horses and mules stayed around 25 million. Growing enough feed for their maintenance and work required about one quarter of America’s cultivated land." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. P. 110.
"Not surprisingly, the transition from shifting to permanent farming and its subsequent intensification happened generally first in areas with poorer soils, limited arable land, high aridity, or uneven precipitation. Environmental stress and high population density certainly do not explain every instance and timing of cropping intensification, but a strong relationship is unmistakable." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. P. 124.
"These realities could be generalized as a fundamental preference of peasant societies to minimize the labor needed to secure basic food supply and essential possessions.... "Seavoy labeled this behavior–acquiring minimum levels of food safety and material welfare with the least expenditure of physical labor–a subsistence compromise." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. P. 125. Reference: Seavoy RE. 1986. Famine in Peasant Societies. Greenwood Press.
"The prime movers and fuels energizing these advances remained unchanged for millennia, but human ingenuity improved their performance in many remarkable ways. Eventually, some of these conversions became so powerful and so efficient that they were able to energize the initial stages of modern industrialization. Two principal roads led to higher outputs and better efficiencies. The first one was multiplication of small forces, primarily a matter of superior organization, especially with the application of animate energies. The second one was technical innovation, which introduced new energy conversions or increased the efficiencies of established processes. In practice, the two approaches often melded. For example, monumental structures built by virtually every old high culture demanded both massed labor and extensive applications of labor-easing devices, starting with simple levers and inclined planes and eventually including pulleys, cranes, windlasses, and treadwheels." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. P. 127.
"A nineteenth-century heavy draft horse with iron horseshoes and a collar harness hitched to a light flat-top wagon on a hard-top road could easily pull a load 20 times as heavy as its much lighter unshod, breast-harnessed ancestor linked to a heavy wooden cart on a muddy road could." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. P. 128.
"There were only two practical ways in which the delivery of useful animate power could be increased: either by concentrating individual inputs or by using mechanical devices to redirect and amplify muscular exertions.... "The three simplest aids providing mechanical advantage–levers, inclined planes, and pulleys–were used by virtually all old high cultures." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. Pp. 132-3.
"Three classes of mechanical devices–windlasses and capstans, treadwheels, and gearwheels–became critical for applying continuous human power, needed in lifting, grinding, crushing, and pounding." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. P. 137.
"But even small waterwheels had a major economic impact. Even when assuming that flour supplied half of an average person’s daily food energy intake, a small water mill, manned by fewer than 10 workers, would grind enough in a day (10 hours of milling) to feed some 3,500 people, a fair-sized medieval town, while hand milling would have required at least 250 laborers." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. P. 154.
"Waterwheels were the most efficient traditional energy converters. Their efficiencies were superior even when compared to the best steam engines, whose operation converted less than 2% of coal into useful power by 1780, and usually no more than 15% even by the end of the nineteenth century." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. Pp. 154-5.
"... the cleavage between animate and inanimate prime movers has been fully accomplished only among the richest fifth of the humanity." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. P. 388.
"The prolonged dominance of human labor, the slow diffusion of water- and wind-driven machines, and the rapid post-1800 adoption of engines and turbines are the three most remarkable features in the history of prime movers." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. P. 390.
"Ceylon’s Kalawewa irrigation system took about 1,400 years to build. Piecemeal construction and repairs of China’s Great Wall extended over an even longer period of time. And a century or two was not an exceptionally long time to finish a cathedral." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. P. 391. "The increased speed and range of passenger and goods transportation had its destructive counterpart in the increased speed, range and effective power of projectiles released by weapons. The killing range of spears was just a few tens of meters; an expertly fielded spear thrower could increase this distance to more than 60 m. Good composite bows delivered piercing arrows up to 500-700 m. This was also the range for the more powerful crossbows. Various catapults could throw stones of 20-150 kg 200-500 m. The reach rose rapidly when muscles were replaced by gunpowder." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. Pp. 402-3.
"The falling cost of fuels used to generate light directly or via electricity and the rising efficiency of lighting devices have combined to produce the secular drop in the cost of lighting services (monies/lumens) that is unequaled by any other kind of energy conversion." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. P. 406.
"Real electricity prices declined by 97-98% during the twentieth century both in Europe and in North America, and when this decline is combined with a concurrent fivefold rise in average per capita disposable income and up to an order of magnitude increase in conversion efficiency, it means that in the year 2000 a unit of electricity service in the United States was at least 200 times, and up to 600 times, more affordable than in 1900." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. P. 406.
"Fossil fuels and electricity have moved the world from a mosaic of economic autarchies and limited cultural horizons to an increasingly interdependent whole." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. P. 410.
"Urban car driving, preferred by many because of its supposedly faster speed, is a perfect example of an irrational energy use. After taking into account the time needed to earn monies for buying the car and to fuel it, maintain it, and insure it, the average speed of U.S. car travel amounted to less than 8 km/h in the early 1970s–and, with more congestion, by the early 2000s the speed was no higher than 5 km/h, comparable to speeds achieved before 1900 with horse-drawn omnibuses or by simply walking. In addition, with well-to-wheel efficiencies well below 10%, cars remain a leading source of environmental pollution; as already noted, they also exact a considerable death and injury toll." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. P. 414. Source cited: Illich I. 1974. Energy and Equity. Harper and Row.
"The sustained delivery of human power by adults could not be higher than about 100 W. The efficiency of converting food to mechanical energy could not exceed 20-25%." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. P. 419.
"The two most obviously worrisome consequences of the dependence on high energy flows is the restriction of choices (that is, the impossibility of abandoning existing practices without causing numerous massive dislocations) and degradation of the environment." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. Pp. 422-3.
"Restriction of choices is a paradoxical result of a world dominated by what Jacques Ellul called, simply and all-encompassingly, la technique, ‘the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity.’ This world gives us unprecedented benefits and almost magical freedoms, but in return, modern societies must not only adapt to it but submit to its rules and strictures." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. P. 423. Reference: Ellul J. 1954. La Technique ou l’enjeu du siecle. Armand Colin. P. xxv.
"Macroparasitism has assumed a variety of social controls of energy flows relying both on coercion–ranging from slavery and corvee labor to military conquests–and on complex (and partly voluntary) relationships among unequal groups of people. Special interest groups have become certainly the most important macroparasites in modern affluent countries.... "Olson aptly called such groupings distributional coalitions, and pointed out that stable societies will gradually acquire a greater number of such alliances." Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press. P. 429. Reference: Olson M. 1982. The Rise and Fall of Nations. Yale UP.
"The technological evolution of European Mode 1 should be considered a gradual, complex, and multicausal process." Martinez, Kenneth & Garriga JG. 2016. "On the origin of the European Acheulian." Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. 44:87-104. Pp. 98-9.
"... the time lag between the appearance of Mode 2 in Africa (1.7 Myr), in the Levant, (ca. 1.4 Myr), and its earliest appearance in Europe (0.7) Myr). Lithic technology is conservative, as the subsistence of the group depends on it, and changes are the ultimate manifestation of a historical process involving the cultural evolution of hominin groups in contact and competition among each other." Martinez, Kenneth & Garriga JG. 2016. "On the origin of the European Acheulian." Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. 44:87-104. P. 99.
"Although often characterized as rapid and the result of explicit human intention, domestication is a complex process along a continuum of human, plant and animal relationships that often took place over a long time period and was driven by a mix of ecological, biological, and human cultural factors." Larson, Greger, Piperno D, Allaby R, Purugganan, M, Andersson L, Arroyo-Kalin M, Barton L, Vigueira C, Denham T, Dobney K, Doust A, Gepts P, Gilbert MT, Gremillion K, Lucas L, Lukens L, Marshall F, Olsen K, Pires JC, Richerson P, de Casas RR, Sanjur O, Thomas M & Fuller D. 2014. "Current perspectives and the future of domestication studies." PNAS. April 29. V 111. N 17. 6139-6146. P. 6140.
"At least 11 regions of the Old and New World were involved as independent centers of origin, encompassing geographically isolated regions on most continents, but several more have been suggested." Larson, Greger, Piperno D, Allaby R, Purugganan, M, Andersson L, Arroyo-Kalin M, Barton L, Vigueira C, Denham T, Dobney K, Doust A, Gepts P, Gilbert MT, Gremillion K, Lucas L, Lukens L, Marshall F, Olsen K, Pires JC, Richerson P, de Casas RR, Sanjur O, Thomas M & Fuller D. 2014. "Current perspectives and the future of domestication studies." PNAS. April 29. V 111. N 17. 6139-6146. P. 6140.
"In the New World, crop domestication occurred thousands of years before animal domestication, whereas the opposite was true in areas such as Africa, Arabia, and India." Larson, Greger, Piperno D, Allaby R, Purugganan, M, Andersson L, Arroyo-Kalin M, Barton L, Vigueira C, Denham T, Dobney K, Doust A, Gepts P, Gilbert MT, Gremillion K, Lucas L, Lukens L, Marshall F, Olsen K, Pires JC, Richerson P, de Casas RR, Sanjur O, Thomas M & Fuller D. 2014. "Current perspectives and the future of domestication studies." PNAS. April 29. V 111. N 17. 6139-6146. P. 6140.
"The initial stages of the multispecies networks involved in domestication were critical because humans acted as: (i) dispersal agents (managing the reproduction of cultivated plants and controlling the mobility, range and density of domestic livestock); (ii) agents of (conscious or unconscious) selection, favoring the reproductive success of particular behavioral and phenotypic variants); and (iii) ecosystem modifiers, who (along with natural environmental changes) alter the developmental conditions and hence the characteristics of associated organisms." Larson, Greger, Piperno D, Allaby R, Purugganan, M, Andersson L, Arroyo-Kalin M, Barton L, Vigueira C, Denham T, Dobney K, Doust A, Gepts P, Gilbert MT, Gremillion K, Lucas L, Lukens L, Marshall F, Olsen K, Pires JC, Richerson P, de Casas RR, Sanjur O, Thomas M & Fuller D. 2014. "Current perspectives and the future of domestication studies." PNAS. April 29. V 111. N 17. 6139-6146. P. 6141.
"The evidence for a slow pace of domestication implies a cultural period in agricultural origins called ‘predomestication cultivation.’" Larson, Greger, Piperno D, Allaby R, Purugganan, M, Andersson L, Arroyo-Kalin M, Barton L, Vigueira C, Denham T, Dobney K, Doust A, Gepts P, Gilbert MT, Gremillion K, Lucas L, Lukens L, Marshall F, Olsen K, Pires JC, Richerson P, de Casas RR, Sanjur O, Thomas M & Fuller D. 2014. "Current perspectives and the future of domestication studies." PNAS. April 29. V 111. N 17. 6139-6146. P. 6142.
"Charles Darwin was the first to explicitly articulate the difference between conscious selection during domestication, in which humans directly select for desirable traits (called by Darwin ‘methodical’ selection), versus unconscious selection, where traits evolve as a by-product of growth and natural selection in field environments, or from selection on other traits." Larson, Greger, Piperno D, Allaby R, Purugganan, M, Andersson L, Arroyo-Kalin M, Barton L, Vigueira C, Denham T, Dobney K, Doust A, Gepts P, Gilbert MT, Gremillion K, Lucas L, Lukens L, Marshall F, Olsen K, Pires JC, Richerson P, de Casas RR, Sanjur O, Thomas M & Fuller D. 2014. "Current perspectives and the future of domestication studies." PNAS. April 29. V 111. N 17. 6139-6146. P. 6142.
"Factors such as the distribution area of the crops wild progenitors as well as the rapidity of crops spread outside their centre of origin have likely contributed to the emergence of the three described alternative domestication scenarios: a domestication event from a single gene pool in a restricted area, the best example so far being maize; a diffuse domestication from wild gene pool(s) distributed in a broader area, pearl millet domestication in the Sahel zone, which illustrates this situation, along with barley with the recent discovery that the genome of cultivated barley is a mosaic of several wild source populations; multiple domestications in geographically distinct areas. Examples of the latter include the common bean, which was domesticated independently in Mexico and the Andes from two divergent gene pools as well as Asian rice with two, perhaps even three, independent domestications." Martinez-Ainsworth, N & Tenaillon M. 2016. "Superheroes and masterminds of plant domestication." Comptes Rendus Biologies. 339: 268-273. P. 270.
"... Fuller et al. have established that fixation of the non-shattering phenotype in barley, einkorn and emmer extended over a period of 2000 to 2500 years." Martinez-Ainsworth, N & Tenaillon M. 2016. "Superheroes and masterminds of plant domestication." Comptes Rendus Biologies. 339: 268-273. P. 272. Reference: Fuller DQ, Denham T, Arroyo-Kalin M, Lucas L, Stevens CJ, Qin L, Allaby R, Purugganan M. 2014. "Convergent evolution and parallelism in plant domestication revealed by an expanding archaeoloogical record." PNAS. 111: 6147-6152.
"The most notable consequence of domestication is a loss of genetic diversity. This has been observed in many species and varies from few percents to 20% up to 80% loss at the nucleotide level in maize and durum wheat respectively." Martinez-Ainsworth, N & Tenaillon M. 2016. "Superheroes and masterminds of plant domestication." Comptes Rendus Biologies. 339: 268-273. P. 272.
"If one individual stores her harvest instead of sharing it, she inevitably produces inequalities between producers, increasing the social costs of hoarding that we argue shape nonreciprocal sharing in many immediate return contexts. However, if everyone is storing and not sharing, the social costs are minimal. What Bowles and Choi show is that the maintenance of a delayed-return economy characteristic of farming requires cultural institutions to manage material property for storage and redistribution." Bird, Douglas, Bird RB, Codding BF. 2016. "Pyrodiversity and the Anthropocene: the Role of Fire in the Broad Spectrum Revolution." Evolutionary Anthropology. 25:105-116. Pp. 106-7. Reference: Bowles S, Choi JK. 2013. "Coevolution of farming and private property during the early Holocene." PNAS. 110:8830-35.
"Windfall (stochastic) resources are commonly shared more widely than are resources with strong links between labor and production, suggesting similar processes behind such norm development. This suggests that when everyone has access to economically defendable resources (when resources are spatially and temporally predictable, with patchy distribution decreasing the costs of defense), and when the amount of time invested predicts harvest size, ownership may be likely to emerge and spread in a population. We argue that such conditions, with profoundly dynamic networks of nonlinear interaction, are more likely to emerge where foragers regularly and systematically disturb landscapes in ways that increase patchiness and habitat heterogeneity." Bird, Douglas, Bird RB, Codding BF. 2016. "Pyrodiversity and the Anthropocene: the Role of Fire in the Broad Spectrum Revolution." Evolutionary Anthropology. 25:105-116. P. 108.
"The co-evolutionary ecological model we explore here suggests that the emergent properties of human-environment interaction, with intermediate levels of ecosystem disturbance, shape landscapes and ecological communities in ways that cause shifts in species distributions, which in turn shape human social organization in ways that favor greater benefits of ownership and producer control over resource distribution. The model links ecological disturbance creating patchiness and predictability in certain resources with social processes of sharing and cooperation. We propose that shifts in ecological conditions that increase production of small prey, reduce variability in acquisition, increase group size, reduce mobility, and thus favor storing over sharing can be an emergent property of the way hunter-gatherers interact with plant and animal communities." Bird, Douglas, Bird RB, Codding BF. 2016. "Pyrodiversity and the Anthropocene: the Role of Fire in the Broad Spectrum Revolution." Evolutionary Anthropology. 25:105-116. P. 108.
"Returns are highest in areas under intermediate use, where the negative effects of anthopogenic resource depression are outweighed by the positive effects of human fire." Bird, Douglas, Bird RB, Codding BF. 2016. "Pyrodiversity and the Anthropocene: the Role of Fire in the Broad Spectrum Revolution." Evolutionary Anthropology. 25:105-116. P. 112.
"... we have previously demonstrated, without anthropogenic burning heterogeneity dramatically declines." Bird, Douglas, Bird RB, Codding BF. 2016. "Pyrodiversity and the Anthropocene: the Role of Fire in the Broad Spectrum Revolution." Evolutionary Anthropology. 25:105-116. P. 112.
"The Martu data indicate that people operating in anthropogenic fire regimes experience increased returns from small-game hunting at the immediate scale, which supports long-term increases in subsistence returns over longer periods. Long-term small-game returns are higher because human fire increases patchiness and fine-scale habitat heterogeneity, which increases the predictability and density of generalist and staple animal prey near central places. This tends to reduce mobility, increase reliance on small prey, and reduce variability across individuals, which decreases sharing and increases the benefits to hunters of controlling distribution. Critically, fire is not being used deliberately as a habitat management tool; rather, the use of fire is maintained by its immediate benefits to hunting burrowed animals. Complex systems then emerge from these interactions." Bird, Douglas, Bird RB, Codding BF. 2016. "Pyrodiversity and the Anthropocene: the Role of Fire in the Broad Spectrum Revolution." Evolutionary Anthropology. 25:105-116. P. 113.
"We suggest that broad-spectrum economies may be shaped through co-evolutionary processes involving habitat modification, which can result in increased populations of some species (often smaller or disturbance-dependent) and reduce variability in acquisition, shifting sharing norms toward increasing private ownership and reducing mobility." Bird, Douglas, Bird RB, Codding BF. 2016. "Pyrodiversity and the Anthropocene: the Role of Fire in the Broad Spectrum Revolution." Evolutionary Anthropology. 25:105-116. P. 114.
"Two worldviews and their respective NEPD [Near Eastern plant domestication] models have been debated in recent years. One holds that plant domestication is a form of evolutionary mutualism that emerged from deep-time human liaisons with plants, unfolded slowly, occurred autonomously in subcenters across the Near East. The opposing model views plant domestication as a punctuated, knowledge-based human initiative that was rapid, geographically localized, fully conscious, mostly monophyletic, and gave rise to a nutritionally-agronomically balanced crop package." Abbo, Shahal & Gopher A. 2017. "Near Eastern Plant Domestication: A History of Thought." Cell Press. June. V. 22. N. 6. Pp 491-511. P. 492.
"Note that, except for barley, genetic studies mostly suggest monophyletic origins for Near Eastern crops." Abbo, Shahal & Gopher A. 2017. "Near Eastern Plant Domestication: A History of Thought." Cell Press. June. V. 22. N. 6. Pp 491-511. P. 498.
"During the early 20th century, Engelbrecht, and followers of his Dump-Heap hypothesis, were free of any archaeological or archaeobotanical agenda. yet, their circumstantial model is intimately related to the existence of a human cultural niche as the ‘stage’ on which the ‘play’ unfolds. Namely, domestication was ‘initiated’ by the plants that presented themselves to humans in human-made or -affected contexts in a way that was hard to ignore, or in other words, until their potential was eventually acknowledged by a ‘wise old savage’ (Darwin’s 19th-century wording). Humans are involved in two ways: first, they unintentionally create the circumstances that provide the suitable arena for plant domestication and, second, they notice what happened once plant phenotypes become conspicuous." Abbo, Shahal & Gopher A. 2017. "Near Eastern Plant Domestication: A History of Thought." Cell Press. June. V. 22. N. 6. Pp 491-511. P. 499. Reference: Engelbrecht TH. 1916. Ueber die entstehung einiger feldmaessig angebauter kulturpflanzen." Geog. Zeitsch. 22: 328-334. "The plant domestication versus crop evolution distinction emerges as a powerful key for reconstructing the biological and cultural aspects that underlined the adoption of wild species for domestication." Abbo, Shahal & Gopher A. 2017. "Near Eastern Plant Domestication: A History of Thought." Cell Press. June. V. 22. N. 6. Pp 491-511. P. 501.
"Our own experience based on the cooperation between archaeologists, botanists, and agronomists, and genetic studies of the relevant plant species suggests a core area-one-event domestication model that, in our view, is a better alternative and a more parsimonious reconstruction of NEPD.... "Admittedly, the circumstantial, protracted, autonomous NEPD model prevails in the current literature, while a reconstruction based on centered, rapid, knowledge-based selection of a package of plant species for domestication is a minority view." Abbo, Shahal & Gopher A. 2017. "Near Eastern Plant Domestication: A History of Thought." Cell Press. June. V. 22. N. 6. Pp 491-511. P. 502.
"A quickening of the direct interaction between hominins and plants is apparent at 100 kya, with grass seed consumption by early Homo sapiens in Mozambique. Later evidence comes from Neanderthals up to 50 kya where plant material enshrined in the calculus matrix of teeth shows the consumption of plants later associated with domestication, such as Hordeum, Phoenix, and members of the Faboideae. Furthermore, an insight into the sophistication of this plant use is evident from the occurrence of starch granules showing damage that may be consistent with cooking. This ‘early’ starch economy is also apparent from the late Pleistocene (13.7-15.0 kya) of modern humans from dental caries and a broad range of plant materials from the same context, including grasses, oak, legumes, pines, and pistachio." Allaby, Robin, Kistler L, Gutaker R, Ware R, Kitchen J, Smith O, Clarke A. 2015. "Archaeogenomic insights into the adaptation of plants to the human environment: pushing plant-hominin co-evolution back to the Pliocene." Journal of Human Evolution. 79: 150-157. P. 151.
"However, it was not only plants that were exploited for food that were involved in this adaptation to live within the human environment. Other small-seeded grasses and legumes also adapted and developed domestication syndrome traits such as non-shattering and an annual habit. Therefore, a community of plants that encompassed a range beyond that which could credibly be attributed to human choice thrived in the human environment." Allaby, Robin, Kistler L, Gutaker R, Ware R, Kitchen J, Smith O, Clarke A. 2015. "Archaeogenomic insights into the adaptation of plants to the human environment: pushing plant-hominin co-evolution back to the Pliocene." Journal of Human Evolution. 79: 150-157. P. 151.
"It is possible that these expansions and crude latitudinal adaptations [for barley and rice in moving with humans into northern latitudes] represent the juxtaposition of adaptations of low complexity in complex environments, leading to the frequent collapse of agrarian societies. As such, the spread of agriculture may represent a period of disequilibrium in the long-term plant-hominin interaction, with a predisposed hominin side driving rapid change on the plant side. Currently available evidence suggests that such punctuations have been rare in plant-hominin co-evolution, although an interesting episode may have happened deep in the hominin lineage. During the cooling of the Pliocene 5.33-2.58 mya, predisposed plant forms developed C4 metabolism and rapidly developed savannahs, dramatically changing the landscape and available food sources. In this case it may well have been the hominin lineage that was dragged across a selective gradient, and indeed this period and the Plio-Pleistocene boundary are associated with the rise of a large number of fundamental changes in hominin evolution, such as the appearance of stone tool technologies, increasing brain size, and a shift to a more C4-based diet." Allaby, Robin, Kistler L, Gutaker R, Ware R, Kitchen J, Smith O, Clarke A. 2015. "Archaeogenomic insights into the adaptation of plants to the human environment: pushing plant-hominin co-evolution back to the Pliocene." Journal of Human Evolution. 79: 150-157. P. 155.
"It is important to point out that there is no fixed list of variables [to define a property of urbanism]. I have suggested economic basis, ideology, investment projects, exchange networks, inter-personal relations and social power, conflict, utilization of social space, cultural memory and representation – but this is neither a prescriptive nor an exhaustive list." Gaydarska, Bisserka. 2016. "The City is Dead! Long Live the City!" Norwegian Archaeological Review. V 49. N 1, 40-57. P. 49.
"Pioneering settlement forms that turned into ‘dead-ends’ and their more successful counterparts that we now call ‘first cities’ are equally important in revealing the initial impetus behind settlements forms that shared many characteristics with previous and contemporary sites, yet were perceived and experienced as different. In my view, this approach differs strongly from the impetus towards the emergence of cities in the established urban tradition." Gaydarska, Bisserka. 2016. "The City is Dead! Long Live the City!" Norwegian Archaeological Review. V 49. N 1, 40-57. P. 50.
"In the early levels, the occupation of the settlement is localized. The site follows a regional tradition that sees settlements divided into neighbourhoods of 30-40 structures, often separated by midden spaces, open areas, or alleys. In the middle levels, building complexity and internal storage capacity increases, as corroborated by the expansion of associated, attached ancillary spaces; this shift also follows widespread regional trends. Population and population density peak as indicated by a highly-packed settlement plan, high fertility rates, and evidence of osteoperiostitis brought on by the stresses associated with crowding. Coincidentally, it is in these middle levels, too, that domesticated cattle were likely introduced to the site and began to be integrated into feasting events. "After this time, we start to see the dispersal of clustered neighbourhoods and a contraction in settlement layout. It is during these later levels that houses begin to acquire or are surrounded by more external areas, with a rise in the number of external hearths and ovens. Some scholars have suggested such a trend represents a kind of ‘distancing’ of one dwelling from another. The tradition of ‘history houses’ [engaged in the passing down of human body parts and the construction of histories involving events associated with wild animals] declines, as does the emphasis on architectural installations of wild animal bodies. We also see houses become more and more independent, potentially even managing their own herds in contrast to earlier levels where herding appears to have been a much more collective task. An increase in the quantity of deposits and a diversification in body part representation and species selection may indicate an uptake in feasting in the later levels, suggesting that certain shared practices still endured. Major changes also occurred in lithic and ceramic industries, in addition to the wall paintings, where we begin to see the advent of narrative hunting scenes.... "At Catalhoyuk, these temporal trends are thought to have emerged from an initial ‘population-hungry’ system with robust, collective social and ritual structures. It has been postulated that this system approaches a breaking point in the middle levels, at the limit of carrying capacity and with individual domestic productive units overtaxed. In the later levels, greater household autonomy and production independence help to alleviate these stresses." Der, Lindsay, Issavi J. 2017. "The Urban Quandary and the ‘Mega-Site’ from the Catalhoyuk Perspective." J. World Prehist. 30:189-206. P. 200.
"The human-mediated translocation of species now dates back to the Late Pleistocene. For example, the northern common cuscus, endemic to New Guinea, was transported to eastern Indonesia, the Solomon Islands, and the Bismarck Archipelago beginning ~20-23 ka, becoming a key subsistence species." Boivin, Nicole, Zeder M, Fuller D, Crowther A, Larson G, Erlandson J, Denham T, Petraglia M. 2016. "Ecological consequences of human niche construction: Examining long-term anthropogenic shaping of global species distributions." PNAS. June 7. V 113. N 23. 6388-6396. P. 6389.
"One of the most significant impacts of the Late Pleistocene expansion of our species may have been on megafauna. The human role in the Late Quaternary extinction episode, which saw at least 101 of 150 genera of Earth’s megafauna (animals larger than 44 kg) go extinct between 50 and 10 ka, has long been contentious. Recent analyses support at least a partial anthropogenic impetus in numerous regions, and a dominant human role in others. Of particular importance are new global analyses drawing on higher resolution data and computational modeling approaches. These studies indicate an important role for humans and an inverse relationship between severity of extinction and duration of hominin-megafauna coevolution, with uniformly high extinction rates in areas where H. sapiens was the first hominin to arrive. "Now regional analyses support these findings. For example, recent high-resolution paleoecological and stable isotope data from Australia, where no hominins existed before ~55 ka, show that megafaunal collapse occurred during a period of climatic stability and most closely correlates with human arrival. Improved chronologies for various Australian and Tasmanian sites support anthropogenic rather than climatic explanations for megafaunal extinctions." Boivin, Nicole, Zeder M, Fuller D, Crowther A, Larson G, Erlandson J, Denham T, Petraglia M. 2016. "Ecological consequences of human niche construction: Examining long-term anthropogenic shaping of global species distributions." PNAS. June 7. V 113. N 23. 6388-6396. P. 6390.
"For example [of species translocations to islands], Neolithic colonizers who arrived on Cyprus brought domestic cereals, pulses, sheep, goat, cattle, pigs, domestic dogs, and cats, as well as mainland game animals such as fallow deer, fox, and wild boar beginning 10.6 ka.... "Cyprus had a low density of food animals, and the islands of the Pacific often lacked edible plants and possessed limited nonmarine fauna. In island Southeast Asia, humans transported a range of domesticates, as well as various species of deer, primate, civet, cuscus, wallaby, bird, shrew, rat, and lizard to generate habitats more favorable to human sustenance. Anthropogenic landscapes were created through species introductions, as well as habitat modification, including fire and other means, which reshaped the composition and abundance of native species. On the Pacific island of Tonga, Polynesians introduced at least 40 plant species, mostly trees, shrubs, and herbaceous cultigens." Boivin, Nicole, Zeder M, Fuller D, Crowther A, Larson G, Erlandson J, Denham T, Petraglia M. 2016. "Ecological consequences of human niche construction: Examining long-term anthropogenic shaping of global species distributions." PNAS. June 7. V 113. N 23. 6388-6396. P. 6391.
"Extinctions and extirpations were a common consequence of island colonization in prehistory. Thousands of bird populations in the Pacific went extinct after Polynesian colonization. One recent study of nonpasserine birds on 41 Pacific islands shows that two-thirds went extinct between initial prehistoric colonization and European contact. Bird species extinctions impact important ecosystem processes like decomposition, pollination, and seed dispersal, leading to trophic cascades." Boivin, Nicole, Zeder M, Fuller D, Crowther A, Larson G, Erlandson J, Denham T, Petraglia M. 2016. "Ecological consequences of human niche construction: Examining long-term anthropogenic shaping of global species distributions." PNAS. June 7. V 113. N 23. 6388-6396. P. 6392.
"Multidisciplinary datasets reveal that agricultural intensification, in response to factors like growing populations and emerging markets, was a major driver of ecological change across the Old World from the Bronze Age onwards. In the Near East, Bronze Age datasets reveal pervasive turnover from deciduous to evergreen oak and replacement of indigenous forest with cultivated orchard crops like olive, grape, and fig. Cereal crops and vegetation indicative of grazing and other anthropogenic disturbance increased. Archaeological study of wood charcoal points to a decline in tree taxa richness from the Middle Bronze Age to the Late Iron Age." Boivin, Nicole, Zeder M, Fuller D, Crowther A, Larson G, Erlandson J, Denham T, Petraglia M. 2016. "Ecological consequences of human niche construction: Examining long-term anthropogenic shaping of global species distributions." PNAS. June 7. V 113. N 23. 6388-6396. P. 6392. "Onager, Arabian oryx, and ostrich were all extirpated from the southern Levant, largely through ungulate mass kills, by the second millennium B.C.E. Ancient urbanization contributed to a major reduction in large-bodied mammal species in Egypt, from 37 in the Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene to only 8 today." Boivin, Nicole, Zeder M, Fuller D, Crowther A, Larson G, Erlandson J, Denham T, Petraglia M. 2016. "Ecological consequences of human niche construction: Examining long-term anthropogenic shaping of global species distributions." PNAS. June 7. V 113. N 23. 6388-6396. P. 6392.
"A recent estimate from Britain, where some of the most systematic archaeobotanical studies have been carried out, indicates that at least 50 new plant foods (mostly fruits, herbs, and vegetables) were introduced in the Roman period alone, with many entering into cultivation." Boivin, Nicole, Zeder M, Fuller D, Crowther A, Larson G, Erlandson J, Denham T, Petraglia M. 2016. "Ecological consequences of human niche construction: Examining long-term anthropogenic shaping of global species distributions." PNAS. June 7. V 113. N 23. 6388-6396. P. 6393.
"... a number of general patterns concerning the long-term human shaping of biodiversity.... "Third, there is widespread evidence for increasing rates of human-mediated species translocation, extinction, and ecosystem and biodiversity reshaping through time. This acceleration is not constant but is characterized by pulses and pauses that reflect cultural, ecological, and climatic transformations at local, regional, and global scales. These changes have increasingly concentrated biomass into particular sets of human-favored plants and animals." Boivin, Nicole, Zeder M, Fuller D, Crowther A, Larson G, Erlandson J, Denham T, Petraglia M. 2016. "Ecological consequences of human niche construction: Examining long-term anthropogenic shaping of global species distributions." PNAS. June 7. V 113. N 23. 6388-6396. P. 6393.
"We assume, as is common in HBE [human behavioral ecology], that selection favors the optimal solution to a problem in any given context, whether the solution is arrived at via some ‘combination of genetic adaptation, physiological plasticity or culturally transmitted information.’ To the point, the ways that humans produce food, which is constructing their niche, may affect the composition of an ecosystem; in turn, the changed composition of the ecosystem may change the behaviors that are optimal – and, by inference, fitness maximizing – in the future. It is this feedback between the optimal behavior now, an ecosystem’s structure, and optimal behaviors in the future that needs investigation to better understand variation in people’s investment in farming." Freeman, Jacob, Peeples M, Anderies J. 2015. "Toward a theory of non-linear transitions from foraging to farming." Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. 40: 109-122. P. 110.
"Alternatively, population growth could lead to the depletion of wild resources, which would decrease the marginal rate of return from foraging relative to farming: this possibility invokes ecological inheritance as a causal mechanism; the composition of the ecosystem is changed by the depression of wild resources, which changes the calculus about whether it is optimal to forage or farm." Freeman, Jacob, Peeples M, Anderies J. 2015. "Toward a theory of non-linear transitions from foraging to farming." Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. 40: 109-122. P. 111.
"Ecological inheritance is known to cause non-linear trajectories of evolution. An important possibility is that ecological inheritance may result in multiple stable states, or ways that humans could be organized to obtain food in a given environment. Multiple stable states can lead to transitions that are punctuated, difficult to anticipate, and very costly to reverse." Freeman, Jacob, Peeples M, Anderies J. 2015. "Toward a theory of non-linear transitions from foraging to farming." Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. 40: 109-122. P. 119.
"This is an exciting period in evolutionary biology. The principal Darwinian research tradition is upheld, but the specifics of evolutionary theory structures are undergoing ferment, including the revision of some of its traditional elements and the incorporation of new elements. Instead of privileging selected mechanisms such as random variation, genetic control and natural selection, the multitude of factors that dynamically interact in the evolutionary process will be better expounded by a pluralistic theory framework. Current evolutionary research already reflects this pluralism, and as many of its underlying concepts have drifted from the standard theoretical paradigm, an adjusted evolutionary framework that adequately synthesizes the multitude of new theoretical elements has become a necessity. The EES [extended evolutionary synthesis] represents one possibility for such integration." Mueller, Gerd. 2017. "Why an extended evolutionary synthesis is necessary." Interface Focus. 7: 20170015. P. 9.
"The power of finance to effect such important transitions in world history is that it moves economic value forward and backward through time." Goetzmann, William. 2016. Money Changes Everything: How Finance Made Civilization Possible. Princeton UP. P. 2.
"... intersubjective phenomena emerge only as a dynamic relation between these two broad domains: the personal and the inter-personal. Any emphasis on either side of this relation at the expense of the other fails to capture the complete picture." Di Paolo, Ezequiel & De Jaegher H. 2017. "Neither Individualistic nor Interactionist." Pp. 87-105. Durt Christoph, Fuchs T, Tewes C. (Eds). Embodiment, Enaction, and Culture: Investigating the Constitution of the Shared World. MIT Press. P. 87.
"... social interaction is the regulated coupling between at least two autonomous agents, where the regulation is aimed at aspects of the coupling itself so that it constitutes an emergent autonomous organization in the domain of relational dynamics, without destroying in the process the autonomy of the agents involved." De Jaegher, Hanne & Di Paolo, E. 2007. "Participatory sense-making: An enactive approach to social cognition." Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. 6: 485-507. P. 493. From: Di Paolo, Ezequiel & De Jaegher H. 2017. "Neither Individualistic nor Interactionist." Pp. 87-105. Durt Christoph, Fuchs T, Tewes C. (Eds). Embodiment, Enaction, and Culture: Investigating the Constitution of the Shared World. MIT Press. P. 89.
"The definition [of social interaction] demands two strong conditions. Condition (1) requires that there is a co-regulated coupling, which originates a series of dynamical, relational processes that become self-sustaining (autonomous) in the relational domain. This is important because this condition allows us to speak of events and properties as belonging to the interaction or being external to it. Condition (2) requires that the participants are and remain autonomous. They do not lose the possibility of exerting their powers on the interaction patterns or attempting to terminate it." Di Paolo, Ezequiel & De Jaegher H. 2017. "Neither Individualistic nor Interactionist." Pp. 87-105. Durt Christoph, Fuchs T, Tewes C. (Eds). Embodiment, Enaction, and Culture: Investigating the Constitution of the Shared World. MIT Press. Pp. 89-90.
"Too much emphasis on the autonomy of relational patterns, such that individuals are subordinated to them, ignores the second condition of social interaction, which demands the sustained autonomy of individuals. Similarly, too much emphasis on the individual determinants of a social encounter (individual intentions, brain mechanisms for interpreting the actions and intentions of other, etc.) misses the role played by the self-determining aspects of the interactive dynamics." Di Paolo, Ezequiel & De Jaegher H. 2017. "Neither Individualistic nor Interactionist." Pp. 87-105. Durt Christoph, Fuchs T, Tewes C. (Eds). Embodiment, Enaction, and Culture: Investigating the Constitution of the Shared World. MIT Press. P. 90.
"In the absence of live interaction, the capacities at work in understanding others still rely on interactive skills. People, their bodies, their actions, manifest themselves to other people not as inputs but in the richness of a dynamical coupling full of virtual possibilities, even when the agent is not interacting with them directly.... In other words, social agents are pulled into interactions with others to different degrees, and this pull exists even if actual engagement is absent or not possible. These dispositions have been described as readiness-to-interact." Di Paolo, Ezequiel & De Jaegher H. 2017. "Neither Individualistic nor Interactionist." Pp. 87-105. Durt Christoph, Fuchs T, Tewes C. (Eds). Embodiment, Enaction, and Culture: Investigating the Constitution of the Shared World. MIT Press. P. 94.
"Meaning is the relational activity of sense-making, which holistically involves the autonomous agent’s adaptive modulation of its own dynamical tendencies and its coupling with the world. Never in any of the descriptions of sense-making in the enactive literature has meaning been equated with coupling. The coupling between agent and environment is only one element in the sense-making process, certainly not the bearer of any meaning by itself (another remnant of representationalist thinking: meaning as content moved about in vehicles)." Di Paolo, Ezequiel & De Jaegher H. 2017. "Neither Individualistic nor Interactionist." Pp. 87-105. Durt Christoph, Fuchs T, Tewes C. (Eds). Embodiment, Enaction, and Culture: Investigating the Constitution of the Shared World. MIT Press. Pp. 97-8.
"The two forms of autonomy in participatory sense-making (individual and interactional) establish a primordial tension, one that is managed in increasingly complex ways but never fully disappears." Di Paolo, Ezequiel & De Jaegher H. 2017. "Neither Individualistic nor Interactionist." Pp. 87-105. Durt Christoph, Fuchs T, Tewes C. (Eds). Embodiment, Enaction, and Culture: Investigating the Constitution of the Shared World. MIT Press. P. 99.
"For humans, fire became important for many reasons, including cooking, protection and warmth, but most of these presuppose some degree of control. Fire foraging, in contrast, demands only an attraction towards fires, in the hope of benefitting from additional resources. For hominins, benefits could include retrieval of birds eggs, rodents, lizards and other small animals, as well as of invertebrates. Although fire does not create such resources, it renders them far more visible, and chance cooking might well improve their digestibility." Gowlett J. 2016. "The discovery of fire by humans: a long and convoluted process." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371: 20150164. P. 2.
"... there are occasional instances, largely anecdotal, of mammalian predators such as cheetahs positioning themselves to spring on prey fleeing fires. Bird ‘fire followers’ are much better recorded. They amount to many species across continents. They show the availability of resources, the potential selective advantage, and by inference that this kind of fire harvesting would be within the cognitive capabilities of early hominins." Gowlett J. 2016. "The discovery of fire by humans: a long and convoluted process." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371: 20150164. P. 2.
"If hominins could not ignite fire, however, they would need to be able to maintain it robustly, and hence probably be reliant on a strong social network allowing its replacement." Gowlett J. 2016. "The discovery of fire by humans: a long and convoluted process." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371: 20150164. P. 5.
"By 120,000 years ago, pierced shell beads indicate a knowledge of twine or leather cord, which would have been necessary for operating a fire drill. Before this date at Pinnacle Point in South Africa, stone was being warmed to improve its working qualities. Such finds are a further early indication of the use of fire in technological processes:..." Gowlett J. 2016. "The discovery of fire by humans: a long and convoluted process." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371: 20150164. P. 5. "Within the last 20,000 years, there came major new fire interactions, the first associated with pottery, which appears to have originated in China. From around 10,000 years ago, agriculture would potentially have widespread effects. Fixed Neolithic settlements, such as Catalhoyok, would have required wide-ranging foraging for firewood, but there are indications in the Levant that woodland was sometimes managed. Soon afterwards, from roughly 5,000 years ago come the beginnings of metalworking, first copper and bronze, and then iron. Such interventions involve the raising of temperatures far above those of open fires–the development of a true pyrotechnology." Gowlett J. 2016. "The discovery of fire by humans: a long and convoluted process." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 371: 20150164. P. 7.
"... it is clear that from the perspective of early hominin ecology, fire can be considered to be a seasonal resource." Chazan Michael. 2017. "Toward a Long Prehistory of Fire." Current Anthropology. V 58. Supplement 16. August. S351-59. P. S352.
"The available archaeological data are consistent with a scenario of three stages in the development of human interaction with fire during the Paleolithic.... "Stage 1: Opportunistic interaction with fire dates back 1 million years but likely appears much earlier, perhaps even to the origins of Homo erectus. Fire at this stage was a seasonal resource, and maintenance of fire was limited.... "Stage 2: Enhanced maintenance of fire was associated with the development of base camp sites. The maintenance of fire requires such occupation and there is strong evidence for the development of this behavior between 400,000 and 200,000 years ago.... "Stage 3: Enclosure of fire is a late development not associated with seasonal collection and maintenance. There appears to be an association between the enclosure of fire with habitual use of techniques to create fire. This stage in the scenario proposed here would provide the basis for an adaptation dependent on year-round obligate cooking." Chazan Michael. 2017. "Toward a Long Prehistory of Fire." Current Anthropology. V 58. Supplement 16. August. S351-59. Pp. S353-5.
"We are left with the difficulty of reconciling the apparent evidence that suggests fire played a minor role in the early hominin record and the revolutionary impact of fire on early hominin adaptations proposed by Wrangham." Chazan Michael. 2017. "Toward a Long Prehistory of Fire." Current Anthropology. V 58. Supplement 16. August. S351-59. P. S354.
"If fire could only be collected but was becoming an increasingly critical aspect of hominin adaptation, this would also place a high degree of importance on the maintenance of fire. As a result there would be a degree of tethering of groups to places where fire was maintained in order to prolong the availability of this resource." Chazan Michael. 2017. "Toward a Long Prehistory of Fire." Current Anthropology. V 58. Supplement 16. August. S351-59. P. S355.
"Some 20 years ago, the dating of the earliest known ceramic containers completely overturned the classic view, which had allied pottery closely with agriculture. The dates range from 15000-10000 BC for China, Japan and Siberia, to cal 9400 BC for West Africa, and around 5500-5000 BC for the Brazilian Amazon." De Saulieu, Geoffroy & A. Testart. 2015. "Innovations, food storage and the origins of agriculture." Environmental Archaeology. V 20. N 4. 314-320. P. 316.
"These parallels [evidence for pottery before agriculture in both countries] support the theory that, in Japan as in China, the scenario was as follows: the first potters were mobile hunter-gatherers, who gradually became sedentary, storing their respective food resources, supplemented no doubt by the products of the first agricultural experiments, and finally passing the tipping point into a full-blown agricultural economy." De Saulieu, Geoffroy & A. Testart. 2015. "Innovations, food storage and the origins of agriculture." Environmental Archaeology. V 20. N 4. 314-320. P. 317.
"In short, in tropical America there were agriculturalists who had to continue hunting, but also many hunter-gatherers who diversified their resources by means of agriculture." De Saulieu, Geoffroy & A. Testart. 2015. "Innovations, food storage and the origins of agriculture." Environmental Archaeology. V 20. N 4. 314-320. P. 317.
"Inventing and diversifying pottery, increasing foraging with its ever more varied equipment (containers, stone mortars, baskets, fish nets and traps, drying racks, etc.), embarking on agriculture, starting to store food (in pits), all these remain, up to a point, compatible with a nomadic life. However, the multiplication of inventions and the accumulation of necessary equipment became increasingly burdensome. Mobility was thereby limited. People began to stay longer in one place. This increasing and almost enforced sedentarism of hunter-gatherers weighed down by their tools furthered their involvement in agriculture. And cultivating a garden is much harder when one must often leave it." De Saulieu, Geoffroy & A. Testart. 2015. "Innovations, food storage and the origins of agriculture." Environmental Archaeology. V 20. N 4. 314-320. P. 318.
"We know of no factors that would necessarily have prevented hunter-gatherers from practising agriculture. However, intense agriculture would not have been compatible with their mobile lifestyle. Technical advances in the last millennia of the Pleistocene era led to a reduction in their mobility, if not to true sedentarism. This favoured the development of agriculture, which until then had only been practised on a very small scale. In sum, it was the gradual multiplication of inventions, increasingly incompatible with nomadism (pottery, mortars, storage and simple agriculture), which led eventually to the wholesale adoption of agriculture." De Saulieu, Geoffroy & A. Testart. 2015. "Innovations, food storage and the origins of agriculture." Environmental Archaeology. V 20. N 4. 314-320. P;. 318-9.
"On balance, then, a combination of energy savings with thermal benefits and locomotor advantages would seem to provide the mostly likely selection pressures favouring bipedalism in the australopiths, with the locomotor advantages probably becoming increasingly important with Homo in order to facilitate a more nomadic ranging pattern and the occupation of lower altitude habitats under significantly cooler thermal regimes." David-Barret, Tamas & Dunbar, R. 2016. "Bipedality and hair loss in human evolution revisited: The impact of altitude and activity scheduling." Journal of Human Evolution. 94: 72-82. P. 79.
"Those who today disparage the Evolutionary Synthesis as a constrained, dogmatic assertion that evolution consists only of natural selection on random genetic mutations within species must recognize that the authors of the Synthesis were responding to an almost complete repudiation of natural selection, adaptation, and coherent connection of macroevolution to these processes. Macroevolution, in particular, was explained by Lamarckian modification, orthogenesis (for which no mechanism was every articulated), and saltation (mutationism)." Futuyma, Douglas 2015. Pp. 29-85. "Can Modern Evolutionary Theory Explain Macroevolution?" From: Serrelli E & Gontier N (Eds). Macroevolution. Springer. P. 33.
"The claims embodied in the Evolutionary Synthesis were well founded, and hold up today to an extraordinary extent. It is, of course, inconceivable that they should be complete and sufficient in the face of the vast increase of biological knowledge, especially of molecular, developmental, and physiological processes, but they were well founded enough not to be abandoned lightly. Having considered several challenges to the explanation of macroevolution developed during the Evolutionary Synthesis, I conclude that the ST [synthetic theory] remains fairly intact, but that the challengers have advanced our understanding or at least introduced considerations worth pursuing." Futuyma, Douglas 2015. Pp. 29-85. "Can Modern Evolutionary Theory Explain Macroevolution?" From: Serrelli E & Gontier N (Eds). Macroevolution. Springer. P. 74.
"Proximal physical processes can constrain form and are clearly involved in the production of new forms, which cannot exist other than by physical events. But these events cannot explain the fixation of the new forms in species populations, nor the further honing of such features into more precise, effective adaptations." Futuyma, Douglas 2015. Pp. 29-85. "Can Modern Evolutionary Theory Explain Macroevolution?" From: Serrelli E & Gontier N (Eds). Macroevolution. Springer. P. 75.
"Explanation by gene frequency change and explanation by changes in the material, mechanistic properties of organisms are complementary; one need not diminish the significance of the other." Futuyma, Douglas 2015. Pp. 29-85. "Can Modern Evolutionary Theory Explain Macroevolution?" From: Serrelli E & Gontier N (Eds). Macroevolution. Springer. P. 75.
"The emphasis [at the synthesis of Darwin with Mendelian genetics] was on transmission genetics, and the phenotype, with its environmentally sensitive development (Darwin’s main subject and the object of natural selection) fell into comparative neglect on the part of evolutionary theorists in favor of a strong emphasis on the role of the gene. "The twenty-first century promises to be the century of the environment, in human affairs and in biology.... At the same time, within biology, descriptive genomics is giving way to comparative studies of gene expression, bringing molecular genetics closer to the study of the (molecular) phenotype." West-Eberhard, MJ. 2009. "Darwinisn in the twenty-first century." Rend. Fis. Acc. Lincei. 20:297-299. P. 298.
"... most gene frequency change follows, rather than starts, the origin of selectable variation, even if the change is initiated by a mutation. In this sense, genes are followers rather than leaders in evolution. "Evolutionary biology in the twenty-first century promises to add attention to development and the environment to the genetic insights of the past century. This represents a return to Darwin’s original formulation of the idea of evolution by natural selection, which envisioned inheritance as involving both the transmission and the expression of traits." West-Eberhard, MJ. 2009. "Darwinisn in the twenty-first century." Rend. Fis. Acc. Lincei. 20:297-299. Pp. 298-9.
"Because there is genetic variation in the thresholds of responses to the environment, and in other factors that affect the expression of traits, such as habitat selection, diet and social status within groups, novel traits of environmental origin have as much evolutionary potential as mutation-induced novelties, or even more evolutionary potential, since a large population of genetically variable individuals can be affected immediately by an environmental factor; only one individual can initially be affected by a mutation." West-Eberhard, MJ. 2009. "Darwinisn in the twenty-first century." Rend. Fis. Acc. Lincei. 20:297-299. P. 299.
"Fire-making played an indispensable role in transforming hominid ecology, food consumption, and social life, as well as in the emergence of new land uses based on residence systems linked to home bases. The technological breakthrough concerning the use of fire that made it a routine component of hominin lifeways is evidenced at Qesem Cave at least as early as ca. 300 ka, although burned bones from the lowest units are recorded already as soon as ca. 400 ka." Blasco, Ruth, Rosell J, Sanudo P, Gopher A, Barkai R. 2016. "What happens around a fire: Faunal processing sequences and spatial distribution at Qesem Cave (300 ka), Israel." Quaternary International. 398: 190-209. P. 206. "After hundreds of thousands of years of stability, around 0.2-0.3 Ma the lithic record begins to vary divergently by region and cumulatively over time. Correctly identifying age and provenience for stone tools younger than 0.3 Ma from morphological clues alone is relatively easy and becomes easier still with ever-younger sets of artifacts." Shea, John. 2017. "Occasional, obligatory, and habitual stone tool use in hominin evolution." Evolutionary Anthropology. 26: 200-217. Pp. 201-2.
"Tools are exosomatic objects that organisms use to manipulate energy, modify other materials from their natural state, and to insulate themselves from environmental stresses. Humans are obligatory tool users in the sense that we cannot long survive without using tools." Shea, John. 2017. "Occasional, obligatory, and habitual stone tool use in hominin evolution." Evolutionary Anthropology. 26: 200-217. P. 202.
"Plio-Pleistocene stone tools appear together with no fewer than three hominin genera, Australopithecus, Paranthropus, and early homo spp. These hominins differ from their Pliocene precursors and other African primates in having reduced canines, teeth that living nonhuman primates use for cutting tasks analogous to those inferred for Plio-Pleistocene lithic artifacts. For any or all such Plio-Pleistocene hominins, stone tools could have been ‘artificial teeth.’" Shea, John. 2017. "Occasional, obligatory, and habitual stone tool use in hominin evolution." Evolutionary Anthropology. 26: 200-217. P. 209.
"This sequence [of humans’ relationship to tools] began around 3-4 Ma with occasional stone tool use likely arising as a consequence of anterior dental reduction among Pliocene hominins. Habitual stone tool use augmented occasional stone cutting tool use during Early Pleistocene times, after 1.7 Ma. Stone tool use became increasingly obligatory after 0.3 Ma, but this quality varied, as indeed all human behavior does." Shea, John. 2017. "Occasional, obligatory, and habitual stone tool use in hominin evolution." Evolutionary Anthropology. 26: 200-217. P. 213.
"In a comparative study of the weapons and practices across numerous cultures, Churchill found that 95% of the world-wide societies used the spear, but only half of them used it in terrestrial hunting. Primarily, spearing technologies were used for marine mammals, fishing, warfare, and defense against predators. The spear was the most effective against larger prey and, rather than thrown, ‘The thrusting spear is used primarily as a dispatching tool after prey have been placed in a disadvantageous position’.... "Even when thrown, the spear is a short-range weapon, which is why hunters often cornered prey in a narrow canyon, swamp, or snow drift." Angelbeck, Bill & Cameron I. 2014. "The Faustian bargain of technological change: Evaluating the socioeconomic effects of the bow and arrow transition in the Coast Salish past." Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. 36: 93-109. P. 95. Reference/subquote: Churchill SE. 1993. "Weapon technology, prey size selection, and hunting methods in modern hunter-gatherers: implications for hunting in the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic." Archeol Pap Am Anthropol Assoc. 4(1): 11-24. P. 16.
"While the atlatl has advantages in the force of the projectile, its main limitations concerned where it could be used (open environments), the hindrance to stealth, and the number of shots readily available for the hunter. The bow and arrow addresses each of these drawbacks." Angelbeck, Bill & Cameron I. 2014. "The Faustian bargain of technological change: Evaluating the socioeconomic effects of the bow and arrow transition in the Coast Salish past." Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. 36: 93-109. P. 96.
"Their [Hare et al] results indicated that use of the atlatl ranged from at least 8360 BP to approximately 1250 BP, when the bow and arrow became predominant. In comparing arrow dates with dart dates, they claimed that ‘it is clear that there is virtually no temporal overlap between atlatl and bow-and-arrow technology in southern Yukon’. They described the transition as an ‘abrupt technological replacement’ about 1200 BP." Angelbeck, Bill & Cameron I. 2014. "The Faustian bargain of technological change: Evaluating the socioeconomic effects of the bow and arrow transition in the Coast Salish past." Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. 36: 93-109. P. 97. Reference: Hare PG, Greer S, Gotthardt R, Farnell R, Bowyer V, Schweger C, Strand D. 2004. "Ethnographic and archaeological investigations of alpine ice patches in southwest Yukon, Canada." Arctic. 57 (3): 260-272. Subquote: P. 268.
"Where the Holocene revolution occurred, acknowledgment of one’s fellow first farmers’ property rights in dwellings, crops, and animals became a convention, that is, a norm that persisted once it had become common because respecting the rights of others was in the interest of each as long as two conditions were met. The first was that most people accept the exclusion of others from one’s possessions as legitimate. The second was that the things one valued could be made to be possessions, that is, they could be unambiguously demarcated and then defended so that contests over the facts of possession would be infrequent." Bowles, Samuel & Choi, Jung-Kyoo. 2013. "Coevolution of farming and private property during the early Holocene." PNAS. May 28. V 110. N 22. 8830-8835. Pp. 8831-2.
"The passage from initial domestication of one or two species accounting for a modest portion of the diet to a primary commitment to food production in some cases extended over as may as six millennia." Bowles, Samuel & Choi, Jung-Kyoo. 2013. "Coevolution of farming and private property during the early Holocene." PNAS. May 28. V 110. N 22. 8830-8835. P. 8832.
"The key event here is thus not the ‘invention’ of farming but the coincidence of sufficiently many individuals adopting both the novel property rights and the new technology so as to overcome the critical mass problem." Bowles, Samuel & Choi, Jung-Kyoo. 2013. "Coevolution of farming and private property during the early Holocene." PNAS. May 28. V 110. N 22. 8830-8835. P. 8834. "From an Earth system sciences perspective, the key feature of the Anthropocene is that human domination has led to the emergence of feedback between human and nonhuman systems at a planetary scale, such that actions on energy use, land use, food consumption, and trade have consequences for the basic functioning of the planet and can potentially destabilize planetary function." Malhi, Yadvinder. 2017. "The Concept of the Anthropocene." Annual Review of Environment and Resources. 42:77-104. P. 84.
"One set of indicators is new materials of purely anthropogenic origin [technofossils]. These include the abundance of pure elemental aluminum (98% of all production of aluminum has been since 1950), concrete (which was invented by the Romans but only became a prime building material since World War 2; in the past 20 years the volume produced is equivalent to 1 kg m-2 of land surface), and plastics (which were developed around 1900, surged after 1950, and have a current annual production of 300 teragrams, equal to global human biomass; plastics are now common in marine sediments as both as macroscopic fragments and as ubiquitous microscopic particles). There are also other distinct organic geochemical signatures (e.g., polyaromatic hydrocarbons, polychlorinated biphenyls, and diverse pesticide residues) that show elevated concentrations since around 1950." Malhi, Yadvinder. 2017. "The Concept of the Anthropocene." Annual Review of Environment and Resources. 42:77-104. P. 86.
"However, the consequences of this mixing and extinction [of species] for the geological record will persist for hundreds of millions of years as local evolutionary pathways have been fundamentally reset to a degree that would be obvious to any future paleontologist. Changes in geological periods and epochs throughout the Phanerozoic are often recognized by abrupt changes in the fossil record of life. Such changes support the geological arguments for the Anthropocene epoch. Indeed, the magnitude and legacy of changes would support an argument for a higher level of stratigraphic classification, such as period or possibly even era (the last change in era being the ecological ‘reset’ that occurred after the extinction of the nonavian dinosaurs). This biotic signature may well be the most long-lived and obvious long-term stratigraphic signature of the Anthropocene." Malhi Yadvinder. 2017. "The Concept of the Anthropocene." Annual Review of Environment and Resources. 42:77-104. P. 87.
"Indeed, the potential that a convincing argument could be made for a higher-level classification such as an Anthropogene period or Anthopozoic eon means that it might be premature, and of limited utility, to rush into defining an Anthropocene epoch." Malhi, Yadvinder. 2017. "The Concept of the Anthropocene." Annual Review of Environment and Resources. 42:77-104. P. 88.
"Foley et al. suggest adopting the informal term Paleoanthropocene to describe these early alterations of the environment, which form a spectrum of intensity building up to a recent start of the Anthropocene, but which are distinguishable by the lower magnitude and rate of human-caused change." Malhi, Yadvinder. 2017. "The Concept of the Anthropocene." Annual Review of Environment and Resources. 42:77-104. P. 89. Reference: Foley SF, Gronenborn D, Andreae MO, Kadereit JW, Esper J, et al. 2013. "The Palaeoanthropocene–the beginnings of anthropogenic environmental change." Anthropocene. 3:8-88.
"Once the Anthropocene is recognized as a new phase of human-natural relationships, a range of societal and philosophical responses are possible. The prevailing and instinctive narrative response has tended toward one of scientifically informed management and planetary stewardship." Malhi, Yadvinder. 2017. "The Concept of the Anthropocene." Annual Review of Environment and Resources. 42:77-104. P. 94.
"At its core, the Anthropocene is an encapsulation of the concept that modern human activity is large relative to the basic processes of planetary functioning, and therefore that human social, economic, and political decisions have become entangled in a web of planetary feedbacks." Malhi, Yadvinder. 2017. "The Concept of the Anthropocene." Annual Review of Environment and Resources. 42:77-104. P. 97.
"There are hordes of excellent unicellular niches; multicellularity is often selectively disadvantageous. Yeasts evolved multiply from multicellular filamentous ancestors; Myxozoa are parasitic unicells that evolved from animals with nervous systems (early-branching Cnidaria), losing epithelia, connective tissue, nerves and 70% of genes as useless, only their multicellular spores keeping nematocysts." Cavalier-Smith, Thomas. 2017. "Origin of animal multicellularity: precursors, causes, consequences–the choanoflagellate/sponge transition, neurogenesis and the Cambrian explosion." Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B. 372: 20150476. P. 1.
"Multicellularity evolves in two ways. Naked cells, as in animals and slime moulds, evolve glue to stick together. Walled cells modify wall biogenesis to inhibit the final split that normally makes separate unicells, so daughters remain joined... Tissues require more geometric control of daughter wall orientation, ..." Cavalier-Smith, Thomas. 2017. "Origin of animal multicellularity: precursors, causes, consequences–the choanoflagellate/sponge transition, neurogenesis and the Cambrian explosion." Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B. 372: 20150476. P. 2.
"Merely joining daughter cells together suffices to create efficient multicellular phototrophs or osmotrophic saprotrophs because their essential trophic features remain intracellular. A bacterial or protist phototroph can easily become multicellular while maintaining the same way of feeding and identical cell functions.... However, a phagotrophic amoeba could not aggregate into a multicellular body and still locomote and feed the same way. Nor could most other protozoa. Many amoebae have become multicellular, but only temporarily for spore dispersal, not feeding. Aggregative multicellularity has produced multispore fruiting bodies numerous times ... That is because their multicellular phases are non-trophic; they evolved purely for efficient aerial spore dispersal, free of conflict between need to feed and to aggregate; spores still function as unicells." Cavalier-Smith, Thomas. 2017. "Origin of animal multicellularity: precursors, causes, consequences–the choanoflagellate/sponge transition, neurogenesis and the Cambrian explosion." Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B. 372: 20150476. P. 2.
"If evolving multicellularity is mechanistically so easy for bacteria and protists, then why did animals evolve only once? Primarily, because it is selectively immensely harder for organisms that feed by swallowing others or bits of them to switch from intracellular phagocytosis, as in amoebae or ciliates, to eating with a multicellular mouth and gut, whose cells have novel functions and structures absent in their unicellular ancestors." Cavalier-Smith, Thomas. 2017. "Origin of animal multicellularity: precursors, causes, consequences–the choanoflagellate/sponge transition, neurogenesis and the Cambrian explosion." Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B. 372: 20150476. P. 2.
"Among extant animals, only sponges could have evolved directly from protozoa without changing feeding mode. The key problems in understanding animal origins are therefore how and why sponges evolved from a craspedid-like stem choanoflagellate and later generated all other animals." Cavalier-Smith, Thomas. 2017. "Origin of animal multicellularity: precursors, causes, consequences–the choanoflagellate/sponge transition, neurogenesis and the Cambrian explosion." Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B. 372: 20150476. P. 2.
"I contend that it was not the presence of potential glue molecules, but the rare ability of choanoflagellate cells to stick together yet still feed as before that made stem choanoflagellates our ancestors. Inability to do this would strongly select against similar aggregative mutations in other groups." Cavalier-Smith, Thomas. 2017. "Origin of animal multicellularity: precursors, causes, consequences–the choanoflagellate/sponge transition, neurogenesis and the Cambrian explosion." Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B. 372: 20150476. P. 4.
"For understanding animal origins, the key problem is not how cells evolved a capacity to stick together (trivial)–or even why–but defining the selective forces that promoted the fundamental differentiation between sponge feeding cells (choanocytes) and non-feeding cells and between cells that stick together as epithelia and connective tissue cells embedded separately in a gelatinous mesohyl." Cavalier-Smith, Thomas. 2017. "Origin of animal multicellularity: precursors, causes, consequences–the choanoflagellate/sponge transition, neurogenesis and the Cambrian explosion." Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B. 372: 20150476. P. 4.
"Filtering more water by a different sessile body form is, I argue, the selective advantage that made sponges." Cavalier-Smith, Thomas. 2017. "Origin of animal multicellularity: precursors, causes, consequences–the choanoflagellate/sponge transition, neurogenesis and the Cambrian explosion." Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B. 372: 20150476. P. 4. "Cultivating cyanobacteria in ECM [extracellular matrix] mucilage would make the photophagotrophic consortium an extremely effective competitor with merely branched choanocyte-only colonial choanoflagellates.... Great Barrier Reef sponges 1-2 m high are often red through being packed with cyanobacteria whose biomass is greater than that of the sponge cells....Even sponges without cyanobacteria or green algae have a huge bacterial symbiont biomass, often in special bacteriocytes, presumably providing trophic or other advantages such as antibiotic defence against invaders." Cavalier-Smith, Thomas. 2017. "Origin of animal multicellularity: precursors, causes, consequences–the choanoflagellate/sponge transition, neurogenesis and the Cambrian explosion." Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B. 372: 20150476. Pp. 5-6.
"Understanding asymmetric cytoskeletons and spatial control of membrane protein secretion of the whole spectrum of zooflagellates as well as sponges will do far more than genomics for elucidating the physical forces that made animals. Making animals is a four-dimensional, not a one-dimensional problem." Cavalier-Smith, Thomas. 2017. "Origin of animal multicellularity: precursors, causes, consequences–the choanoflagellate/sponge transition, neurogenesis and the Cambrian explosion." Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B. 372: 20150476. P. 7.
"The larger larvae of true sponges provided a novel, hitherto unexploited, food for predators. One stem sponge lineage, I suggest, evolved nematocysts to catch and digest them, thereby becoming the ancestor of coelenterates (Cnidaria, Ctenophora), a clade on the best multigene trees." Cavalier-Smith, Thomas. 2017. "Origin of animal multicellularity: precursors, causes, consequences–the choanoflagellate/sponge transition, neurogenesis and the Cambrian explosion." Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B. 372: 20150476. P. 7.
"Synapses evolved to make ciliated larval settlement faster and more effective by neural coordination of concerted banks of nematocysts under the control of ciliated sensors that selected the best sites." Cavalier-Smith, Thomas. 2017. "Origin of animal multicellularity: precursors, causes, consequences–the choanoflagellate/sponge transition, neurogenesis and the Cambrian explosion." Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B. 372: 20150476. P. 8.
"On the contrary, to evolve a coelenterate from a stem sponge depended on preexisting epithelial adhaerens junctions, enabling extracellular digestion, thus converting spongocoel into gut lumen; and required only two key cellular innovations; secretory nematocysts for enhancing larval settling and trapping metazoan prey; action potentials in protoneurons; as well as loss of choanocyte collars and ostia. Neither is mechanistically or selectively unlikely;.... ... so coelenterates should have evolved essentially immediately after sponges, which fits the fossil record." Cavalier-Smith, Thomas. 2017. "Origin of animal multicellularity: precursors, causes, consequences–the choanoflagellate/sponge transition, neurogenesis and the Cambrian explosion." Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B. 372: 20150476. P. 8. "This interpretation of Ediacaran fossils implies that presponges preceded sponges by scores of millions of years." Cavalier-Smith, Thomas. 2017. "Origin of animal multicellularity: precursors, causes, consequences–the choanoflagellate/sponge transition, neurogenesis and the Cambrian explosion." Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B. 372: 20150476. P. 11.
"The Cambrian explosion is the most striking animal example of ultrarapid origins of novel body forms: Simpson’s quantum evolution, convincingly attributed to the invasion of previously unexploited major adaptive zones. Some lesser examples (e.g. land invasion generating tetrapods) may have been initiated by behavioural changes allowing entry into pre-existing vacant habitats and associated body plan modifications. Behaviour changed markedly during animal phylum origins–contrast crawling molluscs, burrowing annelids, walking/swimming arthropods and sedentary filtering Bryozoa–but in most cases, mutations creating truly novel body plans effectively simultaneously created body plans and their adaptive zones. Origins of sponges, cnidaria, ctenophores and coelomate bilateria made organisms with novel body plans and thereby new adaptive zones; they cannot sensibly be regarded as responses to environmental change or entry into pre-existing adaptive zones." Cavalier-Smith, Thomas. 2017. "Origin of animal multicellularity: precursors, causes, consequences–the choanoflagellate/sponge transition, neurogenesis and the Cambrian explosion." Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B. 372: 20150476. P. 12.
"The bottom line in my argument is that something as world-changing as agriculture and state formation requires the qualitatively new social worlds of cities as a prerequisite." Taylor, Peter. 2012. "Extraordinary Cities: Early ‘City-ness’ and the Origins of Agriculture and States." International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. May. V 36.3 415-447. P. 416.
"Thus the complexity of cities includes both internal links (clusters/agglomeration) and external links (networks/connectivity). It is this combination that makes cities so special:..." Taylor, Peter. 2012. "Extraordinary Cities: Early ‘City-ness’ and the Origins of Agriculture and States." International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. May. V 36.3 415-447. P. 417.
"Central place theory is essentially about the local relations of urban places, albeit at different scales of ‘local’ as the urban hierarchy is ascended. The focus is on the central place as it services its local area. This process can be equated with town-ness, a relatively simple flow of people to the ‘town’ to access public goods or buy private goods. City-ness, on the other hand, deals with non-local flows of people, commodities and information between cities, which has been termed ‘central flow theory.’" Taylor, Peter. 2012. "Extraordinary Cities: Early ‘City-ness’ and the Origins of Agriculture and States." International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. May. V 36.3 415-447. P. 419.
"Soja’s interpretation of a pre-Mesopotamian, multi-city Western Asia is that it represents a first ‘urban revolution’. Thus he develops a thesis of three urban revolutions: this early one, Childe’s Mesopotamian urban revolution and the modern industrial urban revolution." Taylor, Peter. 2012. "Extraordinary Cities: Early ‘City-ness’ and the Origins of Agriculture and States." International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. May. V 36.3 415-447. P. 427. Reference: Soja EW. 2000. Postmetropolis: critical studies of cities and regions. Blackwell.
"The category urban needs a serious rethink across all disciplines." Fletcher, Roland. 2010. "Shining Stars and Black Holes: Urbanism, Comparison, and Comparability." Journal of Urban History. 36(2): 251-256. P. 253.
"In addition, the relationship between urbanism and mobility needs to be reappraised. The familiar position is that urban life is quintessentially sedentary. Yet it is now repeatedly noted that the urban populations of the United States and Europe are increasingly peripatetic." Fletcher, Roland. 2010. "Shining Stars and Black Holes: Urbanism, Comparison, and Comparability." Journal of Urban History. 36(2): 251-256. P. 254.
"The conventional, essentially Mesopotamian-European-Chinese model, is that the compact city extracts tax from its surrounding region. The tax is then stored in the city and disbursed from there to create a trade-power nexus. But the ‘moving’ capital offers an entirely different path whereby the city goes to the provinces and strips them of resources on a cyclical basis, requiring no substantial storage as it moves. The low-density, preindustrial urban patterns offer yet another option of incessant, ‘just in time’ delivery of small quantities of produce throughout the year by numerous different families,... The residents are dispersed across the landscape and grow food outside their ‘front door.’ They then store it in their houses until the scheduled time when they must deliver the produce to a palace, temple, administrative center, or work site." Fletcher, Roland. 2010. "Shining Stars and Black Holes: Urbanism, Comparison, and Comparability." Journal of Urban History. 36(2): 251-256. P. 254.
"Many of the genes that came to be involved in multicellular biogeneric effects pre-existed the metazoans, and others that may have evolved gradually exerted their effects on morphology or pattern in an abrupt fashion owing to the frequently nonlinear properties of mesoscale physical effects. Thus, a straightforward relationship between genotype and phenotype does not generally hold in this picture.... "For example, aggregation of unicellular organisms is not a major transition, but the constitution of liquid tissues, which affords the possibility of evolving multilayered and hollow embryos, is." Newman, Stuart. 2016. "‘Biogeneric’ developmental processes: drivers of major transitions in animal evolution." Philosophical Transactions: B. 371: 20150443. P. 2.
"Morphogenesis of early-stage animal embryos depends on cells being independently mobile and capable of slipping past one another while remaining attached to each other collectively. In contrast to a non-living liquid’s molecules that translocate by randomly directed Brownian motion, cells in liquid tissues translocate by the analogous effect of uncorrelated cytoskeleton-driven fluctuations of their surfaces, which lead (in the absence of tissue gradients) to random locomotion. The cell masses or layers from which body plans and organs develop thus behave formally like liquids." Newman, Stuart. 2016. "‘Biogeneric’ developmental processes: drivers of major transitions in animal evolution." Philosophical Transactions: B. 371: 20150443. P. 3.
"The morphological consequences of the constitution of liquid tissues show that this event was indeed a major transition in the history of life." Newman, Stuart. 2016. "‘Biogeneric’ developmental processes: drivers of major transitions in animal evolution." Philosophical Transactions: B. 371: 20150443. P. 4.
"The formation of a sharply defined second layer was the foundation of the first major evolutionary transition in animal life following the constitution of liquid tissues. It is the basis of ‘gastrulation’ in present-day diploblastic and triploblastic forms. Multilayering provides a platform for a profusion of body plans and occurs in several different manners with varying degrees of stability, each dependent on phase-separation behaviours of the liquid tissue state:..." Newman, Stuart. 2016. "‘Biogeneric’ developmental processes: drivers of major transitions in animal evolution." Philosophical Transactions: B. 371: 20150443. P. 5.
"With triploblasty the consequences of the major evolutionary transition first marked by the formation of distinct germ layers in diploblasts were realized in a dramatic fashion. Triploblasts comprise the majority of animal phyla and have more complex body plans than diploblasts... The rise of triploblasty from diploblastic ancestors thus constitutes a major evolutionary transition." Newman, Stuart. 2016. "‘Biogeneric’ developmental processes: drivers of major transitions in animal evolution." Philosophical Transactions: B. 371: 20150443. P. 6.
"In summary, this major transition late in animal evolution [reaction-diffusion processes to set up periodic tissues as for vertebrates], like the early ones described in the previous sections, was based on the constitution of a tissue with new biogeneric properties. In this case, the novelty was a reaction-diffusion-adhesion network with narrowly stereotypical patterning outcomes, which contrasted with the loosely organized networks specifying the more variable species-idiosyncratic limb endoskeletons of ancestral and divergent modern groups." Newman, Stuart. 2016. "‘Biogeneric’ developmental processes: drivers of major transitions in animal evolution." Philosophical Transactions: B. 371: 20150443. P. 7.
"Using three examples, I have put forward the general hypothesis that certain major transitions in the evolution of the animals were based on the constitution of new biogeneric materials and their associated dynamical processes. I have focused on (i) the emergence of the animals, which involved the origination, from populations of unicellular holozoans, of ‘liquid tissues’; (ii) the addition of planar and interstitial ECMs to some ancestral metazoan lineages, thus giving rise to diploblastic and triploblastic animals, and (iii) the establishment within a liquid-tissue appendage (the ancestral gnathostome fin) of a reaction-diffusion system based on a pair of galectin-family carbohydrate-binding proteins, which generates patterns typically consisting of arrays of small numbers of parallel endoskeletal elements." Newman, Stuart. 2016. "‘Biogeneric’ developmental processes: drivers of major transitions in animal evolution." Philosophical Transactions: B. 371: 20150443. P. 7.
"As the reality of evolution came to be recognized in the nineteenth century, hierarchical schemes for the ‘grades’ of organisms relative to their morphological complexity (primitive to advanced) were propounded, such as Haeckel’s ‘Gastrea’ theory based on his recapitulationism, embodied in his famous ‘tree of life’ diagram. The rise of a strong theoretical commitment in the twentieth century to the function-related opportunism of natural selection led evolutionists such as Stephen Jay Gould to reject the hierarchical view of the history of life as a remnant of the pre-Enlightenment ‘great chain of being’, and to favour instead a ramifying bush-like representation of the relationships among organisms. Taken together with the comparable age of all extant lineages, the neo-Darwinian tenet that evolution never ceases transforming phenotypes has made references to ‘primitive’ and ‘advanced’ characters unfashionable, if not outright taboo. "Notwithstanding these insights, the implication of the analysis presented in this paper is that, at least concerning the early evolution of the animals and certain of their organs, the hierarchical picture contained an important truth." Newman, Stuart. 2016. "‘Biogeneric’ developmental processes: drivers of major transitions in animal evolution." Philosophical Transactions: B. 371: 20150443. P. 8.
"At a given moment, workers [e.g. ants or cells in the pancreas] will be distributed across a range of tasks – specializing (permanently or temporarily) as a forager, a cemetery cleaner or a nurse, for instance. This allocation of workers to distinct tasks promotes colony efficiency and productivity. However, recent studies have revealed extraordinary heterogeneity within physical worker castes." Kennedy, Patrick, Baron G, Qiu B, Freitak D, Helantera H, Hunt E, Manfredini F, O’Shea-Wheller T, Patalano S, Pull C, Sasaki T, Taylor D, Wyatt C, Sumner S. 2017. "Deconstructing Superorganisms and Societies to Address Big Questions in Biology." Trends in Ecology & Evolution. November. V 32. N 11. 861-872. P. 864.
"The heterogeneous nature of social phenotypes within the colony appears to be adaptive at the colony level. For example, honeybee colonies with high genetic diversity (generated from multiply mated queens) experience reduced fluctuation in temperature compared with less genetically diverse colonies; this is because the response thresholds of individuals are genetically determined, and so varied patrilines deliver varied response thresholds. Variations in response thresholds are also important in decision making. For example, among house-hunting ants, some individuals have high thresholds for accepting a new nest, making it more likely that the colony finds the best available option." Kennedy, Patrick, Baron G, Qiu B, Freitak D, Helantera H, Hunt E, Manfredini F, O’Shea-Wheller T, Patalano S, Pull C, Sasaki T, Taylor D, Wyatt C, Sumner S. 2017. "Deconstructing Superorganisms and Societies to Address Big Questions in Biology." Trends in Ecology & Evolution. November. V 32. N 11. 861-872. Pp. 864-5.
"In the chemical context employed here contiguity is seen as a connected gradient of physico-chemical conditions through which the different components of a chemical system can be synthesized and achieve their connectivity." Kee, Terrence & Monnard PA. 2017. "Chemical systems, chemical contiguity and the emergence of life." Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry. 13: 1551-1563. P. 1554.
"Thus, short of proposing a global, environmentally anchored solution to the syntheses of all molecules necessary for life to emerge, distinct geochemical environments could have not only produced specific chemicals, but could also have contributed to their evolution at different stages." Kee, Terrence & Monnard, PA. 2017. "Chemical systems, chemical contiguity and the emergence of life." Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry. 13: 1551-1563. P. 1554.
"Today, it seems clear that a change of paradigm is warranted, thus the idea of chemical systems and its corollary, chemical contiguity, which must be explored in relation to early earth geochemistry." Kee, Terrence & Monnard, PA. 2017. "Chemical systems, chemical contiguity and the emergence of life." Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry. 13: 1551-1563. P. 1559.
"Looking at the origins of life scenario, one has to come to terms with the most difficult and central aspect of the problem: how does a heterogeneous and diverse mixture of source chemicals and building blocks come together in specific ways (prebiotic chemistry) to give rise to more complex chemical entities, which then transform themselves into homogeneous polymers that function and evolve through heterogeneous interaction with other small and [sic] macromolecules (protobiology)? How to the heterogeneous interactions of a diverse collection of heterogeneous molecules (‘heterogeneous heterogeneity’: amino acids, sugars, nucleobases, phosphates, fatty acids, small molecules, and metal ions) metamorphose to heterogeneous interactions of a collection of homogeneous supramolecular entitites (‘homogeneous heterogeneity’: proteins, polysaccharides, nucleic acids, and bilayer lipids) capable of function and evolution?" Krishnamurthy, Ramanarayanan. 2017. "Giving Rise to Life: Transition from Prebiotic Chemistry to Protobiology." Accounts of Chemical Research. 50: 455-459. P. 455.
"Key to this approach [avoiding clean, isolated, and homogeneous systems as models to study] is the realization that starting with a heterogeneous mixture of source chemicals and building blocks need not be a problem. There could be natural interactions and catalysis that can lead to selective reactions or feedback, which in turn would set the next stage for chemical selections. These approaches, while experimentally and analytically demanding, point to the way in which the chemical origins o life research could actually benefit, by challenging the origins of life practitioners to deal with the difficulties posed by the prebiotic clutter of heterogeneous heterogeneity head on." Krishnamurthy, Ramanarayanan. 2017. "Giving Rise to Life: Transition from Prebiotic Chemistry to Protobiology." Accounts of Chemical Research. 50: 455-459. P. 456.
"In much of the discussion about the evolution of language, there is ambiguity about what is meant by language itself. Most are clear that language cannot be simply defined as communication. If that were so, there could be no suggestion that human language is unique, since communication is ubiquitous among species of all kinds–land animals, birds, fish, insects." Corballis, Michael. 2017. "The evolution of language: Sharing our mental lives." Journal of Neurolinguistics. 43: 120-132. P. 121.
"By distinguishing language from thought, we can then consider how thought itself evolved independently of how language evolved as a device for communicating our thoughts. Language, then, does depend on thought insofar as it is shaped to convey thoughts, but the structure of thoughts probably long precedes the emergence of language itself." Corballis, Michael. 2017. "The evolution of language: Sharing our mental lives." Journal of Neurolinguistics. 43: 120-132. P. 122.
"The theme to be developed below is that generativity derives, not from language, but from the ability to generate thoughts. This derives in turn from experience in time and space, and the ability to travel mentally away from the present. The capacity to mentally relive past happenings or imagine possible future ones has come to be called mental time travel." Corballis, Michael. 2017. "The evolution of language: Sharing our mental lives." Journal of Neurolinguistics. 43: 120-132. P. 122.
"The generativity of the system [cognitive ability to generate a vast number of episodic events], moreover, may be the principal source of generativity in language. That is, language is generative because it allows us to describe the products of generative experience and imagination, and not because of some fundamental property restricted to the linguistic system itself. One might say that walking is generative, because it allows us to move to a potentially infinite number of locations, but the generativity lies in the variety of locations and not in the act of walking itself. "The generativity of mental travel is even further extended by our capacity to take the mental perspective of others, through what has been termed theory of mind." Corballis, Michael. 2017. "The evolution of language: Sharing our mental lives." Journal of Neurolinguistics. 43: 120-132. P. 123.
"Ediacara fossils (575 to 542 million years ago) represent Earth’s oldest known complex macroscopic life forms, but their morphological history is poorly understood. A comprehensive quantitative analysis of these fossils indicates that the oldest Ediacara assemblage–the Avalon assemblage (575 to 565 Ma)–already encompassed the full range of Edicara morphospace." Shen, Bing, Dong L, Xiao S, Kowalewski M. 2008. "The Avalon Explosion: Evolution of Ediacara Morphospace." Science. V 319. 81-84. January 4. P. 81.
"The Ediacaran System was only formally ratified in 2004, and discussions regarding the division of this 90 million-year interval of Earth history are just beginning." Liu, Alexander, Kenchington C, Mitchell E. 2015. "Remarkable insights into the paleoecology of the Avalonian Edicaran macrobiota." Gondwana Research. 27: 1355-1380. P. 1356.
"Marine life diversified extensively during the Neoproterozoic, and a wide range of biological groups existed by the start of the Edicaran Period. These included multiple microscopic prokaryotes and eukaryotes, acritarchs, a wide range of simple macroscopic discoidal specimens, and putative metazoans." Liu, Alexander, Kenchington C, Mitchell E. 2015. "Remarkable insights into the paleoecology of the Avalonian Edicaran macrobiota." Gondwana Research. 27: 1355-1380. P. 1359.
"However, a world assembled from perfectly fitting, externally bounded blocks could harbour no life. Nothing could move or grow. Thus the block-chain-container and the knot represent mutually exclusive master-tropes for understanding the constitution of the world, predicated on philosophies, respectively, of being and becoming." Ingold, Tim. 2015. The Life of Lines. Routledge. P. 15.
"The thing about things, however, is that they occur – that is, they carry on along their lines. This is to admit them into the world not as nouns but as verbs, as goings-on." Ingold, Tim. 2015. The Life of Lines. Routledge. P. 16.
"Perhaps the tragedy of kinship is that its lines, bound at source, can only grow apart; its promise lies in the discovery of other lines to bind with, and the new life that issues from them." Ingold, Tim. 2015. The Life of Lines. Routledge. P. 20.
"His point [Gilles Deleuze] is that in becoming different, one thing may seek to distinguish itself from another without the latter’s distinguishing itself from the former. Thus a streak of lightning shows up against the night sky, but the sky does not show up against the lightning. The distinction is unilateral. And this is how it is too, suggests Deleuze, with the ground and the line. The line, he writes, distinguishes itself from the ground ‘without the ground distinguishing itself from the line.’ It is like lifting up a sheet to form a crease. We register the line of the crease, we see it as something that has an existence of its own, and yet the crease is still in the sheet. It is not as though the sheet had parted company with the crease and sunk back into flat homogeneity, leaving the crease-line, as it were, high and dry." Ingold, Tim. 2015. The Life of Lines. Routledge. Pp. 34-5.
"With his feet firmly planted on the level ground and his mind soaring in the sphere of reason, the Kantian subject was above all a seeker after knowledge. "It was in the political economy of Karl Marx that the subject was subsequently put to work, through a process of labour that saw the earth turned into an instrument of his purpose... Do people produce upon the earth, or do they assist, like midwives at a birth, in harvesting what the earth has itself produced?... "For Marx’s idea of the instrumental or use-value of the earth, Gibson substitutes the notion of affordance." Ingold, Tim. 2015. The Life of Lines. Routledge. Pp. 37-8.
"We live in a world turned outside in – what I shall call an inverted world – in which all that moves and grows, shines or burns, or makes a noise has been reconstructed within as a simulacrum or image of the exterior. Real living animals, from mice to spiders, are banished or eradicated to make way for their sculptural counterparts, ornamental plants are placed in pots, picture windows affords a view not unlike that which might be projected on a television screen, artificial lighting is engineered to simulate the rays of the sun, concealed radiators give off heat from invisible sources while an imitation coal fire, electrically lit, burns in the grate, and speakers, tastefully, placed around the walls, emit recorded sound that could be wind sighing in the trees or waves breaking on the shore." Ingold, Tim. 2015. The Life of Lines. Routledge. P. 41.
"In short, thanks to its exposure to light, moisture and currents of air – to sun, rain and wind – the earth is forever bursting forth, not destroying the ground in consequence but creating it.... "Hard surfacing, I contend, is the definitive characteristic of the built environment. In such an environment, life is truly lived on or above the ground and not in it. Plants grow in pots, people in apartments, fed and watered from remote sources. Life and habitation are contained." Ingold, Tim. 2015. The Life of Lines. Routledge. P. 45.
"In reality, however, not only does the extended mind of the walker infiltrate the ground along myriad pathways, but also, and inevitably, it tangles with the minds of fellow inhabitants. Thus the ground comprises a domain in which the lives and minds of its human and non-human inhabitants are comprehensively knotted with one another." Ingold, Tim. 2015. The Life of Lines. Routledge. P. 49.
"It is of course the logic of inversion that leads us to imagine the living being that has thus spiralled in on itself as an externally bounded object, deceiving us into thinking that it is not so much a movement in itself as a container for life. This is like confusing the curling movement of your hand in drawing a circle, and the trace it leaves, with the perimeter of the completed figure. Circles may lie inside or outside each other, they may touch or overlap. But in the whirligig world of organisms and storms, there are only coils or spirals, dynamically sustained formations in the current of life that continually run into and out of one another in the very processes of their generation and dissolution." Ingold, Tim. 2015. The Life of Lines. Routledge. Pp. 54-5.
"There is, however, a strong inclination, at least in the verbal and musical arts of the western tradition, to denigrate the pause. Orators are taught to speak, vocalists to sing and flautists to play in such a way that any intake of breath and resulting interruption in the line is as imperceptible as possible. Just as action has always been prioritised over passion, doing over undergoing, so to pause is seen as a sign of hesitation, weakness or indecision." Ingold, Tim. 2015. The Life of Lines. Routledge. P. 89.
"With the white wall/black hole system, white light reflected from the surfaces of objects in the world converges, in seeing, at the black pupil of the eye; while in drawing, the typically black line, issuing from the mind of the hidden subject, by way of the hand, is inscribed upon the white surface of paper. Colour, in this system, is superficial, even deeptive." Ingold, Tim. 2015. The Life of Lines. Routledge. P. 102.
"In sum, whereas from the point of view of classical acoustics, we hear sound and not music (the music taking shape only subsequently, from the mental processing of received auditory stimuli), from a Gibsonian perspective we hear music and not sound (the music consisting in the invariant structures of ambient sound under transformation). Both approaches, however, start from the physicist’s definition of sounds as mechanical vibrations in a medium. As such, for sound to exist there need be no creatures with ears. The tree falling in a forest, to cite a celebrated conundrum, makes a sound regardless of whether anyone is there to hear it. Ears and hearing establish the relevance of the sound, but not its existence." Ingold, Tim. 2015. The Life of Lines. Routledge. Pp. 106-7.
"Music is on black-on-white. With the sound taken out of it, the musical line suffers the same fate as the drawn or painted line once the colour is drained out. It is reduced to the shell of invariance." Ingold, Tim. 2015. The Life of Lines. Routledge. P. 110.
"Silence is black, noise is white: all sounds – like all colours – fall somewhere on a continuum of intensity in between these extremes." Ingold, Tim. 2015. The Life of Lines. Routledge. P. 111.
"That the existence of a thing or substance is indistinguishable from its activity is not, however, easily expressed in Latin, or indeed in any language that normally enlists the verb into the predicate, and which thus categorically separates persons and things, as causal agents, from the effects they set in train." Ingold, Tim. 2015. The Life of Lines. Routledge. Pp. 116-7.
"Flying does not make a bird, but speaking makes us human. It is not that humans are becoming rather than being; rather, their becoming is continually overtaking their being." Ingold, Tim. 2015. The Life of Lines. Routledge. P. 118.
"The task of the builder is, rather, to bring one way of life and growth (of the tree in the forest) to a close in preparation for the launching of another (of the craft in the ocean). Islanders themselves compare the metamorphosis of the tree into a canoe to that of the caterpillar into a butterfly." Ingold, Tim. 2015. The Life of Lines. Routledge. P. 121.
"... ethnography from contemporary Amerindian peoples of the same region [northern Argentina] suggests that in their eyes, pots and babies are not so different after all. Pots do indeed grow like babies, and are grown like them. As the human parent eases the passage of the baby from its prenatal life to its new life in the world, so the potter eases the passage of clay from its life in the earth to its new life as a pot. In the same way that human hands caress and cradle babies, the potter’s hands stroke the clay. All this handling, this nurturance, allows the form of the pot to emerge, just as does that of the growing baby. "Here, the form is not imposed onto the ‘natural’ material of the clay from a superior source in human culture, as the notion of anthropomorphism implies. It rather arises from the caressing and cradling hands of the potter, who is literally inaugurating a new life-cycle through his work. We really need a new word, something like ‘anthropo-ontogenetic’, to describe how form, rather than being applied to the material, is emergent within the field of human relations. But because the word is so long and so cumbersome, I shall abbreviate it in what follows to anthropogenic.... "This was art imitating nature not by the reproduction of its forms but in the exploration of its processes: if there was a likeness between artefacts and organisms, it was not because the former had been modelled in the image of the latter but because similar processes would generate similar results. So too with pots and babies." Ingold, Tim. 2015. The Life of Lines. Routledge. Pp. 122-3.
"... Arendt notes that both classical Greek and Latin had two different words for ‘to act’: in Greek archein and prattein; in Latin agere and gerere. In each pair, the former (archein, agere) originally carried the sense of initiation or commencement, of setting things in motion, while the latter (prattein, gerere) meant to take hold of them, to bear with them and to finish them off. However, in the history of usage in both languages, as Arendt shows, these meanings altered. For the one who would set things in motion became exclusively a leader, whose function was to issue commands, while those who would bear with them became subjects, whose sole duty was to put these commands into practice, to execute them.... However, the leader’s claim to mastery rests on a delusion. For he too is necessarily a participant in social life, and his strength and stature come not from him alone but from what others have lent him, and without which he could achieve nothing. Hence the encompassing of undergoing within doing is no more than a facade, put up by those with pretensions to rule, which hides its opposite, namely that doing is always encompassed within undergoing." Ingold, Tim. 2015. The Life of Lines. Routledge. P. 127.
"Remember the snail! Like all of us, it too must draw in if it is to issue forth. Lines of life, following the ways of the labyrinth, are hesitant at the tip. It is only in the follow-through that mastery, born of past practice, kicks in. Thus in the labyrinth as in life, submission leads and mastery follows: education as exposure precedes education as attunement. Rather than a commanding mind that already knows its will trailing a subservient body in its wake, out in front is an aspirant imagination that feels its way forward, improvising a passage through an as yet unformed world, while bringing up the rear is a prehensive perception already accustomed to the ways of the world and skilled in observing and responding to its affordances." Ingold, Tim. 2015. The Life of Lines. Routledge. Pp. 139-40.
"Whereas God created the world in a single act, and finished the job, ‘man’, wrote Ortega, ‘makes himself in the light of circumstance, ... he is a God as occasion offers, a ‘secondhand God’. And it is precisely in this task of secondhand creation that imagination comes into play. God needs no imagination, says Ortega, since His creation is already all in place before the act begins. But worldly, mortal humans can only recreate piecemeal, a bit at a time." Ingold, Tim. 2015. The Life of Lines. Routledge. Pp 140-1.
"Between has two terminals, in-between has none. Any movement in the between, like the undergoing that is framed in doing or the growing framed in making, is merely from here to there, from an initial to final state. In the in-between, however, movement is the primary and ongoing condition. Where between is liminal, in-between is arterial; where between is intermediate, in -between is midstream. And the in-between is the realm of the life of lines." Ingold, Tim. 2015. The Life of Lines. Routledge. P. 147.
"Turning to the atmosphere, we have seen how the air we breathe is of the in-between; it does not lie between us but is the very medium in which our lives are mixed and stirred. But we have seen, too, how in the history of modernity, this in-between was converted into a between, when the world was turned outside in and boxed inside the theatre. In the theatricalisation of space, air became ether, and light and sound – which once had curved and twisted with the wind – were converted into vectors of projection, linking the eye and mind of the spectator to the reconstructed panorama of the scenery." Ingold, Tim. 2015. The Life of Lines. Routledge. P. 149.
"It [religious faith] has nothing to do with holding beliefs about the world and everything to do with corresponding with it. It is about commitment and the passion that infuses it, about the recognition of what we owe to the world for our existence and our capacity to act – precisely what is denied by the despot who claims all strength to himself, and by the cognitive scientist for whom the mind owes nothing to the world for its power of command." Ingold, Tim. 2015. The Life of Lines. Routledge. Pp. 155-6.
"The world’s industrialised nations have accumulated a wealth of assets in the form of buildings, infrastructure and other durable goods. Thee assets constitute a valuable reservoir of secondary raw materials... "The transition to a circular economy necessitates fundamental changes to production-consumption systems." Schiller, Georg, Mueller F, Ortlepp R. 2016. "Mapping the anthropogenic stock in Germany: Metabolic evidence for a circular economy." Resoruces, Conservation and Recycling. P. 1.
"The basic strategy of managing and exploiting materials embedded in the anthropogenic stock is known as urban mining." Schiller, Georg, Mueller F, Ortlepp R. 2016. "Mapping the anthropogenic stock in Germany: Metabolic evidence for a circular economy." Resoruces, Conservation and Recycling. P. 2.
"Nowhere is the issue [of which factors caused megafaunal extinction] more acute than in Australia, where 85% of the continent’s large mammal species went extinct sometime shortly after 50 kyr ago, approximately the same time that humans established their first firm presence around the continent." Van der Kaars, Sander, Miller G, Turney C, Cook E. Nuernberg D, Schoenfeld J, Kershaw AP, Lehman SJ. 2017. "Humans rather than climate the primary cause of Pleistocene megafaunal extinction in Australia." Nature Communications. DOI: 10.1038/ncomms14142. P. 2.
"Large mammals are demographically vulnerable to hunting pressure owing to their typically low reproduction rates and low population growth. It has been estimated that low intensity hunting (such as the killing of just one juvenile per person per decade) could result in a species being extinguished over a few hundred years. Such selective, low-level hunting would be virtually imperceptible in the archaeological record, accounting for the lack of reported kill sites... In the Cape Pasley record, megafaunal population collapse commenced within 2,000 years of the established date for human dispersal on Australia at ~ 47 kyr ago, with extinction completed within 4,000 years. We conclude our results are consistent with extinction being driven by such ‘imperceptible overkill’." Van der Kaars, Sander, Miller G, Turney C, Cook E. Nuernberg D, Schoenfeld J, Kershaw AP, Lehman SJ. 2017. "Humans rather than climate the primary cause of Pleistocene megafaunal extinction in Australia." Nature Communications. DOI: 10.1038/ncomms14142. P. 5.
"I suggest that the alternative April Theses [Lenin’s call to optimize the revolution but now for a revolution in cognitive science] should be conceived as demands for the rejection of internalism and representationalism. That is, they should be demands for externalism and antirepresentationalism." Wheeler, Michael. 2017. "The Revolution will not be Optimised: Radical Enactivism, Extended Functionalism and the Extensive Mind." Topoi. 36:457-472. P. 458.
"The pivotal claim here is that there is an intimate link between internalism and representationalism, such that if one accepts representationalism, one is pulled inexorably toward internalism. Put another way, the only stable externalism will be one that is founded on antirepresentationalism." Wheeler, Michael. 2017. "The Revolution will not be Optimised: Radical Enactivism, Extended Functionalism and the Extensive Mind." Topoi. 36:457-472. P. 458.
"In the most general terms, a position is enactivist if it pursues some version of the claim that cognition unfolds (is enacted) in looping interactions between an active organism and its environment. For the enactivist, then, cognition depends on a tight and dynamic relationship between perception and action. Moving beyond this broad characterisation, it is increasingly common to find analyses distinguishing between three varieties of the view: sensorimotor enactivism, autopoietic enactivism and radical enactivism. Very roughly sensorimotor enactivism is rooted in the thought that perceptual experience is constituted by implicit knowledge of so-called sensorimotor contingencies–the law-like effects that either my movement or the movements of objects in my sensory field have on the sensory input that I receive. By contrast, autopoietic enactivism is based on the idea that cognition is a process of sense-making by adaptively autonomous systems, where an autonomous system is a network of interdependent processes whose recurrent activity (a) produces and maintains the very boundary that determines the identity of that network as a unitary system, and concurrently (b) defines the ways in which that system may encounter perturbations from what is outside it while maintaining its organisation. A system is adaptively autonomous when it is able to alter its behaviour in response to changes in its environment, in order to improve its situation." Wheeler, Michael. 2017. "The Revolution will not be Optimised: Radical Enactivism, Extended Functionalism and the Extensive Mind." Topoi. 36:457-472. P. 460.
"Radical enactivism is marked out by its steadfast commitment to antirepresentationalism (to a no-content view) about basic cognition, where basic cognition is to be equated not with ‘simple’ cognition but with ‘the most fundamental kinds of minds’. Such minds are phylogenetically and ontogenetically basic, but they may be organisationally and behaviourally sophisticated.... Importantly, the radical enactivist claim that basic cognition is nonrepresentational in character should not be taken as implying that there is no such thing as representational cognition. Rather, given that basic cognition is nonrepresentational in character, contentful thought emerges as a special achievement of minds that are scaffolded through structured and complex manipulations of external representational resources. The radical enactivist commitment to antirepresentationalism about basic cognition is allied with a strongly enactivist interpretation of the idea that cognition is embodied." Wheeler, Michael. 2017. "The Revolution will not be Optimised: Radical Enactivism, Extended Functionalism and the Extensive Mind." Topoi. 36:457-472. P. 460. Subquotes: Hutto DD, Kirchhoff MD, Myin E. 2014. "Extensive enactivism: why keep it all in?" Front Hum Neurosci. 8(706):1-11. P. 1.
"Most importantly, however, representationalism can be a barrier to externalism only if representationalism somehow invites internalism; but we have seen already that it doesn’t." Wheeler, Michael. 2017. "The Revolution will not be Optimised: Radical Enactivism, Extended Functionalism and the Extensive Mind." Topoi. 36:457-472. P. 471.
"I identify five ways in which the concept of the Anthropocene has been mobilized in the Anthropo-scene: scientific question, intellectual zeitgeist, ideological provocation, new ontologies and science fiction." Lorimer, Jamie. 2017. "The Anthropo-scene: A guide for the perplexed." Social Studies of Science. 47(1): 117-142. P. 118.
"One high-profile and mainstream ideological engagement with the Anthropocene comes from a self-described group of ‘economodernists’ associated with the Breakthrough Institute – a centre-right US think-tank. In a recent manifesto they imagine a ‘good Anthropocene’ in which humans achieve their Enlightenment destiny as the ‘God Species’ through better technology, urbanization and the ‘decoupling’ of people from nature." Lorimer, Jamie. 2017. "The Anthropo-scene: A guide for the perplexed." Social Studies of Science. 47(1): 117-142. P. 123. Reference: Asafu-Adjaye, J, L Blomquist, S Brand, et al. 2015. An Economodernist Manifesto. Breakthrough Institute. Subquote: Lynas, M. 2011. The God Species: How the Planet Can Survive the Age of Humans. Fourth Estate.
"Haff encourages us to view technology ‘from the outside’, as a coherent, ‘autonomous’ system whose emergence ‘represents a new stage in the geologic evolution of the Earth’. He proposes the technosphere as having ‘similarities to the lithosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere’ and as the basis of a new ‘geological paradigm’." Lorimer, Jamie. 2017. "The Anthropo-scene: A guide for the perplexed." Social Studies of Science. 47(1): 117-142. P. 126. Reference: Haff, PK. 2014. "Technology as a geological phenomenon: Implications for human well-being." Geological Society. 395(1): 301-309.
"In the dialectical spirit of Lewontin and the Niche Construction theorists, social niche construction theory employs an explicitly interactionist explanatory stance. The central idea is that biological entities are both the subject and object of their own social evolution." Ryan, PA, S. Powers, R. Watson. 2016. "Social niche construction and evolutionary transitions in individuality." Biol Philos. 31: 59-79. P. 61. Reference: Lewontin, Richard. 1985. "The organism as the subject and object of evolution." From: Lerwins, R. & R. Lewontin (Eds). The Dialectical Biologist. Harvard UP.
"Social niche modifier (SNM): A trait that alters the effective game being played by its bearers, causing it to differ from the counterfactual game they would have been playing if the SNM had not acted. Examples include factors such as population structure, relatedness, punishment, policing and side-payments." Ryan, PA, S. Powers, R. Watson. 2016. "Social niche construction and evolutionary transitions in individuality." Biol Philos. 31: 59-79. Pp. 61-2.
"Social niche and SNM are inter-defined. The SNM trait is called a ‘modifier’ because it changes the social niche that would have obtained had it not been in operation. It is by the notion of SNM traits that individuals can (partly) construct their own social niche and so the circumstances of their own social evolution. Policing, punishment, side-payments and relatedness among interaction partners are examples of SNMs that can arise as a result of individuals’ social niche modifying traits. It is important for their evolution that SNMs alter the effective game being played in their bearers’ interactions, not for the whole population." Ryan, PA, S. Powers, R. Watson. 2016. "Social niche construction and evolutionary transitions in individuality." Biol Philos. 31: 59-79. P. 62.
"The first [general point about conflict of genes within organisms] is that we should not forget what a cooperative venture sexual reproduction is. Here we are referring not to the cooperation of the parents, which we will treat later, but of the cooperation that results after two unrelated sets of genes are put together in the zygote. We think of organisms as being built by genetically identical lineages of cells, and we tend to forget that, with every sexual event, an organism is initiated by the horizontal amalgamation of two cells that have great potential conflict but little actual conflict. Clearly, high relatedness is not essential for organismality." Queller, David & J. Strassmann. 2009. "Beyond society: the evolution of organismality." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 364: 3143-3155. P. 3146.
"If we were to use a majority-rule criterion, many eukaryotes might not be considered organismal; about half the human genome is derived from transposable elements. However, we use actual conflict as the criterion, and most of these transposons are inactive and presumably not very costly, and some many perform useful functions.... "The main lesson here is that the significant conflicts occur in undoubted organisms, so we cannot use the mere existence of conflict to rule out organismality of other types." Queller, David & J. Strassmann. 2009. "Beyond society: the evolution of organismality." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 364: 3143-3155. P. 3147.
"High cooperation and low conflicts do not go strictly hand-in-hand; sometimes high cooperation gives room for conflicts to operate without doing too much damage." Queller, David & J. Strassmann. 2009. "Beyond society: the evolution of organismality." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 364: 3143-3155. P. 3147.
"Humans are the most successful cooperators; a human city is arguably far more cooperative and integrated than groups of any other species, but that is not sufficient to make it [a human group] organismal." Queller, David & J. Strassmann. 2009. "Beyond society: the evolution of organismality." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 364: 3143-3155. P. 3147.
"Wheeler’s use of the term ‘organism’ has been largely supplanted by ‘superorganism’, but we concur with Wheeler’s usage because we have come to learn that all of our familiar organisms are superorganisms." Queller, David & J. Strassmann. 2009. "Beyond society: the evolution of organismality." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 364: 3143-3155. P. 3148. Reference: Wheeler, W. 1911. "The ant colony as organism." J. Morph. 22: 307-325.
"The glue [between honeybees in a colony] is not adhesion molecules and intercellular signals, but attachment to a particular place, pheromones, chemical recognition cues, as well as various visual, tactile and smell signals of work done and undone." Queller, David & J. Strassmann. 2009. "Beyond society: the evolution of organismality." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 364: 3143-3155. P. 3148.
"By accepting the eukaryotic cell as an organism, we have already acknowledged that genetically distinct partners can become organismal. The genetic differences in a social insect colony lead to potential conflicts, but in honeybees, the actual conflicts appear to be very small. New queens fight to the death, but at little cost to the colony." Queller, David & J. Strassmann. 2009. "Beyond society: the evolution of organismality." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 364: 3143-3155. P. 3148.
"These steps [major transitions] have been critically important, but evolution does not work by major transitions alone. If evolution occasionally crafts new organismal alliances that are truly transformational, it seems likely that it will much more frequently craft new organismal alliances that are not necessarily revolutionary in the history of life, but organismal nevertheless." Queller, David & J. Strassmann. 2009. "Beyond society: the evolution of organismality." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 364: 3143-3155. P. 3151.
"Control of conflict is viewed as one of the major prerequisites for a major transition. We agree that it is important, but low conflict and high cooperation are not the same thing;... Some groups have low conflict, but never become cooperative enough to be deemed organismal (clones of dandelions or non-social aphids, Gonium). Others have very high cooperation in spite of considerable conflict, with human societies being one familiar example. Organismality can evolve from either direction. Volvox and eusocial aphids evolved by adding cooperation in simple groups lacking conflict, like Gonium or non-social aphids. Honeybees, in contrast, evolved by reducing conflicts in societies of more primitive bees." Queller, David & J. Strassmann. 2009. "Beyond society: the evolution of organismality." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 364: 3143-3155. P. 3151.
"Conflict can certainly be a threat to cooperation, but the two are not incompatible. High cooperation may even sometimes be what allows significant conflict. Melipona bees are in no danger of extinction despite their internecine battles, presumably because their colonies work so well in other ways. Vetebrates can sustain a huge amount of selfish junk DNA precisely because they are such successful cooperative entities in most respects." Queller, David & J. Strassmann. 2009. "Beyond society: the evolution of organismality." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 364: 3143-3155. P. 3151.
"But it seems to us that the simplest way to include all conventionally accepted organisms is to define them in terms of extensive cooperation with little conflict." Queller, David & J. Strassmann. 2009. "Beyond society: the evolution of organismality." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 364: 3143-3155. P. 3152.
"The scientific community could choose any name they want for entities with extensive cooperation and very little conflict, but the existence of such entities is one of the striking features of life, and explaining how they evolve should therefore be an important task. That task will be hamstrung if we restrict ourselves to those transitions that happened to have major consequences." Queller, David & J. Strassmann. 2009. "Beyond society: the evolution of organismality." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 364: 3143-3155. P. 3152.
"However, there is one higher taxon that can be considered an individual in the same sense as species are individuals; namely, the taxon that contains all life on Earth that shares a single origin. If species can be defined as ‘the smallest historical individual within which there is a parental pattern of ancestry and descent’, then life on Earth can be defined as ‘the largest historical individual within which there is a parental pattern of ancestry and descent’. It is a perfectly monophyletic taxon and fulfills the criteria defined by Hull as to what constitutes an individual: it is a spatio-temporally localized, cohesive, and continuous entity–a historical entity." Hermida, Margarida. 2016. "Life on Earth is an individual." Theory Biosci. 135:37-44. P. 38. Subquotes: Kluge, AG. 1990. "Species as historical individuals." Biol Philos. 5:417-431. Reference: Hull, DL. 1978. "A matter of individuality." Philos Sci. 45:335-360. "So, if the universe had indeed a start at the Big Bang, then it is a historical individual. Life on Earth, which is also thought to have had a single origin, similarly qualifies as a historical individual. In addition, life on Earth is causally continuous since at every interface between a previously existing cell or organism and a new one, the new cell or organism is causally related to the previously existing one." Hermida, Margarida. 2016. "Life on Earth is an individual." Theory Biosci. 135:37-44. P. 40.
"The inclusion of a new category of biological individual, here called ‘life-individuals’, in addition to cells, organisms, and species, is an important step toward the project of a universal biology." Hermida, Margarida. 2016. "Life on Earth is an individual." Theory Biosci. 135:37-44. P. 43.
"Although life on Earth comprises a diversity of species, it is only one life-individual.... "The program of universal biology is not just about finding out which features of Earth life are universal and which are peculiar to it, although that is a good starting point. Universal biology will be the study not only of organisms, species, and the evolutionary process, but also of life-individuals." Hermida, Margarida. 2016. "Life on Earth is an individual." Theory Biosci. 135:37-44. P. 43. |
